Page 54 of The Intruder

The good news is Nell surrenders my gun.

The bad news is we can’t get her to stop crying. She buries her face in her hands, her small body shaking with sobs. Lee looks at me helplessly, and I crouch down beside her. I put my arms around her, remembering the way that nice paramedic hugged me after my mother died.

Well, after I killed her.

We need to calm Nell down. That’s the first thing we have to do. The second thing we have to do is figure out where her mother is. Because we know that her father is dead. At least we know she didn’t kill him.

I manage to coax her to the sofa. She’s still sobbing, her face bright red and full of snot. I sit down on one side of her, and Lee grabs a box of tissues for her, then sits on her other side. He’s still in his pajamas, but he doesn’t make any move to go change.

“I’m so sorry, Nell,” Lee says again. “My brother never even knew about you as far as I know. If he had…”

“When…?” Nell looks up at him, gasping to speak through her sobs. “When did he…did he die?”

“Twelve years ago,” he says. “How old are you?”

“I’m twelve.”

Lee gets a really sad expression on his face. “He told me your mom was pregnant, but he thought she lost it. I thought so too. I had no idea…”

“How…how did he die?”

“Car accident.” He bows his head. “He was just driving along, and another car blew through a stop sign and hit him. Just one of those things.”

A few more tears run down her cheeks. “Were you close with him?”

“We were.” Lee hands her a fresh tissue from the box. “He was my hero, honestly. I would’ve done anything for him. And I know he would have wanted me to help take care of you. So if your mom needs help…”

His statement elicits a fresh wave of tears. She sobs into her hands. Lee looks like he’s not sure what to do, so I rub her back, making circles with my palm.

“Nell,” I say, “does your mom know where you are?”

She shakes her head slowly.

“Is she looking for you?”

“I… I think…” Nell looks up at me, her pale eyelashes heavy with tears. “I think she might be dead.”

Lee’s blue eyes fly open, but I’m not nearly as surprised. I saw Nell when she first arrived, covered in blood. I also knew that nobody put out an Amber Alert. I have been bracing myself for a confession like this.

“She was having a really bad fight with her boyfriend.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “She and Jax fight all the time, mostly just yelling and screaming. I wish they’d break up, but he gets her drugs, so she stays with him.”

I flinch, already itching to call child protective services, even though there’s no phone service.

“She was mad at him because she thought he was cheating on her,” Nell continues.

“She kept screaming, and then she was hitting him. I don’t know what happened, but the next thing I knew, Jax grabbed this switchblade he keeps in his pocket and—and I think he stabbed her.

” She looks up at me, desperate for me to understand.

“She was mean to me a lot, but I didn’t want her to die.

I swear I didn’t.” She shakes her head violently.

I put my arm around her and let her cry, remembering how awful my own mother was to me when I was her age. Her story feels so much like my own in so many ways.

Except, of course, I absolutely did mean for my mother to die.

“There was so much blood,” Nell squeaks into my shirt, which is now wet with her tears. “I tried to help her, but I didn’t know how. And then Jax started acting like I was the one who stabbed her. He said, ‘What did you do, Nelly? They’re going to send you to jail!’”

“That’s ridiculous!” I burst out.

“It’s not though.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.

“I always got in so much trouble at school for fighting. And I had her blood all over me. So…I ran.” She peeks a look over at Lee.

“Except I didn’t know where to go. But I remembered your name and address, and when I went there, this maintenance person said you’d moved out, but he knew your new mailing address, and I looked up a map in my phone. So…here I am.”

“With a gun?” Lee says, still clearly rattled from having the Glock pointed at him.

“I wasn’t planning to use it.” Nell turns her face into my shoulder, avoiding his eyes. “But in the time it took me to hitch over here, I convinced myself that…” She takes a shaky breath. “Well, you didn’t want me when I was a baby. I figured you wouldn’t want me now. And…I got mad.”

Lee looks like he doesn’t know what to say to that. He rubs his temples with his fingertips, like he’s trying to make sense of all this. “We need to call the police,” he finally says.

Nell curls up in a little ball on the sofa, crying into her knees. I have stopped her from hurting Lee, but the girl may have lost her mother. And the fact that her mother was a terrible person who hurt a defenseless child doesn’t make Nell miss her any less.

But there’s a chance that Jolene Kettering is still okay. Yes, she was stabbed. But that doesn’t mean she’s dead. Although to be fair, that was a considerable amount of blood on Nell’s clothing. So much blood, as Nell noted.

“Please don’t call the police.” She looks between the two of us, the urgent desperation plain on her face like she thinks we’re going to call right this minute, even though the phones are out.

Like she thinks she’ll be locked up any moment.

“They’ll think I did it for sure. And if she’s alive, she’ll probably tell them I did it to protect Jax. ”

“Nobody will think you stabbed your mother,” Lee insists. “You’re only twelve.”

“Please.” She is almost feverish now. “I don’t want them to take me away. If they don’t put me in jail, they’ll put me in a foster home.”

“Nell—” Lee begins, but before he can say whatever he was going to say, I cut him off.

“Since the phone lines are down, I’ll go to the police station myself,” I volunteer. “I’ll tell them everything that happened, and I’ll make sure they know you’re safe with family. I’ll make sure they won’t hurt you or take you away.”

“You can’t promise that,” Nell sniffles.

“I do promise.” I lay a hand on my chest. “I infinity promise, Nell. Let me handle this, and it will be all right. I’m a teacher, and it’s my job to protect children.”

“Casey.” Lee frowns, like he doesn’t entirely trust me either. “Maybe I should go talk to the police.”

“No,” I say calmly. “You should stay here with your niece. I will deal with it.”

God knows, I’ve done it before.

Lee lets out a long sigh. He knows he has a long road ahead of him. If Jolene Kettering is dead and so is the girl’s father, he might be the next of kin. She is his responsibility if he is willing. And he may not be willing.

“Nell,” he says quietly, “do you have any aunts or uncles or grandparents you can stay with?”

Slowly, she shakes her head. It all feels painfully familiar.

But Lee doesn’t miss a beat. “I need you to know then that if your mother and father are both gone, I will be there for you. I will be your guardian, if that’s what you want. I promise you that.”

I look at Lee with a newfound respect. He seemed like a decent enough guy, but I always suspected there were things about him that he wasn’t telling me, and it made me want to stay away from him.

But now he’s offering to step up for a child who isn’t even his, and I can see in his eyes that he means it. Lee is a good man.

“Casey is going to have the police check on your mom,” he says. “In the meantime, do you want to look at some pictures of your dad? I’ve got lots of them.”

Nell nods slowly. She is still tearful, but she doesn’t look like she’s about to hyperventilate. Maybe she’ll be okay after all.

Lee doesn’t know it, but I’m going to make sure of that.

Because I’m not driving to the police station. I have very different plans to ensure that Nell doesn’t have to suffer one more day at the hands of that miserable woman. It’s time for the misery to end.