Embers & Echoes by Karsten Knight Page B

you were the one who found Mama? Sometimes you even have to wonder if he secretly blames you. But you know that’s absurd. Papa has never looked on you with an ounce of resentment, even when you snapped his fishing rod in half.
    “And what about you, darlin’?” He leans over the table. His hand finds yours, which is closed in a fist on the table, and he shakes it gingerly. “Did you sell that charming voice and quick wit of yours to the devil?”
    You can’t help but smile. “No, sir.” You pat the top ofhis hand, and then pull yours away so you can reach for the carafe of milk in front of Gracie. “The only way I’d let the devil at my voice,” you say as you bring the carafe over your empty glass, “is if he pried it from my unwilling hands.”
    The bullet hits the carafe. The glass shatters over the table before you can even register that the deafening bang from across the room was a gunshot. The milk splashes over your face, and Papa cries out when a sliver of glass pierces his cheek.
    Horatio McGrath stands in the open doorway with a rifle snug against his breast. The bloodshot eye that gazes down the sights of his barrel twitches uncontrollably. When he smiles, his teeth burn red from the wine. If the man weren’t such an impeccable shot even when he’s drunk, the glass carafe could have very well been your head. You drop the broken bottle neck onto the table.
    “Horatio!” Papa shouts. He stands up and kicks the chair out from behind him. “What the hell do you think you’re—”
    McGrath flips the rifle from trigger to barrel, wheels back, and strikes Papa hard across the face with the stock. Papa hits the table on the way down. He grabs his head and moans on the floor, but he’s still conscious.
    “None of y’all move,” McGrath says, returning the rifle to its perch against his shoulder.
    Even Gracie stops fidgeting in her high chair. You’retoo terrified to even wipe the milk from your face.
    “Now, Phillip,” Horatio says out of the corner of his mouth. He always speaks that way, even when he isn’t chewing tobacco. “This community stood by you when you decided to adopt Satan’s offspring, not once, but twice. We sympathized with your fruitless efforts to yield some real salt-of-the-earth children. I even allowed my girls to play with yours in the hopes of teaching your girls the fineries of American so-ci-e-ty.”
    Papa seizes the back of the chair and winces as he raises himself to a knee. “Save your sermons for mass,” he wheezes, “and tell me why you’ve barged into my house, endangered my daughters, and cuffed a man who never raised a hand to you.”
    “Never raised a hand to me?” Horatio growls. “Maybe you haven’t; but the fire-lighting hounds of hell that you call daughters managed to burn through half my harvest.”
    Papa immediately stops trying to get up and turns his gaze on you. He says nothing, but his eyes whisper, Is this true?
    “Now justice has come to collect.” Horatio stumbles a little bit on a loose floorboard, but his aim stays true. “You know, Phillip boy, if you’d just given Clarisse the child she wanted, like a real man, none of this would have happened. . . . Shame I had to fill in for you.”
    Your breath catches. Papa’s grip on the chair tightens so much that you can hear the wood splinter beneath his hand.
    Horatio sneers. “You mean you didn’t even suspect?”
    Papa draws himself up to his full height.
    “When Clarisse sent herself back to her Maker in that barn,” McGrath says slowly, “she took one of mine with her.”
    Papa screams and lunges for McGrath.
    McGrath opens fire.
    The impact folds Papa’s body in two and carries him across the room into the stove, where he shudders once and lies still. His unseeing eyes glare up at McGrath.
    At once Gracie is wailing and Violet is screaming, and you want to join them, but the heat within is devouring your voice. Instead you dive for McGrath yourself.
    He doesn’t have time