Lilies and Lies by Mary Manners Page B

his own. He bolted from the house, took off across the snow-covered pasture.
    “I lunged after him, shouting for him to come back. It was cold, dark, and he’d surely freeze to death before he made it back to the house, especially in tennis shoes, a T-shirt and jeans. Neither of us had thought to bring a jacket. I could barely see him as he plodded across the pasture, veiled in moonlight that reflected off the falling snow. He made it about two-hundred yards before I heard the sirens squealing. I didn’t connect the dots at first, because I was bleeding pretty badly by then from the gash on my arm and things were sort of fading in and out. Then, a pair of cruisers turned the corner and started down the road that flanked the pasture. Their lights cut through the darkness and I suddenly realized…I just knew...”
    “Oh my, Gunnar…then what?”
    “I called to Morgan to turn around and come back but he just kept moving. He ran right toward the cruisers. He thought the police were going to help, and in a way, I suppose they did. But it tore us apart, what happened next.”
    “What was it? What did the police do?”
    “They took Morgan into protective services. There’d been other reports from his school, from the neighbors. I guess that night was the last straw.”
    “And you?”
    “I spent the night at the hospital, getting stitched up and interviewed. I was out of it and I just remember asking over and over again to see Morgan.”
    “You were probably in shock, Gunnar.” Maddie linked her fingers with his, holding tight. “If you were bleeding that badly…”
    “When the doctors released me, I was taken to a place—I guess you could call it a group home—in Nashville, where I spent the next few months, finishing school, until I turned eighteen. I tried to find Morgan, but it was like he dropped off the face of the earth. I took off, just went as far away as I could manage on the money I had, and tried to move on…until I got a call from Charlene out of the blue about six months later. Mom was…dead.”
    “I headed home for the funeral, and Kyle was born just a week later. I was there…I saw him right after he was born. Things were better for a while, and I helped Charlene get back on her feet. Then one day she just up and left again. I didn’t see Kyle until she dropped him on my doorstep. I’m still waiting for Morgan. Maybe, one day…”
     
     
     
     

9
     
    Gunnar’s voice remained with Maddie the next day, as she set a new shipment of Stargazers on display at the nursery while Reese unloaded them from a truck.
    “I don’t know if anyone who has ever been so broken can really ever be made whole again.”
    Tears stung her eyes as she remembered the tone of Gunnar’s voice…quiet, solemn as the memories flooded in to take him back to that dark place.
    “My sister repeated the cycle of abuse…she’s still repeating the cycle. It’s painful to watch and to offer her help that she continually refuses to accept. At least I have Kyle. I think, for him, things can be so much better than they were for me, for Charlene…for Morgan. But I’m not sure that what I have to give him is enough…”
    What was it like to grow up immersed in the kind of turmoil Gunnar and his siblings had endured? Maddie couldn’t fathom. His words put everything in perspective, and she thought of her life up to this point as warm and fuzzy while Gunnar’s had been a ride through coarse sandpaper. Sure, the home she grew up in was busy and crowded, but it was a good kind of busy, a warm kind of crowded. Her family was close-knit; they shared more than meals together. They shared secrets and worries, heartache and laughter, hopes and dreams. Yes, it was sometimes difficult to be the only girl in a brood of brothers who had a penchant to annoy and to dote. But what was the real harm in that, besides an occasional bruised ego or frazzled nerves? Maddie knew without fail, through good days and some not-so-good, that she