Chapter 17 - The Mother's Fortress
"Claire, get down!" Dad roared, reaching for my jacket.
"No, Dad. He pushed me down the stairs because he thought I was weak," I said, stepping out from behind the stone parapet into full view of the ridge. "He hid behind his money, his lawyers, and his fists. I am not running from this man ever again."
Richard stopped forty yards up the slope, his boots planted in the mud near a rocky outcrop. He leveled the deer rifle straight at my chest, his hands shaking so violently the barrel wobbled in small, erratic circles.
"Look at you," he panted, rain dripping down his hollow face, mixing with sweat and tears of rage. "Look at the proud little bitch on her mountain. You think you won, don't you? You think you took everything from me?"
"You had nothing to take, Richard," I said, my voice amplified by the dead silence of the rain-washed valley. I did not raise my shotgun. I held it at my side, walking down the terrace steps, one by one, until I stood on the open grass ten yards from him.
"Stop right there or I'll blow a hole through you!" he screamed, his finger curling over the trigger. "Where is she?! Where is Maya?!"
"She's where you will never, ever reach her," I replied, my voice steady as granite. "She doesn't even remember the sound of your voice, Richard. When she thinks of her childhood, she doesn't think of the man who slammed her mother's head against the wall. She thinks of this mountain. She thinks of her grandfather. She thinks of safety."
"I am her father!" he sobbed, a grotesque mixture of self-pity and fury contorting his face. "I gave you that house in New Albany! I gave you that life! You were nothing before me! Nothing!"
"I was whole before you," I said coldly, taking another step forward. "And I am whole without you."
"Shut up!" he shrieked, closing his eyes and tightening his finger on the rifle.
He never got the chance to pull it.
A low, ferocious growl rose from the treeline behind him.
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From the brush burst Barnaby—Dad’s hundred-and-ten-pound Caucasian Shepherd mix who had been silent-tracking through the ravine under Dad's hidden whistle command. The massive dog hit Richard from the blind side like a freight train, knocking the deer rifle out of his hands and slamming him face-first into the wet red clay.
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