Sanford Crow

CHAPTER 48

Both guns blazed. Everything else was a blur.

The shots were so loud that Diane's ears rang. She sat still in a moment of disbelief. Sanford collapsed alongside her, his chest irregularly spurting blood in her direction. She knew he was either dead or on his way to it.

She heard Eric gasp. Then he screamed, "Nooooo!" His free hand cradled his stomach, where Sanford's bullet tunneled in and stayed.

Diane looked at her hand and saw the gun. Comprehension took hold.

Eric was still on his feet, screaming. These plans—twenty-five years in the making—were now derailed and gunning it off the edge of the cliff.

Diane heard the deadened screams of Sadie, and saw the lifeless body of Frank Waters budging from her underneath him.

Sadie had squirmed free, covered in his blood from head to toe. Her eyes were on her father's. Diane knew she would go to him.

Eric knew as well. In his dying frustration, he raised his gun with a trembling arm towards his niece.

Now! Diane thought.

She felt a surge of adrenaline. She lifted the gun, saw the safety was off, and let her training take control. She felt the cold breeze of the gun range, Jake Hardy behind her, whispering.

"Lift your arms, bend your elbows, bring the barrel to eye level, squeeze the trigger, don't pull it."

"You sound like a broken record," she had said.

"Better to be repetitive than dead."

Eric turned to Diane as she drew, his own gun rising instinctively towards her and away from Sadie. He tried to take aim, but Diane's quick-twitch was far too fast. She pulled the trigger three times before he could pull his once. There was no recoil.

Two plummeted into his chest, one into his shoulder. He clutched his sternum with a gurgled moan and toppled over.

Sadie barely blinked through the stream of bullets that whizzed above her head as she crawled towards Sanford. She felt like she was a million miles away, in another dimension, where the only thing that made sense was the fact that her father needed her.

Diane stood up, still gripping the gun and pointing it at Eric, who lay motionless on the floor.

"Sadie?" she asked.

Sadie was at her father's side. His head was in her lap.

Blood gurgled from the corner of Sanford's mouth.

"Daddy," Sadie cried. "Daddy, please don't..."

His breathing was erratic. Short gasps of air heaved in and out, as he desperately tried to cling to them. He tried to speak, but choked on the blood in his lungs.

All Sanford could do was look at his little girl. What he saw, made everything else okay. Her open eyes, her beating heart—the fact that she was still alive. Even though he was leaving her as an orphan, he knew she'd be all right. Because she was better than he was, and he was better than his father.

As Sanford looked at Sadie, he realized that bringing her into this world was the whole reason for his existence, and with that knowledge, he could die peacefully.

Her little hand fell into his. It took all the strength he had left to give it a tiny squeeze.

"I love you, Daddy!" Sadie pleaded, then looked at her father through the tears of her eyes, and saw that he was smiling at her. In some bizarre way, he'd looked more alive than he ever had before.

Sanford's hand went limp on top of hers. His eyes shut and never opened again.

"Daddy—" she started to say and then stopped. Tears burned from the back of her eyes. Her breathing ceased in her chest. It had all caught up to her; this gross portrayal of Christmas. Sadie fell into shock.

Diane slowly walked over, scared, letting the gun take charge and lead the way, still aiming it at Eric.

"Sadie?" she called her name again. But Sadie remained silent.

Diane stood tall over Eric's body. She kicked his foot with hers. It flopped to the side limply. She couldn't trust his death. Like they do in the movies, she waited for him to remerge, drenched in blood and riddled with bullets for one last scare.

But Eric didn't rise. He didn't spasm. Eric Crow was dead, twenty-five years too late.

Blue and red lights flashed through the window, and sirens wailed a sweet song in her ears. The police cars came to screeching halts outside.

Diane went over to Sadie, who was on her knees, immobile alongside her dead father.

"Sadie?" Diane asked again. She put the gun down and lowered herself to her knees. She was face to face with her. Sadie's eyes were drawn to both her parents, dead on the floor of her once innocuous living room. The same room where her father taught her how to walk, where her mother had painted her nails for the first time, where Christmas mornings would start with her racing into the room and ransacking all the presents scattered under the tree for a loved and spoiled little girl.

Sadie's eyes finally blinked, air rushed back into her lungs, as the standing tears erupted down her face like water out of a cracked dam.

Diane breathed a sigh of relief as Sadie turned her head towards her and let her cries be heard. They collapsed into each other's arms, Diane whispering softly and reassuring, "I got you. You're safe, you're safe" gripping her tightly.

The police swarmed the house with guns drawn.

"Freeze!" and "Put your hands up!"

Diane and Sadie remained embraced, ignoring their demands. They were secure in their hug. Outside of it, the world existed, a world too big at the moment for either of them to face.

"You're safe," Diane said, but couldn't help wondering if Sadie would ever feel safe again.