Things We Left Behind (Knockemout Series, 3)

Twenty-two years ago

Six days. That was how long Lucian had been behind bars. He’d turned eighteen and missed his own high school graduation because of me. Well, technically because of his horrible, disgusting monster of a father, but also because I hadn’t listened to him.

I told my parents everything I knew the night Lucian was arrested. They hadn’t been happy with me keeping that kind of secret from them. Their disappointment in me only made me feel worse.

My dad had put everything on hold and was fighting tooth and nail to get Lucian out of county jail. From what I’d gathered through pointed questioning and blatant eavesdropping, Chief Ogden was pushing to charge Lucian as an adult. The judge seemed amiable and set the bail at an astronomical $250,000 during the arraignment, which I hadn’t been allowed to attend.

According to what Mom told Maeve over the phone, Dad had nearly had an aneurysm on the spot.

I was listening outside his office later that day when he took a call from the district attorney, who had suggested Lucian accept a plea deal for eight years in state prison. My father, one of the nicest, most polite human beings in the entire universe, told the DA to go fuck himself.

Meanwhile, Mom had visited Lucian’s mom twice since she got out of the hospital with a pair of broken ribs. Both times, the woman had refused to talk about Lucian or what really happened that night. She had also declined Mom’s offer to let her come stay with us “until things were sorted out.”

Ansel Rollins appeared to be behaving himself, for the moment.

I’d overheard my parents talking on the front porch the night before. Dad broached the subject of a second mortgage to Mom for Lucian’s bond.

“Darling, of course we’ll do it. We can’t leave him behind bars.”

In that moment, I realized what a privilege it was to grow up with good people for parents. I’d pressed my teary face up against the inside of the window screen and scared the shit out of them by yelling, “You can have my college fund too!”

I came from a family of heroes and wasn’t about to be left out. Certainly not after my mistake had caused the current situation.

I had a plan.

I’d done enough research on abusive relationships over the past year that the librarian was starting to give me funny looks every week when I checked out a new batch of books.

I knew I wasn’t supposed to blame Mrs. Rollins. She was a victim of domestic abuse. I was savvy enough to understand that systemic abuse did things to the psyche that other people couldn’t fathom. However, even with that in mind, a very large, very loud part of me wanted to tell her exactly what I thought of her choosing her dirtbag loser husband over her son.

I felt dizzy every time I thought of the boy I adored behind bars for the crime of protecting his mother.

So while my parents decided to move forward with coming up with bail money, I decided I was going to fix the whole damn mess. I was going to make it clear to everyone, including the blind-as-a-bat Chief Ogden, that Lucian Rollins wasn’t the dangerous one in the family.

I just needed the right opportunity.

I thought of going to Lucian’s friends Knox and Nash Morgan for help. But I didn’t know how much they knew about Lucian’s situation, and they were boys. They were more likely to go off half-cocked and screw up everything. It made sense to keep it to myself.

What I needed was irrefutable proof of Ansel Rollins’s villain status. To sixteen-year-old me, that meant video. After double checking that Virginia was a single-party consent jurisdiction when it came to recording conversations, I squirreled away my parents’ camcorder under my bed along with a mini tape recorder I borrowed from my friend Sherry.

Every night, I stayed up late, sprawled on the window seat with my window open wide, listening.

Waiting with a sick mix of anticipation and dread churning in my stomach.

I dropped the book I’d been ignoring onto the cushion and shot my legs up in the air above me. My toenails were purple, and both pinkies had already chipped. I’d painted them the day before Lucian got arrested, and since then, everything else had seemed so frivolous.

This wasn’t how the summer before my junior year was supposed to go. I was supposed to be looking forward to the summer softball league that was starting in a week. The one where I was going to get scouted by one of my dream colleges. I was supposed to be accepting invitations to Third Base and making out. Maybe even losing my virginity. I was supposed to be convincing Lucian that it was safe for him to go out into the world and live his life.

Instead, I’d been the one to ruin any chance at that future.

I sat up and peered morosely out the window. The look on his face when he’d seen me standing there as he was led to the police cruiser, when he realized I’d done the one thing he’d made me promise not to…

I’d begged to be allowed to visit him at the county jail. Dad had diplomatically told me it wasn’t a good idea, but I knew by the shifty look behind his glasses that Lucian didn’t want to see me. Because it was my fault he was there in the first place. Because I’d broken that trust.

I heard the chirp of tires, the squeal of brakes, and I popped up onto my knees. Mr. Rollins’s pickup came to an abrupt stop in the driveway. He’d parked crooked, and he stumbled when he got out from behind the wheel. He slammed the door, but it bounced open again without his notice.

I scrambled off the window seat and dove for the box under my bed. I stuffed the camera and the recorder in an NPR tote bag, shoved my feet in a pair of sneakers, and let myself out into the hall. I held my breath as I tiptoed to the stairs, ears straining for any noises coming from my parents’ room on the opposite side of the house.

They were going to be so pissed. I’d be grounded until I was thirty. But the end justified the means. If I could show the police department irrefutable proof that put Mr. Rollins behind bars and freed Lucian, it would all be worth it.

I detoured into my dad’s office and grabbed the cordless phone off his desk. I wasn’t sure if the signal would reach from next door, but I could at least run and dial 911 if necessary. Phone secured in the tote bag with the rest of my equipment, I unlocked the front door and slipped out into the night.

I stumbled twice in my haste, my heart pounding louder the closer I got.

There were lights on, upstairs and down.

“Please be downstairs,” I murmured to myself, wincing when I realized I was actually hoping that a woman was about to be attacked. I felt sick to my stomach as I stayed low and made my way up to the front window.

This was going to work. It had to work.

I heard voices, one soft and pleading, one raised. A shadow passed by the glass, and I ducked low in the overgrown flower bed. Something with thorns bit into my forearm. Every twig snap, every breath, every beat of my heart sounded like it was amplified.

There was a dull thud inside and an angry muttering. Carefully, I reached into the bag and produced the recorder. I didn’t know if it was sensitive enough to pick up what was going on inside, but it was worth a try. I hit Record and placed it on the skinny window ledge.

I hauled out the camera, took off the lens cap, and fired it up.

With a shaky breath, I stood up in the flower bed and peered through the camera lens.

They were in the kitchen, Mr. Rollins prowling back and forth. “I told you I expect dinner on the table when I get home,” he barked loud enough for me to hear.

“It’s almost midnight, asshole,” I muttered under my breath.

I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Rollins in a nightgown as she scurried past the kitchen door, shoulders hunched.

He caught her by the elbow and slapped the plate out of her hand with a crash.

A dog barked next door, one of Mrs. and Mr. Clemson’s Saint Bernards, scaring the heck out of me.

Mr. and Mrs. Rollins disappeared from view, and I used the opportunity to pull out the cordless phone. But there was no dial tone. I was too far away from the base.

He was shouting again inside, but I couldn’t see anything. Shit. I needed to get a better view. Camera still rolling, I looped the bag over my shoulder and took off running around the side of the house. In the dark, I banged my hip off the rusty grill. But that pain was nothing compared to what Ansel Rollins was inflicting right now, I reminded myself.

I limped around into the backyard to the rickety, rotting deck off the back of the house, and there, through the sliding glass door, I saw them. He backhanded her across the face hard enough that I gasped. His brutal grip on her arm kept Mrs. Rollins from folding to the floor.

“You disgust me, woman,” he said and hurled her into the kitchen table. “You make me fucking sick.”

This had to be enough evidence, I decided, feeling pretty sick myself.

Mrs. Rollins was crumpled in a dining chair like a wadded-up piece of paper. Silent sobs shook her frail shoulders. I hated him. I hated Ansel Rollins for ever existing. For treating his wife like that, for forcing his son to stand between them. I hated the man with every fiber of my being.

“If you don’t quit your bawling, I’ll give you something to bawl about,” he slurred.

Stop crying, Mrs. Rollins. Please stop crying.

Suddenly, the woman’s head came up. I saw her mouth moving but couldn’t make out what she was saying.

“What did you say?” he snarled.

“I said, I have nothing because of you,” she said, getting to her feet on shaky legs. Tears were still streaming down her cheeks.

Oh God. I tried the phone again, but there was still no dial tone.

“The only reason you have anything is because of me.” He moved into view, and every muscle in my body went tight when I saw what he was holding. He was drying a long, serrated knife on a dish towel.

I remembered Lucian’s bloody arm. Assault with a deadly weapon.

I left the camcorder on the deck, angled toward the door, and ran. I was inside my house in seconds, dialing the phone and flipping light switches.

“Mom! Dad! He’s hurting her again,” I shrieked from the foot of the stairs. A light clicked on upstairs. “We have to stop him!”

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Ansel Rollins is attacking his wife with a knife again, and if Wylie Ogden doesn’t arrest him this time, I’m going to sue the entire police department,” I shouted into the phone. I had to get back. I had to stop him or bear witness.

I heard my parents’ muffled voices coming from upstairs.

“Hurry!” I said before dropping the phone on the floor and bolting back out the door.

The tree frogs were still chirping outside, but I barely heard them as I sprinted across our driveway and into the Rollinses’ backyard.

I landed on the deck with a flying leap. Through the glass door, I spied them. He had her pinned to the table, the knife to her throat. There was blood on the linoleum.

Dogs were barking frantically now, but the rest of the neighborhood was still.

I had no choice. He had to be stopped. I had to stop him.

I picked up an old, cracked clay pot and, with a primal scream that came from the depths of my soul, hurled it into the glass.

The door shattered, sending shards of glass and clay everywhere.

Someone was calling my name. Multiple someones from the sounds of it. But I couldn’t scream back. I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot as Mr. Rollins stared at me through his busted door.

We locked eyes, and I poured every ounce of hate that I carried inside into that one look.

“You’re gonna pay for that, you little fucking bitch.”

I was shaking with fear, with rage. “Fuck. You. You stupid, worthless piece of shit!”

He lunged for me, and I felt pain around the edges of the rage. I fought him as the shouting got closer, as the sirens finally cut through the night, as the tree frogs stopped.

Snap.