“You!’ Fanny stared at her husband, furious with him. “This is all your fault. All your fault. Why could you just leave that girl be? Go down and bother her at her bus stop. You know the little thing is scared of you. Why couldn’t you just stay away?”
“I just told her happy birthday. It was a harmless gesture.”
“Was it?” She pointed at his thin chest, pressing her nail into the fabric of his cotton shirt. He flinched beneath her hand. “I’m warning you. I’ll not relive the past. You make me sick. Where’s your shame?”
Misery filled Charlie’s eyes, despair in his slouch.
“You’re an old man. Stirring up things I have tried to forget, forgive.” She poked him several more times, feeling his hard rib cage. Once a virile man, her husband was now skeletal. Heath problems had taken their toll on his aged body, leaving him a mere shadow of his former self. But pity didn’t loom in her heart. No. He deserved his penance. “Because of you I have foul memories. Because of you I have lived through disgrace. Have done things that no women should have ever done. And for what? To save your hide. To protect what we worked so hard to achieve.”
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I know you have suffered.”
“Damn right. I got blood on my hands because of you.” She shook her head, pulling herself together. Now was not the time to fall apart. “ So do you. And not just for one life, but for two. I’ll take you to hell with me if I have too.”
He took a step away from her, fear in his façade. With the couch behind him, he fell into its soft depths. Righting himself against the cushion, he eased out his stiff legs and stayed put.
“I’m warning you, Charlie.” Spit sprang out from her rolled back lips. “Stay away from that family. Stay away from their girl. Mike knows something. I saw it in his eyes.”
“He knows nothing.”
“He knows something,” she insisted, noting the anxiety that drew its head in the lines of his pinch mouth. “He’s not a little boy anymore. He’s a man. And he’s smart.