Killed Dead, Part 3 of 3

This story is fiction. Part 3.

Molly looked at Mama, suddenly afraid that Mama was watching her and reading her mind. But Mama was on the couch with Cade’s head in her lap. She was crying and stroking Cade’s hair with her fingers. For the first time, Molly saw weakness in her mother. Mama wouldn’t do anything about this.

Just then, Mama confirmed Molly’s conclusion when she got up from the couch and walked to the kitchen. She got a glass jar from the cabinet and filled the jar with water. She pushed aside the quilt hanging in the kitchen doorway and walked down the hall to the bathroom. Molly heard the metallic scrape of the medicine cabinet door opening, then the sound of pills inside a plastic bottle. She thought Mama was getting some medicine for Cade but Mama went to the back of the trailer instead.

Molly moved the quilt aside to see what Mama was doing. She heard Mama talking quietly to Tommy but couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Mama came back into the kitchen with nothing in her hands. Molly didn’t try to hide her disgust. Mama sighed and closed her eyes. “You’ll understand someday,” she said.

“I’ll never understand you,” Molly said. Mama sighed again, then called Tommy’s boss and told him that Tommy was sick and wouldn’t be at work the next morning. Molly knew the pattern. Tommy would sleep half the day and act like nothing had happened, as always. But this was the first time Tommy had hit Cade.

Molly lay under the weight of several quilts that night, relishing the sting of freezing air on her face. She didn’t go to sleep for a long time. She was making a plan. Her alarm would wake her up at six-thirty and she would get Cade up as usual. Mama was opening at the café in the morning, so she would be gone when Molly and Cade got up for school. Molly would make their toast for breakfast. They would walk to the road and wait for the bus with the rest of the trailer park kids. At the last minute, she would tell Cade she felt sick. She would watch the bus drive off, to make sure. She would go back to the trailer and fill the heater with kerosene. She would drag it to the hallway and turn it on full blast. She would open Tommy’s bedroom door. He would still be passed out. She would make sure all the windows were shut tight and she would seal off the front part of the trailer with the quilt, making sure it was pulled tight against the walls so no fresh air could get through. She would walk to the library, which was only a mile away, and spend the day there. She would come back home at two o’clock, long before Cade and Mama would be home. That should be plenty of time for the carbon monoxide to work. She would quickly drag the heater back to the living room. She would crack a window in the living room and lie on the couch and pretend she’d been sleeping all day. Mama would discover Tommy’s body when she got home from work.

Could she really do this? Whenever her resolve slipped, Molly replayed Tommy’s strong punch to Cade’s soft stomach. She remembered Tommy’s brown hand tight against Mama’s white throat, and Mama’s red face and bulging eyes. Yes, she could do this.

The alarm sounded at six-thirty sharp. Molly was instantly awake. She felt a moment of disbelief that she was finally going to solve her family’s problem. She felt grown-up. She dressed quickly in the cold room. She opened the door to Cade’s bedroom and told him to get up. She was about to go to the bathroom when she smelled something. Coffee? She frowned and brushed aside the quilt in the doorway. The lights were on and Mama was sitting at the table. She looked at Molly and smiled. “Good morning, baby,” Mama said. Her throat was bruised now that the redness was gone.

Molly felt her chest tighten. “Mama. What are you doing here?”

“I got Belinda to cover for me this morning,” Mama said. “I’m going to open for her tomorrow.”

Molly ducked back through the quilt. She went to the bathroom, closed the door and sat on the edge of the bathtub. She put her face in her hands. Her perfect plan, ruined. The disappointment tasted bitter on the back of her tongue. Tonight, Tommy would still be here, acting like everything was normal. She stood up and took a deep breath. Her legs were shaky. The plan will just have to wait until another day. She knows there will be another night like last night. There will be another morning where Tommy is passed out and Mama is at work.

Mama made a big breakfast for Molly and Cade. She even walked them to the bus stop, which she hadn’t done since they were little.

When Mama got home, she filled the kerosene heater. She dragged it into the hallway and turned it on full blast. She opened her and Tommy’s bedroom door. The last four of the sleeping pills Belinda had given her were doing their job just fine. She pulled the quilt tight against the kitchen doorway to make sure no fresh air would get through.

Later, the neighbors would tell the police that they had heard her squeaky car leaving the trailer park that morning as usual.

-Melanie K. Patterson

© Forged in Words 2023