After Hours: Midnight Oil / Midnight Madness / Midnight Touch

Peggy ran after him, half-dressed. “She may not be able to handle her own emotions, much less theirs!”

“Fine. Whatever.” Even under these circumstances, he opened the passenger-side door for her, though he almost threw her inside. They were squealing out of his driveway in seconds.

She finished dressing in the car, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail with a rubber band she found in her tote. Troy’s face had set into hard lines, his jaw clenched.

“Does your brother-in-law have a gun?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Christ, I hope not.”

“Has he ever raised a hand to your sister?”

“His specialty has always been punching holes through drywall and occasionally turning furniture into projectiles. He’s never actually hit her or the kids. But he’s drunk, and he’s stupid, and I don’t like this situation at all. He disappeared on them seven months ago, and I wish like hell he’d stayed gone.”

Peggy echoed his sentiment. As she clung to the seat while they careened around corners and broke the speed limit, all she could think about was Danni and Laura and their brother, the helpless child victims in this situation.

She felt a soul-deep rage at men who terrorized and hurt the women and children in their lives, and quite frankly she hoped that Troy, who appeared to be one of the good guys, would beat the living snot out of his brother-in-law. Maybe it wouldn’t solve anything, but it would sure be satisfying.

11

“STAY HERE,” Troy ordered Peggy. He erupted out of the car and shot over the sidewalk, up the steps and into the house he’d parked in front of. It was a neat little bungalow on a postage-stamp lawn, painted a soft blue with white trim. A familiar Nissan Pathfinder sat in the driveway, the car that Samantha used to pick up the twins from powder-puff practice. Blocking it in was a shiny black Dodge Ram truck with inordinately big tires; Peg surmised that it belonged to Sam’s husband.

Peggy got out of the car despite Troy’s instructions and stood in front of the place, her heart feeling as if it were hurling itself against the wall of her chest. Were Danni and Laura okay? Was their brother okay? Was Sam okay? How violent had this altercation gotten while she and Troy were driving over?

A lower left panel of the door was splintered, leaving a gaping hole, but there was no damage around the lock or the jamb.

It looked to Peggy as if Sam had let her husband—ex-husband?—inside, maybe to get him calmed down, or maybe so that the neighbors wouldn’t call the police.

From inside the house she heard shouting. She moved to a window and tried to peer in through the half-closed blinds, making out Troy’s big body near an overturned armchair. He had another shaggy-haired man in a lock, his forearm across the guy’s throat. “Get the hell out of here and don’t come back, or I will pulverize you and then snap your neck like a chicken bone.”

“Troy, don’t hurt him!” Samantha, blond hair wild and cheeks tearstained, cowered in a far corner of the room, wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

The smaller man called her something vile and told Troy to do something anatomically impossible. Peggy winced and hoped the kids weren’t hearing this, but she knew they must be. Where were they? Hiding under their beds, poor things?

“You can’t keep me off my own property, you son of a bitch!” The shaggy man snarled, trying to twist free. “And you can’t stop me from seeing my kids.”

Troy’s answer was to haul the man by the neck to the door. “You can see your kids during reasonable hours, when you’re sober. In the meantime, you piece of shit, get away from them and get away from my sister.”

The guy scrabbled ineffectively against Troy’s grip, kicked backward and even tried to turn and bite him. “I’ll file assault charges, damn you!”

“You do what you have to do. The cops can come out here and take a look at the door you were kicking in. They can ask Sam and your kids a few questions. And they can inspect you for nonexistent bruises. Believe me, I’d like to take your ass apart, but it’s not going to do my sister any good to have me in jail.”

Troy wrestled him off the porch and into the yard. Then he released his neck and gave him a kick in the pants that sent him sprawling. “Walk back to whatever roach motel you crawled out of.”

“Give me my keys, you prick!”

“Oh, sure. Frankly, I’d love to see you wrap your car around a telephone pole, but in the state you’re in, you’d take some innocent person with you. You’re not getting behind the wheel, you’re walking. And you start now.” Troy took a menacing step toward him, and the guy stumbled to his feet. Still cursing, he lurched down the street.

Peggy expelled a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. “Your sister has got to file a restraining order first thing in the morning.”

“Yeah. You okay?”

She nodded. “I don’t know if she is, though.” She gestured toward the house. “And there’s no way the children could have slept through this.”

Samantha was huddled in a corner, crying. Troy ran to her, knelt and put his hands on her shoulders. “Sam, it’s okay. Sam, where are the kids?”

She raised a red, blotchy face. “Bathroom. I told them to lock themselves in the bathroom.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and let Troy help her up. “Coach—Peggy—what are you doing here?”

Sam headed for the hallway and the bathroom, her children her first priority, but embarrassment crept into her demeanor.

“Peggy and I were, uh, having coffee when you called.”

Sam nodded, then knocked on the bathroom door. “Derek? Danni? Laura? It’s okay now. He’s gone. Uncle Troy is here.”

It was Danni who opened it, her face pale. They’d all been crying. Sam and Troy hugged and kissed each one of them, and Peggy tried to swallow the lump in her throat.

Later, she made them hot chocolate in the kitchen while Troy persuaded Sam to give a statement to the police.

“It’s really hard when parents don’t get along and they split up,” Peggy told the kids. “Mine did the same thing.”

“Did your dad go away for almost a year and then show up yelling and kick in your door?” Laura asked.

Peggy put her arm around Laura and pulled her close. “No. My dad just got married to somebody else. But it sucked, because he also got a whole new family, and we were afraid he liked that one better.”

“Did he?” It was Derek who asked this question.

I have to be careful how I answer this. “Um, no. Not better. But my dad was a very athletic guy, kind of like your uncle Troy. And this new family of his had a boy who was also very athletic. My brother, Hal, was a competitive swimmer, but my dad liked football. So he went to Alan’s games a lot.”

“Alan was the new boy?” Danni asked.

“Yes.”

“What about your games? Did he go to those?”

Peggy ruffled Derek’s hair. “Not so much. I was a girl, and he didn’t think my games were that important.”

“That’s really unfair. He hurt your feelings.”

Peggy nodded. “He did. But I don’t think he meant to. Just like I don’t think your dad meant to scare you tonight. He just drank too much whiskey or something and felt guilty for going away. So, not thinking straight, he decided he wanted to see you at one o’clock in the morning. And of course that’s way past your bedtime.”

“I hate him,” said Derek, pushing his hot chocolate away. “He said really bad things to my mom when she wouldn’t open the door.”

“Sometimes people say things they don’t mean.” Peggy prayed she was handling this right.

“I think he meant them. Even without whiskey he used to be a jerk.” Derek’s eyes were hard and angry. “I was glad when he went off.”

Laura and Danni didn’t say anything. But the guilt on their faces spoke for them. Peggy wished she could say something, anything, to comfort these children. “It’s okay to be mad at your dad,” she began. “It doesn’t mean that you don’t still love him.”

“I don’t want to love him,” Danni blurted.