Blood Wounds by Susan Beth Pfeffer

roses. She looked so young, so full of hope. Budge's smile looked insincere, posed. But maybe he was self-conscious or blinded by the flash. He had on an ill-fitting jacket, with one of the roses as a boutonniere.
    There was another picture from the wedding, this one crowded with family. Most of them looked like Crystal, or at least not like Budge. Two of them stood closer to him than to her. One, an old woman squinting and scowling, I recognized right away as Granny Coffey. She'd scared me when I was little, I suddenly remembered. She yanked me by the ear and told me bad little girls went straight to hell, where they burned screaming for their mommies forever and ever. I cried and she said God didn't care if I cried because He didn't love wicked little girls like me.
    Another time, I remembered, she chased me out of the house with a broom, locked the door, and left me standing there, no coat on, for what felt like hours. It might have been hours, for all I knew. Mom had found me and carried me into the house and Granny Coffey had said she'd fallen asleep and forgotten all about me. Mom yelled so loud, she scared me almost as much as Granny Coffey had, and that night she and Daddy got into a huge fight. They woke me up, they were so loud and scary, and I watched from the living room doorway as they fought with curse words and fists.
    Daddy. He was my daddy then and I'd loved him. Even when I was bad and he paddled me hard, I loved him.
    I'll be good, I'd promised him. I'll never do it again.
    Mostly he'd stop then and he'd kiss me and say he sure hoped I'd learned my lesson. Once, maybe twice, he didn't stop. It was like he couldn't, and Mommy had to pull me away from him. He'd burst out crying, and it scared me more to see him like that than all the beatings in the world.
    Daddy.
    I felt assaulted by the memories; they were hitting me as hard as Daddy used to hit me. I shook my head, as though I could knock the thoughts out of it, and forced myself to focus on the boy standing between Budge and Granny Coffey in the wedding picture. He looked to be twelve or thirteen, in a slightly too-tight jacket and slacks that were a little too short, like he'd had a growth spurt too recently to buy new clothes.
    He didn't seem to mind, though. Except for Crystal, he was the only person in the picture who seemed genuinely happy. He was a younger, happier version of Budge, and he looked so much like me that I knew he had to be my brother.
    I put the picture back. There was nothing else in the living room with any meaning for me. Now that I'd seen the photographs, I would always remember what Budge and Granny Coffey looked like, and what they'd been like to Mom and me.
    I went to the kitchen next. It was a small house, probably no more than four rooms. I wasn't ready for the bedrooms yet.
    There were unwashed dishes in the sink. A glass half full of soda sat on the table, a couple of dead flies floating in it.
    Budge had left through the back door, most likely carrying Krissi. He had to have washed the blood, or most of it, off himself first. He couldn't have cleaned himself in the bathroom, not with Kelli Marie lying there in the tub.
    I forced myself to walk to the kitchen sink. There was blood on the dishes, on the faucets, on the walls of the sink. It was week-old blood, and some effort had been made to clean it, but I still could see it.
    Why had Faye brought me here? These people had no money, no jewelry. There was nothing of sentimental value for me, and she had to have known there wouldn't be.
    It was some form of shock treatment, I thought. I was left alone in this house so I could finally understand what Budge had done. To make sure I realized this wasn't some cable news stranger but my daddy.
    It sounded cruel, but I knew it wasn't. Faye was no Granny Coffey. Jack would never have okayed this, but Jack wanted all of us to believe in happy families.
    Mom needed me to understand why she'd run away, what she'd been so frightened of