Trigger Finger by Jackson Spencer Bell

would have made Him
mad.   I think that would have made Him really mad.”
    My mouth.   I couldn’t eat anymore, McRib or not.   “I think you’re right,” I said hollowly.
    She gestured at my
sandwich.   “But He’s not mad.   And now you get free food at McDonald’s.   Which is cool, because you deserve it.”
    I swallowed.   A ki breath filled my chest.   I didn’t want to
ask this next question, but I had to.   “What do you remember?”   I asked.
    “About what?”
    “About that
night.”
    She shrugged and
stole one of my French fries.   I watched
every movement of her face, searching for some sign of the truth.
    “A bunch of
firecrackers going off, then a bunch of screaming.   Mom hauling me out of bed, and I’m still half
asleep.   I’m all like, what’s going on
here, and Mom’s dragging me into the bedroom and calling the police.   Aside from that, not much.   Why?”
    “What happened
before that?”   I asked.
    “Uh…nothing.   I was sleeping.”
    “The whole time?”
    “The whole
time.   What is this?”
    I folded my
arms.   Ki breath.   Time to ask
point-blank: “There’s a theory,” I said, “advanced by my therapist.   You knew I was going to counseling, right?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “My therapist is
wondering if maybe I didn’t encounter these two men on their way out of the house instead of on their way in. ”
    Her face screwed
up with the effort of trying to catch my drift, but then she got it and her
eyes widened.
    “That’s crazy!”
    “Did something
happen to you that night that you’re afraid to talk about?”
    “No!”   She shook her head emphatically.   “No, no, no!   Eeew, Dad, that’s disgusting!   No,
nobody ever…yuck!   Gross!   Absolutely not.   I’d have screamed and screamed and
screamed.   They’d have had to kill me.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Of course I’m
sure!”
    “You know you can tell
me and your mom anything, right?   Anything at all?   No matter what?”
    She rolled her
eyes again.   “Yes, Dad, I know.   Tell you what, if it’ll make you feel better,
I’ll swear on a Bible that those guys didn’t rape me.”   Her eyes came back to center and fixed on
me.   “And you know why they didn’t rape
me?   Because you shot them dead.”
    She reached out
and stole another French fry.   To Hell
with Pinnix, to Hell with Ramseur, she was hungry.
    “And now you have
a Facebook fan page.”   She smiled and
added, “Tell your shrink he’s stupid.”
    Her words made me
feel better.   Her smile made me feel
better.   I’d watched her reaction to Dr.
Koenig’s suggestion and saw nothing hiding underneath it.   I looked at the healthy glow on her face—a
combination of winning her soccer game, seeing her father worshipped like a god
and then getting to tell that same god he was being silly—and I thought, nope.   Didn’t happen.
    It didn’t happen
because I’d been ready.   And I’d shot
those two pieces of shit like a pair of landfill rats.   Whatever remained of Pinnix and Ramseur lay
now in a pauper’s grave in Burlington or Durham or wherever the
coroner had sent the carcasses.   And I
sat in McDonald’s, eating free food with my daughter.
    And suddenly, I
felt hungry again.
    “When you’re
done,” Abby said, “go up there and see if you can score us some free ice
cream.”  

 

                  
    11.

 
    That evening, I
got on the internet and did a search on how to tell if your kid had been
sexually abused.   Her eating habits
hadn’t changed, her grades hadn’t fallen, she hadn’t started sleeping more or
sleeping less, she hadn’t suddenly become any more sullen or cantankerous than
usual—nothing to indicate she’d suffered any sort of trauma.   As far as I knew, she hadn’t suddenly become
sexually promiscuous, either.   I finished
my web investigation satisfied that as to my daughter, at least, Dr. Koenig was
barking up the wrong tree.
    But my wife