Nowhere to Run Read Online Free PDF Page B

a fight. Do you know what the fight was about?”
    That made Livvie think hard, but she shook her head.
    â€œHave they fought before?”
    â€œYeah . . . Mama hit him once.”
    â€œYour mama hit your dad?”
    â€œI think he hit her, too,” Livvie said solemnly. “That’s why she was holding her face.” Then, remembering Mama, she started shaking and hiccupping.
    â€œNow, be a big girl and stop crying. I need your help. Your mama needs your help.”
    â€œMama’s dead. Mama’s dead!!!”
    â€œYou can help her.”
    â€œYou’re lying! Mama’s dead!” Livvie wailed and clapped her hands over her ears and the policeman left the den, said something mean to the neighbor lady and slammed the front door.
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    After that the police gave up trying to interview her, though the social worker questioned Livvie further about her parents’ relationship, which created havoc for her father and was probably partially to blame for their chilly relationship ever since. The police questioned Albert Dugan thoroughly, and he’d been furious with Liv for telling tales. Still, he admitted that he and Deborah’s relationship had been tempestuous. He might have slapped her . . . once . . . or twice . . . but she’d hit him, too. He admitted to slapping her the night of her death before he’d stalked out the back door. Deborah had bitten him and he’d struck without thinking. But he was so sorry. So, so sorry.
    It was also why Mama had said, “I’m done,” Liv was pretty sure.
    Even so, to this day Liv wasn’t sure what the truth had been between her parents. Her father swore they’d loved each other . . . well, at least he’d loved her . . . but then she’d taken her own life and there had to be a deep-seated reason for that, and he just couldn’t understand it. He’d never agreed that Deborah had committed suicide. Wouldn’t talk about it. Within the year after her death he married Lorinda, and the whole family moved from the house with too many memories to another one across town. Employed by the forestry department, Albert pushed his old life behind him, and made a new one. Liv understood he was as haunted by the events of that night as she was, maybe in a different way, but in one just as powerful. Deborah’s death had affected and shaped his life from that day forward.
    As it had Hague’s . . .
    Now Liv climbed in the rattling elevator with the accordion door, slamming the handle shut, watching the floors pass as she headed for the third story. She let herself onto the hallway with its scarred wooden surfaces and scents of floor wax and dust and overcooked vegetables, and walked quickly to Hague’s door.
    After their mother’s death, the policeman had interviewed Hague, too, for all the good it did. Hague had babbled about “that man.” The authorities had looked around for help but no one seemed to know what he was talking about. Liv asked him later, when they were alone, and he squirreled under the blankets of his bed and said, “Zombie man. Kill you. Kill you!” And he was crying and laughing and crying some more.
    He’d scared the living daylights out of Liv, who ran to her own room, hiding beneath her covers. Later Hague said Mama had a friend. “A friend!” he’d yelled at the authorities. “Mama’s friend!”
    They, in turn, labeled “the friend” Deborah Dugan’s Mystery Man.
    Liv never mentioned Hague’s zombie man comment to the police, nor that he’d also said kill you in the same reference, like he’d said when he’d been sitting in his high chair, if that’s what he’d said that day; she’d never been completely sure. And she didn’t know then that his words were the first inkling of the behavioral changes that would send Hague down, down, down in a descending spiral that would last until his