"I whipped him," she said. "Yes, I did."
"Mama—"
"Don’t you mama me in that voice. I’m not going to stand in my son’s kitchen and be looked at like I’m something on the bottom of a shoe." She folded her hands in front of her. "You want to know what happened? Did she tell you what happened? Or did she just tell you the part where the wicked old grandmother put her hands on the precious baby?"
"I told him all of it," Danielle said quietly.
Loretta did not turn her head.
"There was a sheriff’s car," she said to Marcus. "In this street. In front of this house. And your son jumped out of that bush with a black rifle in his hands and pointed it at the windshield. I saw it. I was standing right there at the front window with a dish towel in my hand and I saw that car slow down, and I saw the man inside it look, and I saw his hand go off the steering wheel." She held up her own hand, the fingers spread. "I saw his hand come off the wheel, Marcus. I didn’t see where it went. I didn’t need to. I have been seeing where it goes my whole life."
Marcus said nothing.
"And for one second," his mother said, "for one second, standing at that window, I saw that baby dead on that grass. I saw him lying there in his school clothes. I saw the blood come out under him into the mulch. I saw it as plain as I see you." Her voice did not waver. It had gone very low and very even, the voice she used to use on the telephone with doctors. "And then the car drove on. And I went out there and I got him. And yes, I took him in this house and I wore him out. Because he needs to remember this day for the rest of his life. He needs to remember it every time he so much as thinks about picking up anything that looks like a gun. He needs to remember it in his body, because his body is what they’re going to shoot."
"He’s eight years old," Danielle said.