The next day, Stanton went over to the butcher shop to talk to his brother. He knew he needed to get this over with, before his brother heard the news from someone else and it got out of hand.
Walking through the store, across the old wooden floors of the mercantile, he saw his brother behind the counter, selling Mr. Crenshaw some meat. When he was done, Braxton looked up to see his brother standing there in his policeman’s uniform.
“Need some meat, little brother?” Braxton asked with a sarcastic smirk.
“Before you hear it from anyone, I’m here to tell you that Sheila was here and she’s left with the girls. They’re gone now and better off with their mother,” Stanton stated.
Braxton’s antagonistic look turned off like a switch, his face emotionless. He asked coldly, “Where is she?”
“Don’t even go there. No one’s going to tell you a thing and endanger her or the girls.”
“She’s my wife!”
“You lost that privilege long ago when you crushed her spirit, terrified her and drove her away. You couldn’t even earn the love of your own children. The girls were and still are terrified of you and you know it.”
Braxton was ashen, quiet, and sullen.
Stanton didn’t know what his brother was going to do about this, but he knew he had one more thing to say, “What ever happened to Pastor Andrew, Braxton? He certainly didn’t go away with Sheila. What happened to that kind, good man of God that tried to help you both? Where is he?”
Braxton actually turned pale. “How am I supposed to know!” he blurted out, alarmed at the question. “What makes you think I had anything to do with his disappearance?”
“Only that you wanted them both dead on the day Sheila fled for her life, that’s all. She escaped. But evidently he didn’t. Where is he big brother? Where did you put his body?”
“I think you’d better leave,” Braxton stated, shaken and scared for the first time in his life. The look on his young brother’s face said it all. His brother actually thought that he was capable of killing someone.
But wasn’t he? Hadn’t he tried to kill his wife? Braxton’s heart trembled with the realization of what he had become. He needed to get out of here, to think, to get out in the mountains where he felt whole and complete.
Annual Hunt