Rachel had woken up, her eyes blurry, her mouth dry. She couldn't recall even falling asleep, but she must've, and she must've fallen asleep on the couch. She rolled over and sat up, stretching. Rachel stood up and suddenly heard something, a soft kind of walking sound, heavy and slow. Her eyes scanned the room. Whatever it was she couldn't see it. Then she heard the breathing. Low. Breathy. She slowly turned her head to face the kitchen and screamed. There, peeking around from the corner, with their elongated neck and their transparent skin - veins and blood all visible - was the See Through Horse. Rachel screamed at the top of her lungs, and then woke up.
This time she was lying in bed, and Sun Rai was next to her, trying to calm her down. Rachel immediately pushed herself into Sun's chest, no explanation given, and started sobbing. The medication was working, but it wouldn't last forever, and sometimes she still had the dreams. She knew she'd have to get a legal prescription soon enough, but for right now, she'd enjoy feeling safe at her most vulnerable. She'd worry about everything else tomorrow. And that's exactly what she did. Come the following morning, Rachel called in sick to work and headed over to Wyatt's. Standing on the front porch, waiting for the door to be answered, she chewed her lip nervously. When the door finally swung open, Scarlett stood there.
"Oh," Rachel said, "hi!"
"Hey! What are you doing here?" Scarlett asked.
"Well, actually I..." Rachel thought, and then remembered something, "...could we go see Mona's horse?"
***
Wyatt was sitting at his desk, shuffling papers around, when the door opened. He looked up and saw Celia stroll in. Wyatt smiled, always happy to see her, but she didn't look too thrilled. Celia took a seat, putting her purse on the arm of the chair, and waited as Wyatt finished compiling some things into a manilla folder.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" he asked.
"You left a message on my answering machine," Celia said, "about Calvin."
"...right," Wyatt said, sighing, leaning back in his chair and adding, "uh, yeah. Yeah. He's...he's gone off the deep end. Not that he wasn't close to the edge of it to begin with, but he's really gone off now. Um. Grudin's wife has hired a private investigator to find out what happened to her husband. Calvin currently has him tied up in his shed. I didn't wanna pull you into this, but you...you're like...the only morally conscious one of us and I need some kind of guidance here."
"Well jeez, you just come out swingin' both barrels, don'tcha?" Celia replied, making Wyatt chuckle.
"It's bad, Celia. He's planning on killing her. And their daughter. A little girl. A mentally challenged little girl. An innocent fucking kid. As the father of a child who has developmental issues, I...I'd feel like a hypocrite if I was okay with this happening. Regardless of that, I'd feel like a monster if he killed a kid. I feel like he's sunk to their level and there's no going back. We've been running in circles. We do one thing, he does another. We fix it, he does something worse. We get away with that, he plans something else. He needs to be stopped."
Celia crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt out as she looked at Wyatt, her eyes serious.
"So what do you propose?" she asked.
Wyatt stood up and started pacing behind his desk, scratching the back of his head. He groaned and leaned against a wall, his forehead on the plaster.
"...I think you know what we have to do," he said quietly, "I just...I can't do it. I can't do what he does. I don't have it in me. I think something broke inside Calvin when he lost his family, and he's...he's now capable of monstrous things, but I'm not. I can't sink to that level. But if I don't do something, he'll do something even worse than anything he's done before. At what point does it become socially acceptable to stop someone no matter what the cost?"
"Some folks would say never," Celia replied, "but me, personally? As a mother of a child? Yeah, he needs to be stopped. So let's come up with something before he makes a move."
Wyatt knew he could count on Celia for her honesty and wit, that she was the only one truly law abiding person among them, and if even she was on board with getting rid of Calvin, then there was no denying the truth. They had to get rid of Calvin. One way...or another.
***
"I'm just surprised is all, I don't peg you for the horse riding type," Scarlett said as they approached the stable.
"I used to be," Rachel said, "I used to be super into horseback riding. My friend Kelly and I really bonded over the interest and, god, my room was full of horse stuff. Horse stuff and art supplies."
"What stopped you?" Scarlett asked as they approached Sugarcube's stall, his face hanging out over the wood. Rachel looked at him, and sighed.
"There was an incident," Rachel said, "I...I was with this girl when she got kicked in the head. And all because she was doing something for me, so, like, it's my fault, really. I've never liked horses much after that. She suffered serious brain damage, had to drop out of school, start her whole life over like she was a child. I just...kinda vowed to stay away from horses after that. The weird thing is...I was nearly sexually assaulted by my manager when I was in college doing art, and yet, even with that, I didn't run away from art. Doesn't make sense why I'd run from one but not another."
"Because you recognized his actions weren't a direct result of you," Scarlett said, catching Rachel off guard; she turned and looked at Scarlett, who leaned against the stall and shrugged, folding her arms, continuing, "like...you weren't responsible for his reprehensible behavior towards you. Therefore, art wasn't tainted. But you felt personally responsible for what happened to this girl, and therefore horses were tainted. It all comes down to a matter of perspective, something you should be very familiar with considering you're in the art world."
Rachel chuckled a little and looked back at Sugarcube. He whinnied and shook his head, like he was waiting for something to happen.
"But I can promise you that you're not responsible," Scarlett said, "People make decisions and we live with the ramifications. We react accordingly. Doesn't make us responsible. Especially for such things that were truly accidents or out of our hands. Now, say, you were drinking and driving and you killed someone, that you're responsible for. You chose to do something that directly endangered another person, willingly. But these things? No. They aren't your fault."
Rachel nodded, listening, her thoughts turning to Calvin. He was the one making the decision to kill Grudin's wife and daughter. She wasn't responsible for what might happen to him as a result. She was, if anything, doing the right thing by telling Wyatt. Rachel sniffled and wiped her eyes on her sweatshirt sleeve.
"After it happened," Rachel said, "I started having these dreams, about this...this see through horse with an elongated neck. I never understood why, and it terrified the shit out of me. I'd wake up having these screaming fits, and then...then it progressed to hallucinations. I was put on medication for a while in school until it stopped being so frequent or stopped altogether. I got the horse part, that made sense, but...a friend once asked me why it was transparent and I couldn't answer. Seemed random."
"It's not," Scarlett said, "No, I...I used to do this thing with my cousin where we'd interpret one anothers dreams and so we got all these dream meaning books out of the library and stuff cause, ya know, teenage girl shit, and actually something that’s transparent or see-through can represent something that's seeming to lack substance, meaning, or importance. So really, what your subsconcious is telling you is that this moment that you deem so pivotal to your life and person, this moment that you hold yourself responsible for? It really is nothing more than a small blip on the radar that is your existence. It doesn't mean anything. It has no power, no importance. You're the one who assigned it that. But in reality, it was just a shitty thing that happened."
Rachel slowly turned and looked at Scarlett. Nobody, not even therapists she'd seen, had ever once given her a remotly plausible explanation for the horse. And yet here was Scarlett, a random stay at home mom from a wealthy neighborhood, who managed to give her an actual answer. Rachel turned back to facing Sugarcube and slowly reached out. Her palm inches from its face, she looked back at Scarlett who smiled and nodded. Rachel put her palm on the horses nose and smiled, tears running down her face.
The See Through Horse didn't mean a goddamned thing. But real horses?
Real horses meant the world to her. And she wasn't responsible for what happened, to that girl...or to Calvin.
***
"There's no good outcome to this, is there?" Wyatt asked, slumped in his desk chair as Celia, her legs up on the desk, shook her head.
"Not really, no," she said, "but that's what you work with when you're involved in this level of crime."
"My life was easy," Wyatt said, "before the reunion. Before Calvin. It wasn't perfect, but hell, it was as close to perfect as one could hope to achieve these days."
"What would've made it perfect?" Celia asked.
"Rocket car, obviously, duh," Wyatt replied, making her laugh as he continued, "all I'm saying is that I had the closest thing anyone can have to perfection, and now...now my life is an out and out mess, and for what? Calvin is a victim, sure, nobody would deny that, but at the same time he's creating victims and acting as if its morally justified."
"The thing you need to remember, man, is that we've done everything short of going to the police and putting ourselves in the line of sight to keep Calvin in check. He continues to push forward, proving that he's not manageable, and if that's the case, if he's threatening children now, then something more drastic does need to be done. We've exhausted all our other options."
Wyatt nodded, knowing full well Celia was right, and hating to admit it. He'd tried reasoning with Calvin. He'd tried getting others like Rachel to talk him down. He'd tried threatening him. He'd done everything he could, and Calvin still wouldn't see reason. He was a man blinded by rage disguised as justice. Wyatt leaned back in his chair and covered his face with his hands, groaning.
"Wyatt," Celia said, "it's awful, but you and me, we have kids, we know what he's debating doing isn't okay."
"I know."
"Then you also know that what has to be done HAS to be done," Celia said, "I'm not really a pro-murder kinda lady, but if someone has reached a point where they're willing to harm a child to teach an adult a lesson, then they've lost all credibility in my mind. And, to be perfectly honest...Robert Grudin didn't deserve to die. He shouldn't have been allowed to stay in politics, continue running for office, and yes he was slimy about not openly apologizing for his actions that took Calvin's family away from him, but...I don't think that warrants him being blown up. I think his wife has every right to be mad and want vengeance."
"You're not wrong," Wyatt said quietly, "I just...I don't care about what happens to me, I just don't want you guys to go down too."
Celia smiled. Wyatt really was a selfless individual, and she admired that about him. His worries weren't about himself, his worries were for the friends around him that could be seen as co-conspirators. He didn't want that for them, he knew they deserved better.
"Promise me something," Wyatt said, leaning forward in his chair, "if, when this all ends, if I go to jail, just...make sure my daughter knows the truth."
"I'll let her know what a brave man her father was," Celia said, patting Wyatt's hands and smiling.
And it was a promise she would keep.
***
"Thanks for taking me," Rachel said.
After the ranch, she and Scarlett went to lunch downtown, and now, sitting in a booth, each finishing their respective meals, Rachel felt like she owed this woman the world for opening her eyes.
"Eh, don't mention it, ain't no thing," Scarlett said.
"No, really, I...my parents made me believe that everything was my fault, that I was to blame," Rachel said, "and that isn't a fair way for a child to grow up, let alone an adult to continue living. That isn't to say some stuff isn't, but the majority of things that happened to me weren't my fault, and it's time I stopped believing that they were. I've been thinking about coming out to them lately."
"Yeah?" Scarlett asked, leaning back in the booth and using a toothpick on her teeth.
"It's scary, but...but I want to try and have an open and honest relationship with them, and if they can't accept me for that, then I'll know it's a fruitless endeavor," Rachel said, shrugging, crossing her arms, "like...my parents already blamed me for my near assault, made me feel responsible for the horse incident, and so I don't have a lot of faith that they'll accept me for my sexuality, but hey, at least I can say I'm the one who tried."
"That's the spirit," Scarlett said, smiling, "and hey, for what it's worth, you deserve to be respected and accepted. If my daughter were to turn out to be any flavor of queer, I'd still love her just the same, so remember that no matter what happens with your folks, you'll always have your friends. I'll always be here for you."
Rachel smiled weakly and thought about her parents. And then about Kelly's parents. And then about Sun Rai. Scarlett was right. She already had such a strong support system, so it didn't really matter whether her parents loved her or not in relation to who she was, but...it'd be nice, she wouldn't deny it. When Rachel got home that evening, she found Sun Rai already there, making dinner, and she hugged her from behind in the kitchen, just holding her and swaying gently. Everything Rachel always wanted was right here, parents be damned. And when Scarlett got home, she found Wyatt there, with take out and a bouquet of flowers. He apologized for their recent fights, and Scarlett felt lucky to have such a wonderful husband.
But Calvin...Calvin waited untl his parents were asleep, and then he carried a plate of food from dinner out to the shed for Ricky. As he unshackled one of the mans hands so he could eat, Calvin sat in front of him and watched.
"...you've met them, right? If you work for them, you've obviously met them," Calvin said.
"Yeah," Ricky said, eating like he was starving, "yeah, I've met her, and her kid."
"Tell me one thing," Calvin said, "if you were me, and he took your wife and daughter away...would you have done the same thing?"
"I don't think how you feel is monstrous, I think that's perfectly normal," Ricky said, chewing, "but acting on it? That's an entirely different situation. Everyone WANTS revenge, but that doesn't mean it's justifiable. He's dead, man, what good could come from killing his wife and daughter? He won't be alive to even feel the loss."
"Because Robert Grudin doesn't deserve to have any part of him exist in this world when my family doesn't," Calvin said sternly, "he needs to be completelt wiped from this earth, from this life, his legacy left to the ashes of time. That's why. Tomorrow, I'm gonna come back in here and you're gonna give me her address, her schedule, the layout of her house, anything that could help me do this easily."
Ricky stared as he finished eating and Calvin took the plate from him. The two men locked eyes and Ricky slowly shook his head.
"Don't do this, man," he said softly.
"...I don't have a choice anymore," Calvin replied, before shackling Ricky's hands back up and exiting, the sound of the lock sliding into place making Ricky shiver. Ricky looked around the dimly lit shed and exhaled. Calvin had lost his family, and Ricky felt for him, but he'd also done something worse. Robert Grudin might've killed Calvin's family, and then not taken responsibility for it, but he didn't do it purposefully. Calvin had killed Grudin in cold blood, and was now seeking to further harm his remaining family, who only wanted justice for the murder he'd committed. Ricky was starting to understand just how fucked a predicament he was actually in.
Some nights he really wish he had stayed the course in college and become a teacher. Teachers rarely got tied to chairs and threatened with death.
This time she was lying in bed, and Sun Rai was next to her, trying to calm her down. Rachel immediately pushed herself into Sun's chest, no explanation given, and started sobbing. The medication was working, but it wouldn't last forever, and sometimes she still had the dreams. She knew she'd have to get a legal prescription soon enough, but for right now, she'd enjoy feeling safe at her most vulnerable. She'd worry about everything else tomorrow. And that's exactly what she did. Come the following morning, Rachel called in sick to work and headed over to Wyatt's. Standing on the front porch, waiting for the door to be answered, she chewed her lip nervously. When the door finally swung open, Scarlett stood there.
"Oh," Rachel said, "hi!"
"Hey! What are you doing here?" Scarlett asked.
"Well, actually I..." Rachel thought, and then remembered something, "...could we go see Mona's horse?"
***
Wyatt was sitting at his desk, shuffling papers around, when the door opened. He looked up and saw Celia stroll in. Wyatt smiled, always happy to see her, but she didn't look too thrilled. Celia took a seat, putting her purse on the arm of the chair, and waited as Wyatt finished compiling some things into a manilla folder.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" he asked.
"You left a message on my answering machine," Celia said, "about Calvin."
"...right," Wyatt said, sighing, leaning back in his chair and adding, "uh, yeah. Yeah. He's...he's gone off the deep end. Not that he wasn't close to the edge of it to begin with, but he's really gone off now. Um. Grudin's wife has hired a private investigator to find out what happened to her husband. Calvin currently has him tied up in his shed. I didn't wanna pull you into this, but you...you're like...the only morally conscious one of us and I need some kind of guidance here."
"Well jeez, you just come out swingin' both barrels, don'tcha?" Celia replied, making Wyatt chuckle.
"It's bad, Celia. He's planning on killing her. And their daughter. A little girl. A mentally challenged little girl. An innocent fucking kid. As the father of a child who has developmental issues, I...I'd feel like a hypocrite if I was okay with this happening. Regardless of that, I'd feel like a monster if he killed a kid. I feel like he's sunk to their level and there's no going back. We've been running in circles. We do one thing, he does another. We fix it, he does something worse. We get away with that, he plans something else. He needs to be stopped."
Celia crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt out as she looked at Wyatt, her eyes serious.
"So what do you propose?" she asked.
Wyatt stood up and started pacing behind his desk, scratching the back of his head. He groaned and leaned against a wall, his forehead on the plaster.
"...I think you know what we have to do," he said quietly, "I just...I can't do it. I can't do what he does. I don't have it in me. I think something broke inside Calvin when he lost his family, and he's...he's now capable of monstrous things, but I'm not. I can't sink to that level. But if I don't do something, he'll do something even worse than anything he's done before. At what point does it become socially acceptable to stop someone no matter what the cost?"
"Some folks would say never," Celia replied, "but me, personally? As a mother of a child? Yeah, he needs to be stopped. So let's come up with something before he makes a move."
Wyatt knew he could count on Celia for her honesty and wit, that she was the only one truly law abiding person among them, and if even she was on board with getting rid of Calvin, then there was no denying the truth. They had to get rid of Calvin. One way...or another.
***
"I'm just surprised is all, I don't peg you for the horse riding type," Scarlett said as they approached the stable.
"I used to be," Rachel said, "I used to be super into horseback riding. My friend Kelly and I really bonded over the interest and, god, my room was full of horse stuff. Horse stuff and art supplies."
"What stopped you?" Scarlett asked as they approached Sugarcube's stall, his face hanging out over the wood. Rachel looked at him, and sighed.
"There was an incident," Rachel said, "I...I was with this girl when she got kicked in the head. And all because she was doing something for me, so, like, it's my fault, really. I've never liked horses much after that. She suffered serious brain damage, had to drop out of school, start her whole life over like she was a child. I just...kinda vowed to stay away from horses after that. The weird thing is...I was nearly sexually assaulted by my manager when I was in college doing art, and yet, even with that, I didn't run away from art. Doesn't make sense why I'd run from one but not another."
"Because you recognized his actions weren't a direct result of you," Scarlett said, catching Rachel off guard; she turned and looked at Scarlett, who leaned against the stall and shrugged, folding her arms, continuing, "like...you weren't responsible for his reprehensible behavior towards you. Therefore, art wasn't tainted. But you felt personally responsible for what happened to this girl, and therefore horses were tainted. It all comes down to a matter of perspective, something you should be very familiar with considering you're in the art world."
Rachel chuckled a little and looked back at Sugarcube. He whinnied and shook his head, like he was waiting for something to happen.
"But I can promise you that you're not responsible," Scarlett said, "People make decisions and we live with the ramifications. We react accordingly. Doesn't make us responsible. Especially for such things that were truly accidents or out of our hands. Now, say, you were drinking and driving and you killed someone, that you're responsible for. You chose to do something that directly endangered another person, willingly. But these things? No. They aren't your fault."
Rachel nodded, listening, her thoughts turning to Calvin. He was the one making the decision to kill Grudin's wife and daughter. She wasn't responsible for what might happen to him as a result. She was, if anything, doing the right thing by telling Wyatt. Rachel sniffled and wiped her eyes on her sweatshirt sleeve.
"After it happened," Rachel said, "I started having these dreams, about this...this see through horse with an elongated neck. I never understood why, and it terrified the shit out of me. I'd wake up having these screaming fits, and then...then it progressed to hallucinations. I was put on medication for a while in school until it stopped being so frequent or stopped altogether. I got the horse part, that made sense, but...a friend once asked me why it was transparent and I couldn't answer. Seemed random."
"It's not," Scarlett said, "No, I...I used to do this thing with my cousin where we'd interpret one anothers dreams and so we got all these dream meaning books out of the library and stuff cause, ya know, teenage girl shit, and actually something that’s transparent or see-through can represent something that's seeming to lack substance, meaning, or importance. So really, what your subsconcious is telling you is that this moment that you deem so pivotal to your life and person, this moment that you hold yourself responsible for? It really is nothing more than a small blip on the radar that is your existence. It doesn't mean anything. It has no power, no importance. You're the one who assigned it that. But in reality, it was just a shitty thing that happened."
Rachel slowly turned and looked at Scarlett. Nobody, not even therapists she'd seen, had ever once given her a remotly plausible explanation for the horse. And yet here was Scarlett, a random stay at home mom from a wealthy neighborhood, who managed to give her an actual answer. Rachel turned back to facing Sugarcube and slowly reached out. Her palm inches from its face, she looked back at Scarlett who smiled and nodded. Rachel put her palm on the horses nose and smiled, tears running down her face.
The See Through Horse didn't mean a goddamned thing. But real horses?
Real horses meant the world to her. And she wasn't responsible for what happened, to that girl...or to Calvin.
***
"There's no good outcome to this, is there?" Wyatt asked, slumped in his desk chair as Celia, her legs up on the desk, shook her head.
"Not really, no," she said, "but that's what you work with when you're involved in this level of crime."
"My life was easy," Wyatt said, "before the reunion. Before Calvin. It wasn't perfect, but hell, it was as close to perfect as one could hope to achieve these days."
"What would've made it perfect?" Celia asked.
"Rocket car, obviously, duh," Wyatt replied, making her laugh as he continued, "all I'm saying is that I had the closest thing anyone can have to perfection, and now...now my life is an out and out mess, and for what? Calvin is a victim, sure, nobody would deny that, but at the same time he's creating victims and acting as if its morally justified."
"The thing you need to remember, man, is that we've done everything short of going to the police and putting ourselves in the line of sight to keep Calvin in check. He continues to push forward, proving that he's not manageable, and if that's the case, if he's threatening children now, then something more drastic does need to be done. We've exhausted all our other options."
Wyatt nodded, knowing full well Celia was right, and hating to admit it. He'd tried reasoning with Calvin. He'd tried getting others like Rachel to talk him down. He'd tried threatening him. He'd done everything he could, and Calvin still wouldn't see reason. He was a man blinded by rage disguised as justice. Wyatt leaned back in his chair and covered his face with his hands, groaning.
"Wyatt," Celia said, "it's awful, but you and me, we have kids, we know what he's debating doing isn't okay."
"I know."
"Then you also know that what has to be done HAS to be done," Celia said, "I'm not really a pro-murder kinda lady, but if someone has reached a point where they're willing to harm a child to teach an adult a lesson, then they've lost all credibility in my mind. And, to be perfectly honest...Robert Grudin didn't deserve to die. He shouldn't have been allowed to stay in politics, continue running for office, and yes he was slimy about not openly apologizing for his actions that took Calvin's family away from him, but...I don't think that warrants him being blown up. I think his wife has every right to be mad and want vengeance."
"You're not wrong," Wyatt said quietly, "I just...I don't care about what happens to me, I just don't want you guys to go down too."
Celia smiled. Wyatt really was a selfless individual, and she admired that about him. His worries weren't about himself, his worries were for the friends around him that could be seen as co-conspirators. He didn't want that for them, he knew they deserved better.
"Promise me something," Wyatt said, leaning forward in his chair, "if, when this all ends, if I go to jail, just...make sure my daughter knows the truth."
"I'll let her know what a brave man her father was," Celia said, patting Wyatt's hands and smiling.
And it was a promise she would keep.
***
"Thanks for taking me," Rachel said.
After the ranch, she and Scarlett went to lunch downtown, and now, sitting in a booth, each finishing their respective meals, Rachel felt like she owed this woman the world for opening her eyes.
"Eh, don't mention it, ain't no thing," Scarlett said.
"No, really, I...my parents made me believe that everything was my fault, that I was to blame," Rachel said, "and that isn't a fair way for a child to grow up, let alone an adult to continue living. That isn't to say some stuff isn't, but the majority of things that happened to me weren't my fault, and it's time I stopped believing that they were. I've been thinking about coming out to them lately."
"Yeah?" Scarlett asked, leaning back in the booth and using a toothpick on her teeth.
"It's scary, but...but I want to try and have an open and honest relationship with them, and if they can't accept me for that, then I'll know it's a fruitless endeavor," Rachel said, shrugging, crossing her arms, "like...my parents already blamed me for my near assault, made me feel responsible for the horse incident, and so I don't have a lot of faith that they'll accept me for my sexuality, but hey, at least I can say I'm the one who tried."
"That's the spirit," Scarlett said, smiling, "and hey, for what it's worth, you deserve to be respected and accepted. If my daughter were to turn out to be any flavor of queer, I'd still love her just the same, so remember that no matter what happens with your folks, you'll always have your friends. I'll always be here for you."
Rachel smiled weakly and thought about her parents. And then about Kelly's parents. And then about Sun Rai. Scarlett was right. She already had such a strong support system, so it didn't really matter whether her parents loved her or not in relation to who she was, but...it'd be nice, she wouldn't deny it. When Rachel got home that evening, she found Sun Rai already there, making dinner, and she hugged her from behind in the kitchen, just holding her and swaying gently. Everything Rachel always wanted was right here, parents be damned. And when Scarlett got home, she found Wyatt there, with take out and a bouquet of flowers. He apologized for their recent fights, and Scarlett felt lucky to have such a wonderful husband.
But Calvin...Calvin waited untl his parents were asleep, and then he carried a plate of food from dinner out to the shed for Ricky. As he unshackled one of the mans hands so he could eat, Calvin sat in front of him and watched.
"...you've met them, right? If you work for them, you've obviously met them," Calvin said.
"Yeah," Ricky said, eating like he was starving, "yeah, I've met her, and her kid."
"Tell me one thing," Calvin said, "if you were me, and he took your wife and daughter away...would you have done the same thing?"
"I don't think how you feel is monstrous, I think that's perfectly normal," Ricky said, chewing, "but acting on it? That's an entirely different situation. Everyone WANTS revenge, but that doesn't mean it's justifiable. He's dead, man, what good could come from killing his wife and daughter? He won't be alive to even feel the loss."
"Because Robert Grudin doesn't deserve to have any part of him exist in this world when my family doesn't," Calvin said sternly, "he needs to be completelt wiped from this earth, from this life, his legacy left to the ashes of time. That's why. Tomorrow, I'm gonna come back in here and you're gonna give me her address, her schedule, the layout of her house, anything that could help me do this easily."
Ricky stared as he finished eating and Calvin took the plate from him. The two men locked eyes and Ricky slowly shook his head.
"Don't do this, man," he said softly.
"...I don't have a choice anymore," Calvin replied, before shackling Ricky's hands back up and exiting, the sound of the lock sliding into place making Ricky shiver. Ricky looked around the dimly lit shed and exhaled. Calvin had lost his family, and Ricky felt for him, but he'd also done something worse. Robert Grudin might've killed Calvin's family, and then not taken responsibility for it, but he didn't do it purposefully. Calvin had killed Grudin in cold blood, and was now seeking to further harm his remaining family, who only wanted justice for the murder he'd committed. Ricky was starting to understand just how fucked a predicament he was actually in.
Some nights he really wish he had stayed the course in college and become a teacher. Teachers rarely got tied to chairs and threatened with death.