Right to Life

She didn’t know where Stephen was. He just wasn’t there. Though his pickup was in the driveway.

She couldn’t believe it. She looked around to be sure. The bedrooms, the bathroom, the cellar. Even walked upstairs to the attic. She peered out the windows front and back. Nobody there. The narrow dirt road that wound down the hill to the mailbox was empty. So was the back yard all the way to the woods. The garage door was closed.

He had a shop there but if he were in it he’d have left the door open and even in broad daylight she knew a light would be on inside.

She could leave. She could do it. She could walk away.

She could run.

Her heart was pounding. What about the Organization? What would they do if she got away? She could warn everyone, couldn’t she? Of course she could. Tell her mother and father and Greg and the kids’ parents and get the cops to protect them. Get these two arrested. Make them pay.

For kidnapping. For murder.

The Organization had a long reach, they said. They could wait and bide their time and even if Kath and Stephen were locked up in jail they’d get her. Get all of them. That was what they said.

But how could she not run? How could she not try?

Oh, god. She couldn’t.

She walked to the front door and did the simplest, most amazing thing.

She opened it.

Walked down the wooden stairs she had walked only once before in all these months and that was going up, not down them, walked them slowly and carefully because they creaked and moaned under her feet and she was looking for him side to side all the time, around the tall hedges that needed trimming, along the line of trees far off to her right and then she was on the gravel path that led through the front yard to the road and she was running, aware of her bulk and the weakness of her legs, the legs complaining of too little exercise and her breath coming hard and then heard him behind her on the gravel, turned and saw him drop the rake why hadn’t she checked the sides of the house? he was out there raking the leaves for god’s sake and she stopped dead in her tracks because there was no way she was going to outrun him and stood her ground and looked at him.

He stopped running. Walked up to her, shaking his head, brows knit tight.

Then slapped her to the ground.

“Get up,” he said. “Get your ass up

He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. Marched her back to the house, up the stairs and in. The kiss of warm sunlight disappeared behind her back like a fair-weather friend. He slammed the door. She was crying so hard she could barely see and her ear was ringing where he’d slapped her and throbbed with pain. He moved her through the house to the cellar stairs and down into the cold dark.

“You fat fucking cow! Strip! Get your ass over to the X-frame. You run from me?”

So furious he was spitting.

“Turn around! Spread your legs. Get your arms up.”

He strapped her into the manacles.

“You run from me, you bitch? I ought to break your fucking legs. You fat sow. You cunt!”

“Please, Stephen. The baby…”

It was her only card.

He was pacing the cellar, the studded whip in hand, slapping it against his jeans. Screaming at her.

“Fuck the baby! Fuck you! You know what I ought to do? You know what I really ought to do? I ought to kill you, you little bitch. I ought to kill you right now and to hell with the baby. You try to run from me? You want to go get a cop? You want to put the cops on me? Four months you been here. Four fucking months I put up with you and your bullshit and this is what I get? You little cunt. I ought to kill you and fuck the baby, to hell with the baby, screw the fucking baby.”

He threw the whip at her. The heavy knotted handle struck her in the eye. He moved swiftly to the worktable and came back with the red Swiss army knife in his hand open to the cutting blade. His eyes glittered.

“You want to fuck around? You want to call the cops on me? Well how ’bout we give ’em something. How ’bout we really give ’em something? How ’bout we do this?”

He stabbed her. The soft flesh below her left shoulder.

She felt the sudden punch of the thing and the searing burst of pain.

“How ’bout we do this?”

He shoved the knife into her inner thigh. The pain was a hammer and a snake-bite. Her body slammed back against the X-frame and she screamed. Through the sudden panic she saw where he was going. The hand drew back. Pointed at her swollen abdomen.

“How ’bout we…”

“STEPHENNOPLEEEASETHEBABY!” she wailed.

He stopped. Stared at her.

His face went pale. He staggered once and lowered the knife and then looked away from her, looked down at the floor as though studying something there and then walked slowly over to the worktable and folded back the blade of the knife and put it carefully down. Then just stood there staring at the table. Blood was rolling down her side over her hip and down her thigh across her calf and pooling at her foot. She hung there shaking. Sobbing, watching him.

“I better clean you up,” he murmured. “I better clean up the mess you made. Before Kath comes home.”

Now, a month later, those were practically his last words to her.

He seemed to have lost interest.

She was damn well glad of that but worried as to why. He moped around the house, drank too much beer at night in front of the TV. Mornings Kath would let her out of the Long Box and half the time he’d be still in bed or only just getting up. She’d see the empty bottles. There were times beads of sweat would break out over his forehead, for no apparent reason. He walked with a kind of stoop. His muscle tone seemed to have gone slack. He seemed almost as depressed as she was. Kath said he was worried about money, with taxes and mortgage payments being what they were. But Sara thought it was something else.

She didn’t know why she should be worried. So what if he was depressed? Why should she care? The man had almost killed her. She didn’t know what it signified or why it should concern her but it did.

Her apprehension resolved itself into something infinitely worse the week before Halloween when she went up into the attic looking for a replacement bag for the vacuum cleaner. And saw what they’d stored there.

* * *

“When this is over I want to find another,” he said.

They were lying in bed back to back. She guessed he couldn’t sleep.

She knew what he meant and she didn’t like it one bit. The baby was supposed to be the glue. The baby was supposed to be sufficient. How long did he think this was going to go on? With how many? “Jesus, Stephen. With a baby in the house?”

He snorted. “The baby won’t know.”

“What about us? What about our lives? What about our friends? The baby’s got to have friends and so do we.”

“The baby isn’t going to need any friends the first year or two. I want somebody younger this time, Kath. She’s too fucking old. She doesn’t do it for me. She’s fucking disgusting.”

He was serious for god’s sake. She thought back to Shawna, the first one. She’d been younger all right. Sixteen.

Buried in back a few feet away from McCann.

He’d been playing with electricity. They hadn’t known she had a bad heart.

How many?

“Stephen, I want my life back. I want to have Gail over. I want to go out to dinner and a movie sometimes. I mean, is that a lot to ask?”

“I’m talking about a year or two. Once the baby’s older I’ll… settle down.”

Sure. Sure you will.