serving tray to hold the mugs. She nearly dropped it when she turned from the counter and found the younger of the cops standing directly behind her. His eyes met hers and she felt trapped for an instant, came perilously close to telling him everything, the whole corrupt story burning at the edges of her lips. On the battered aluminium surface, the mugs rattled against each other.
'I'll take that for you,' Walters said. He reached for the pan and his fingers, cold like hers, brushed her arm. His face was unreadable but his touch left her oddly weak, disoriented. Standing before him in the small kitchen, Sondra saw that she'd been wrong about his build; he wasn't overweight at all. In fact, his entire body seemed to have elongated somehow and become lean, like a dog that looks soft and warm and sleepy until it stands up and stretches. Fear bubbled into Sondra's throat, but he only took her elbow with his free hand and guided her towards the living-room and his waiting partner, his flesh burning against her own like dry ice.
McShaw looked up from scribbling on his form and dropped his pen on to the coffee table, reaching eagerly for one of the mugs. Sondra sank on to the worn love seat with a feeling of relief that shattered when Walters settled loosely next to her instead of returning to his place on the old rocking-chair across the coffee table. Everything about the apartment was small: the rooms, the windows and the meagre amount of sunlight they permitted inside, the furniture; his thigh, bunched with muscle beneath the fabric of his slacks, pressed coolly against hers, but there was nowhere for her to move to get away. Was she suffocating here or was the pulse hammering in her throat simply getting in the way of the air trying to flow into her lungs?
'Okay,' McShaw said after a moment. He made no move to pick up the clipboard he'd set on the table next to his pen. 'Tell us about the other two times.'
'I thought I saw him when I took the babies to the paediatrician at the free clinic last Tuesday,' Sondra said hoarsely. She was proud of the way she kept her voice from shaking, from giving away her petty deception. 'Following us again. But it was too crowded there and when we got out it was rush hour. He was gone.'
'You thought?'
Sondra nodded but didn't elaborate. Let them discount this one if they wanted; it was a lie anyway, mere icing on an already poisoned cake.
'And when was the other time?'
'Last night. I took the babies up to the park for the fall festival. He w-was there, and he followed us home.'
McShaw leaned forward. 'Ms Underwood, if he followed you home last night, why did you wait until this morning to call us?'
Sondra looked at her hands, the knuckles red from scrubbing furiously at the filth of this place, the fingernails strangely white under the edges from baby powder. 'I-I don't know,' she whispered. 'I guess I was hoping he would just go away, but when I got up this morning and I thought about it, I realized that's probably not going to happen.'
'Has he ever tried to make contact? Threatened you?' Walters's voice was smooth and vaguely sweet , like one of those expensive frozen drinks the upscale restaurants served. She thought she heard all kinds of innuendo in it, as rich and varied as the variety of liquors dumped into the exotic glasses edged with garnishes made of fruit and plastic sticks.
Sondra's gaze found his unwillingly and she lost herself for a single, panicked moment, snapped back in time to answer before McShaw noticed her lag. 'No.' With a dying feeling, she realized how lame all of this must sound and she had to force the answer past her stiff lips. She had called too soon, they would never believe her; she was alone in her efforts to protect Mallory and Meleena, as she had been from the moment of their birth:
'We're going to have to call a doctor' the midwife said grimly. Sondra lifted her head and saw the woman's heavy, black face peering back at her through the inverted triangle of her spread legs and over the spasming mound of her bloated stomach. Apprehension made her southside accent run the words together. ' You're bleeding too much and you've been in labour way too long.'
' No doctor,' Sondra hissed. The refusal ended in a scream as agony rippled through her uterus, as if the child inside were trying to tear its way through the prison of tissue and mother's blood. Had it heard the midwife's words and realized the danger of prolonging her agony? 'It's coming now!' she screamed and pushed, bore down as she had never done before to expel the thing within her body that was trying to kill her .
' I see it — push again!' The midwife's hands were warm and wet with Sondra's blood and they pried at her ravaged flesh for a moment, then locked around something huge and painful. 'I've got the head. Come on, Sondra — if you don't keep pushing you'll kill it and yourself besides !'
Sondra screamed again and dug into the sides of the mattress with her fingernails, felt the decrepit fabric tear at the same time as the child shot from her body with a wave of pain that nearly made her lose consciousness. Dear God, she thought disjointedly as she fought to find her breath, why hadn't the mound of her stomach grown smaller? Was it afterbirth — could the fruits of her coupling have filled her with that much dark debris?
She was still panting from Mallory's birth when deep within her belly the fire began anew, making her writhe on the soaked sheets and open her mouth in a scream too huge to be heard. The midwife was there in an instant, her large, slick hands working at Sondra's belly, kneading and pressing.
'Twins!' she declared. 'Hold on, girl there's another one coming!'
Sondra's wail found substance as a second child forced its way free. Something deep inside her relaxed and let her breathe, disregarded the short, puny cramps that followed as the midwife worked her stomach to get Sondra's body to eject the bloody afterbirth. 'What?' Sondra finally managed, sucking in welcome air as she fought to sit up. 'W-what are they?'
'Girls,' the midwife said, turning back to the changing table. 'Just as healthy as can be, too. A little over six- and-a-half pounds each — big for twins.' Despite her assurances, the black woman's voice was reserved, puzzled. Exhausted, Sondra listened to the splash of water from the basin as the midwife expertly sponged down the infants, then wrapped them in receiving blankets.
'Can I see?'
'Here you go. One for each arm.'
Warmth settled on either side of her and Sondra tucked her chin to her chest for a glimpse of her babies. Sleeping already, come into the world without so much as a whimper; tiny fingers bunched into loose fists, delicate lips still bluish-purple but pinkening by the second. Their heads were crowned with thick, dark hair above perfect eyebrows and petite, titled noses; as she gazed at them, the second one — Meleena — spread her heart-shaped mouth in a barely discernible yawn .
