Granberrys!” Regina shook her head. “I said, ‘Craig, you’re not gonna believe this!’ and he says, ‘Hey, we’re not letting them have our baby, cause here they are following us!’ and I said, ‘You’re right, let’s keep Hayden.’ ” Regina sighed, offered me some more water.
I started to shake my head no, then realized that was a very bad idea. “No,” I said. “Thanks.” I wondered if Regina had ever made a reasoned decision in her life.
“While Craig was zipping up, getting ready to go down the stairs, I took the baby and kind of slid him under the bed. He was so sound asleep, he didn’t even peep. He’s so good! I didn’t want them to walk in and see him and get all grabby, like they did once before. I told Craig what to say.”
“Why didn’t the Granberrys get there when Craig and Rory did?”
“Well, they’d stopped to eat. At the last gas station they’d stopped at, Craig and Rory had asked for directions to Lawrenceton, so Margaret and Luke knew where they were going. When they were talking later about following Craig, they said they’d been scared to follow too close. When they got to Lawrenceton, they just looked in the phone book for familiar names, came up with Bartell in five minutes.”
“So, what happened then?” I closed my eyes, listened to Regina’s voice wash over me. She was glad to have someone to talk to, so glad she hadn’t noticed I hadn’t answered any of her questions.
“I heard Craig yelling at them, telling them he’d decided they couldn’t have his boy after all. That he’d been willing because a deal was a deal, but now they’d tracked him down from Ohio and he didn’t like that at all. So after a while, Margaret came in the room, she said Luke was down there talking to Craig, where was the baby?”
“And you told her-?”
“The same thing I’d told Craig to tell Luke. That you and Martin had the baby, that you’d taken him riding with you so he would go to sleep, that you wouldn’t be coming back for a long time.”
“She want to know where Rory was?”
“I told her he was over in the house.”
“So?”
“So, she wrote him a long note and stuck it under the windshield wiper of their car. I don’t know what it said, not everything, cause she had pulled a gun on me by that time. You could have knocked me over with a feather, Margaret Granberry pulling a gun on me! So I was sitting there, quiet, and I couldn’t fight, because Hayden was there under the bed and who knew what would happen to him? And I was scared to death he’d wake up and make a noise.”
“But he didn’t.”
“She looked around the room, but she never thought of looking under the bed,” Regina said. “So she told me to get in my car, we were going to drive some.”
“And you went down the stairs?”
“Yes. It was hard to leave Hayden, but I knew once we left, Craig and Rory would search for him; Craig knew for sure he was in that room!” Regina beamed fondly.
“Where was Craig when you left?”
“Oh, he and Luke were still arguing. Craig didn’t say anything when he saw me coming out without the baby, and I knew he’d take care of Hayden and come after me.”
I took a deep breath, and my head throbbed as though it were splitting.
“Aunt Roe,” she said suddenly, “what are you and Uncle Martin doing in Corinth? Every now and then if Margaret and Luke are talking in this room right overhead I can hear them through the gap around the dryer vent, and I heard that you were at the farm. Doesn’t anyone know where I am? Aren’t Craig and Rory looking for me? Why do you have Hayden?”
I had to tell her about us bringing the baby and Rory back to Corinth, about what had happened before we’d brought them here. It wasn’t kind to let her ignorance go on any longer, though I still had lots of questions.
“So when you and Margaret drove off in your car,” I began, “Luke was still arguing outside with Craig?”
“Yeah, they were standing on the steps.”
Where Craig had left the hatchet. While the note to Rory began to disintegrate in the rain. What had Regina imagined the note said? Why hadn’t Regina figured the Granberrys had no reason to leave Rory a note if they planned to leave Craig there alive?
“Regina,” I said, trying to sound gentle, succeeding only in sounding weary, “after you left, Luke killed Craig.”
Regina stared down at me. “Why would he do that?” she asked finally. Her voice had a tremor in it.
“I guess they fought,” I said. “Craig didn’t want Luke to have Hayden. You both had gone back on your agreement. Luke was mad.” Regina didn’t seem to have much grasp of consequences.
“What about Rory? Did Luke go in the house and kill him too?”
“No. Luke needed him to stay, get the baby back, and return him to Corinth. I suppose in the note… Margaret promised him more money if he brought the baby to them. But we brought the baby, and we wouldn’t have given him up to Rory. All Rory was, was a problem. So today, Luke shot Rory.”
I could see the whites all around Regina’s irises.
“Both gone,” she whispered. “Then why am I alive?”
That was a good question, and unexpectedly astute of Regina if she’d meant it literally. While she sat in disbelieving silence, I gave her the bare bones of our trip to Corinth, of what had happened at the farm this afternoon.
And I had to tell her that Margaret and Luke had the baby.
Regina began to cry, but I had no comfort to offer her. My own problems overwhelmed me. I couldn’t move without waves of pain and nausea, and I could no longer put off my fear for Martin. I didn’t have enough energy to worry about Karl Bagosian, too; I thought, obscurely, He’s got plenty of family, and I did my best to dismiss him from my mind.
My thoughts wandered away from the chilly cellar and the stupid young woman beside me. I fantasized that maybe Martin had managed to make it to the road and was flagging down some passing car. That was the least taxing way to get help I could imagine. Even then, the struggle down the snowy driveway, the long cold wait… I remembered how sick Martin had looked, and I wondered what was wrong.
After a while, I admitted to myself that I figured it was his heart.
I recalled Martin’s hesitance when I asked him about his physical, in what seemed the long-ago past. I suspected that Martin had learned then that something was going wrong inside him. But with the troubles of his family, and the troubles of my family, he’d thought it best to put off having that explored; that was what I would have done, and I was sure Martin would think that way.
“You think Uncle Martin will get us out?” Regina asked, in a voice worn limp with tears.
I lay there and hated her. “He didn’t look good when I last saw him,” I said. “Over at the farmhouse.”
“We’re on our own?” Regina sounded as if that was unbelievable. All her layers of backup, gone. I could sympathize. “Have you heard from my mother?”
“Not a word.”
“So she’s still on her cruise,” Regina said. She sat for a long time in silence, which I welcomed. When she finally spoke, it was hardly reassuring. “So they’ll kill us, now that they’ve got the baby,” she said, and I whispered, “Yes.” She’d reasoned herself to the end of the line.
We fell silent. We waited.
Chapter Eleven
Later, I thought of asking Regina if the Granberrys kept any dogs.
“No,” she said, obviously thinking I was an utter loon.
“Good.” Any idea of escape would be complicated by dogs.
Once we heard Hayden crying upstairs, and both of us twitched as if we were going to rise and tend to him. (In my case, that meant my arm moved.) I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to get up and go to the bathroom, and I dreaded it… when I had any dread to spare.
Margaret and Luke didn’t put in an appearance. Probably totally wrapped up with their new baby, I thought
