They walk in silence towards the main house. Ione breaks it.
“I’m sorry for everything,” she says.
A bitter laugh creeps out of Vanessa’s throat.
Ione clears her own.
“You came for her,” Vanessa turns and looks at her. The thought washes over her like a vision. She knows next to nothing about Ione’s relationship to Birdie. Only that they were students of Tom’s together. But something in the way that Ione shifts her weight when Vanessa says it makes her think there’s some truth to it.
Ione looks around, avoiding Vanessa’s eyes.
“You came for the pregnant girl. For Birdie,” Vanessa says. “You didn’t come for Tom.” It dawns on her suddenly. The girl’s not here for her husband. And there’s a small part of Vanessa that’s disappointed.
It makes Vanessa think that maybe there’s nothing between Tom and herself that’s worth fighting for anymore. It’s a thought that’s knocked around in her mind for a long time now. Seeing it confirmed on the face of a virtual stranger is enough to make Vanessa want to vomit.
All of this is for nothing.
But not if she can save the baby. Not if she can bring that child into this world. She could be a wonderful mother. She knows it. Birdie isn’t ready for it. She’s not cut out for motherhood. Vanessa is.
But if Ione manages to get Birdie out of here, the child is going with her.
“Don’t lie to me,” Vanessa prickles against the realization.
“Fine. I did,” Ione says, stiffening in her posture.
“She’s not leaving,” Vanessa says. “Tom won’t allow it.”
“Maybe I can talk to him.”.
Vanessa thinks for a moment.
“He might listen to you,” she says. The wall between them—this iron curtain created by time and trauma—begins to descend. Vanessa thinks this might work. Ione might be able to talk to Tom. She might be able to convince him to let her—Vanessa—take Birdie to the hospital. But she has to be careful about how this goes down.
“I think he would,” Ione says. Her arms cross over her chest.
“Come on.”
She leads the way back to the main house. She takes Ione into Tom’s study.
“I’ll be back,” she says. The words sound more like a threat than a promise.
Vanessa leaves the girl and goes to the kitchen. She grabs an apple—one of the few things they have a surplus of—and some peanut butter from the pantry. The supplies have dwindled for a while. Probably long before Tom instituted the policy of killing the power between certain hours last summer.
Tom didn’t talk to Vanessa about the money. He talks to Birdie about that if he talks to anyone. Birdie had situated herself neatly between the pair of them. Vanessa’s ire about the situation with Ione had taken all the grief she had to give. There are dark moments from that period of time that she doesn’t care to relive.
And Ione being here makes that virtually impossible. She finds her anger rearing its head like a long-caged beast ready to be free. She wants to scream at Tom all over again. Throw a lamp against the wall and watch it shatter over his head while he ducks to avoid it.
Despite everything, there’s part of her that longs for what she had with Tom in the beginning. He’d been so charming when she’d met him. He’d come into the emergency room, having cut his hand on New Year’s Eve trying to cut frozen hamburger meat. Vanessa had been one of his nurses. A student still herself. She can still remember the way he smiled, lopsided and with his whole face. In that moment, he hooked her. There was no going back. She’d have followed him into hell then and now that she’d arrived there, she wondered what the fuck she’d been thinking.
But even still, there is a part of her that holds out that maybe they can have their happy ending after all. Maybe they can raise this baby together. Maybe Birdie will leave. Maybe the charges will be dropped. Maybe they can stay in this standoff forever.
She takes the peanut butter and the apple back to the study and closes the door behind her.
“Here,” she hands it to Ione.
The girl takes it. Her hunger overcoming any misgivings she might have about taking the food from Vanessa, her former rival.
Vanessa sits in the window seat, watching her.
The girl bites into the apple and spoons out the remainder of the peanut butter, shoving it into her mouth.
“It’s good,” she says between bites. She finishes the apple in record time, tossing the core into the trash can that sits beside Tom’s massive desk. Vanessa briefly wonders if Ione recognizes it from his office at the university. She wonders how many nights Ione might have spent there with him. The thought has lost most of its bite with time, but with Ione standing there before her, it’s cutting teeth again.
Vanessa watches her as she finishes eating. Studies her. Wonders why she would come here for a friend from so long ago. Vanessa doesn’t have any relationships that would warrant such extreme action. Not even what’s left in tatters at her feet of the love she and Tom shared.
Ione locks eyes with her and places the peanut butter on the desk.
“Thank you,” she says.
Vanessa nods, accepting the girl’s gratitude reluctantly. It irks her to think she’s done anything for her. Anything that might help her. But then she shifts the frame of her thought: if she helps Ione, maybe Ione will help her.
And maybe if she makes it seem like she’s helping Birdie, she’ll help her even faster.
As the two of them stand in silence, a shattering crash rings out just above. A scream pierces the quiet of the house. It’s a primal sound. A woman in great pain.
Birdie.
BIRDIE
The shard of glass glistens with the dark maroon blood from between Birdie’s legs. Her hand shakes as she holds it. Her grasp loosens and the red-stained piece
