“Birdie?” he calls. “I saw the Jeep by the road.”
His tone is calm, reasonable even. Deceptively so. Not the voice of a man that just knocked his former lover unconscious after being presented with the idea that he might not hold the child that’s rightfully his.
I look down at Birdie and place a single finger against my lips. I pray that her contractions will slow, though I know that’s impossible. It goes against the inevitability of nature—against the fact that her body has already decided that the baby is going to be born tonight.
The thought makes my blood run like ice in my veins. The idea that we may not get out of here is enough to make me sick. I can hear Tom stalking through the stacks. It reminds me for just a moment of our time in the library and of another time when I met him at Bizzell Memorial on campus in Norman. A stolen kiss and passion that required more than a library could offer in terms of privacy. We’d left hand in hand that night, both of us intoxicated by the affair and the idea that anyone could see us at any time.
The thought is so distant now, the impact of the trophy against my skull still making my headache and my ears ring. It makes it hard to concentrate, the sound of him moving a reminder that we are not safe. Not yet.
“Birdie?” he calls again, traipsing through the stacks, hunting us, unaware that I’m here. And I’m not sure how he’ll react to seeing me. If it will piss him off, make things worse. My stomach clenches, and I try to steady my breathing. I look down at Birdie once more. She grits her teeth, tears leaking down her cheeks like raindrops following the path of least resistance down a windowpane.
She gasps suddenly. I see Tom’s boots abruptly stop moving. Dirt shuffles against the oval toes of each of them, making half-moons in the dust as he steps backward. I imagine him looking for us—for Birdie—and I try to keep myself from imagining what he’ll do if he finds her.
I feel responsible. This is why I’m here. This is why I’ve come. I look down at Birdie again, the gap between her front teeth showing as she grimaces from the pain. Her face is twisted into a ghoulish imitation of a smile. She wants to scream, I can tell. She brings her good hand to her mouth and shoves her fist inside, digging her canines into her flesh hard enough that a bead of dark blood pulls to the surface and runs down before she lets up.
I make a decision in that instant. This has to end. There has to be a way.
“Tom,” I say. My voice is even. His name feels like a four-letter word, dirty on my tongue. A curse. A summons for something not of this world. Someone that I don’t know anymore.
He stills, the sound of his footsteps stops. The quiet is overwhelming—suffocating even—and the tension in the room is palpable. A thing with a pulse, writhing and coming to life. It coils around me, a snake in the air, its muscles constricting around my throat. My mouth dries, my tongue suddenly cotton.
Tom starts to walk towards us. His footsteps are slow, cautious even. I wonder what he thinks he’s going to find. If he thinks we’re armed. I remember then that he has the revolver from the desk—from my waistband. The thought makes me sick.
And then he steps around the corner.
In the moonlight, the shadows on his face are long. The crevices that time has carved seem sharper, more pronounced. The ridge of his brow reminds me of a classic horror film monster. I swallow, the lump in my throat hard as a baseball.
He doesn’t say my name. He doesn’t even say anything to acknowledge what happened in the study. He looks from me to Birdie and back again.
“Where’s Vanessa?” he asks.
Birdie doesn’t answer immediately. She grunts in pain. He slams his hand into a stack of canvases, sending them flying across the room. Birdie cries out.
“Where is she?!” his voice booms.
“I don’t know!” Birdie barks at him.
“She needs a doctor, Tom,” I say.
“Shut up. Just shut up!” he hollers. He brings his hands to his head, cradling it as though the sound of my voice is piercing his ear drums like a beetle boring into his brain.
I react as though slapped. I shut my mouth. I raise my hands. He begins to pace and grabs something from the waistband of his pants. A blade glints in the moonlight, the tang catching the illumination in such a way that’s almost beautiful—elegant, even. In any other situation, I could appreciate it. If this was a movie, I might.
“Tom,” I say, nearly breathless.
“Shut up,” he growls.
He shoves me aside and I tumble into a stack of paintings, turning them over and falling to the side with them. I cough as I hit the dusty concrete floor. It’s cool against my face. The air whooshes out of my lungs, sucked out as though by a vacuum.
I pant, trying to regain my breath. I look over my shoulder and see Tom crouched over Birdie, the knife in his hand. He waves it in front of her face, and he pleads with her.
“You understand, don’t you?” There are tears in his voice.
Birdie says nothing. She moans. She mumbles incoherently. I shove myself to my feet.
“Tom,” I say. I try to keep my voice even, as reasonable as I can—as empathetic as I can.
He breaks his concentration for a brief moment and looks at me. There’s a hollowness in his gaze. The pale blue of his eyes is icy and holds a threat. I realize what he’s capable of
