“Tom,” she says slowly, almost elongating the name into two syllables. He looks briefly from Ione to Vanessa.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Tom growls at Vanessa, finding the sight on the gun once more, steadying his hand and taking aim. He pulls the hammer back.
“Tom, stop,” Vanessa says. Her voice commands him; it doesn’t plead. She isn’t begging. She’s telling him what to do. After so many years of letting him silence her, she’s done. She steps forward confidently towards the arms of fate.
Tom quickly shifts his aim, pointing the gun directly at Vanessa’s chest. Her heart thunders, scrambling to circulate the blood needed to keep her standing. The thought of a bullet tearing through her torso gives her pause only for a moment. A natural reaction she supposes. It’s probably unnatural that she continues to step forward.
“Put it down, Tom,” she says.
“Stop!” Tom shouts. The gun shakes in his hand, the effort to keep his composure slowly eroding whatever is left of the image he’s built up of himself. It falls away, pieces of armor chinked, and battle worn. Watching it, Vanessa can’t help but think of the man that she married. A man that knew what he wanted in life. A man that wanted a wife by his side while he got it. And now, she sees him crumbling into ruins.
Tom drops the weapons at his side and looks at her. There’s something in his eyes that’s familiar to her, but not coming from him. He wants her to find a way to make this stop. There’s a part of him that wants her to end this.
And Vanessa intends to oblige.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Tom,” she says.
“Listen to her, Tom,” Ione pipes up.
“You shut up,” Vanessa points a finger at Ione, but her eyes never break away from her husband’s. “Stay out of this.”
Birdie moans in the darkness, a constant reminder that time is slipping from Vanessa’s hands like sand through the waspy waist of an hourglass. It’s precious and has to be seized. She needs to get Birdie out of here. If Tom gets that baby—she doesn’t want to think about it—she’ll never see it again.
“Tom, let me have the gun,” Vanessa ventures. If she can get the gun from him, she only has to contend with the knife. She stretches out a hand—a peace offering, an olive branch—and hopes that he’ll reach back in the darkness.
“Why should I give it to you?” Tom asks.
“You’ve already taken enough, haven’t you?” Vanessa asks, a threat creeping into her voice. The weight of years bearing down on the sentence and threatening to break it into tears. But Vanessa won’t allow that. Tom made her weak once, and she won’t tolerate it again. He and Mark both did. She won’t compromise herself for a man again.
Tom flinches at the statement. A hint of emotion behind his eyes that, for once, betrays feeling for someone other than himself. There’s guilt there. There should be.
“Vanessa—” Tom tries.
“Shut up, Tom,” Vanessa says.
She takes a step towards him—towards the loaded, cocked weapon.
“Let’s end this,” she says. “They’re waiting for you out there. There’s no escaping it, Tom. There’s a man waiting to arrest you and take you to prison.”
Her words agitate him. He paces in a short line, rubbing his forehead with the butt of the gun, momentarily taking his aim away from her. She chances a look at Ione, who seems to breathe again for the first time in minutes.
“This isn’t happening,” Tom mutters to himself. “This isn’t how it was supposed to go.”
“There are a lot of things that didn’t turn out the way they should have,” Vanessa takes another step forward. “But no one else needs to die.”
Tom looks at her and she can see, glistening in the moonlight, the hint of tears gathering on the lower rim of his eyelids.
“You need to give me that gun, Tom,” she says.
He looks at the weapon for a moment as though contemplating the choice—weighing his options.
“I’ll put it away,” he offers the compromise, unwilling to give it to her just yet.
Vanessa inhales the stale air of the studio, the scent of decades old paint offending her nostrils. She exhales, weighing her options. They’re limited. She nods.
“Put it away,” she says.
Tom lowers the gun and tucks it back into the waistband of his jeans. Vanessa breathes deeply, echoing her former rival’s sigh of relief. It’s temporary, at best. She knows this. After tucking the weapon away, he kneels in front of Birdie.
“Step back,” he says to Ione, the knife still in his hand.
She does as he instructs, backing up two steps until a stack of paintings stops her. She looks at Vanessa.
Vanessa looks from the girl to her husband. Ghosts, both of them. They seem like figments of her imagination, no more real than her vision of Mark. Each of them signifies a part of her that has died—been reborn—out here. She studies Tom as he kneels in front of the pregnant girl before him.
She’s not a girl, not really. She’s a woman in her own right. But we are all young when facing a predator. They exploit our weaknesses—the places in our armor where the light gets through. They pour their darkness into us until we’re more them than ourselves. For a moment, Vanessa feels pity for the girl.
Tom brandishes the knife, looking at it in the moonlight. The blade is almost white, almost glowing. The light reflects off of it and illuminates two trails down Birdie’s cheeks. Glistening white snakes that run from her eyes to her chin. She draws a breath and another contraction seizes her.
“I didn’t want to have to do this. You know that, right?” Tom says, almost a whisper. Vanessa barely hears him.
“Tom,” she says, her voice stern. She takes a step forward.
Tom reaches for the weapon in the waist of his jeans and his eyes bore holes
