Fuck, man.
Doug’s trying to sound tough, and for some reason, that makes it even worse.
I swallow the lump forming in my throat and ask, “What’d you go with?”
“The beef,” he says with a sniffle. “My wife never let me eat red meat.” His voice breaks at the mention of his girl, erupting into the kind of sob that’s so painful it doesn’t make a sound. Only gasps and gurgles and deep, guttural moans.
I let my head fall back against the cinder-block wall and close my eyes, but I don’t fucking cry.
Because unlike Doug, I’m gonna see my girl again.
I thought I could do this.
I thought I had changed.
I thought I could sacrifice myself for her and make God happy for once in my shitty waste of a life.
But fuck that.
If God wanted a martyr, he shouldn’t have chosen a motherfucker who knows how to pick locks with a plastic fork.
Rain
Our garage doesn’t have windows.
My garage.
Their garage.
Their garage doesn’t have windows.
It’s pitch-black in here, day or night.
I don’t know which one it is anymore.
The sound of cockroaches scurrying around makes me think it must be getting dark outside. They usually only come out at night.
Thank God I have my boots on.
Not that I can feel my feet anyway. I haven’t been able to straighten my legs for hours. Sophie dragged a chair from the dining room out here, and Carter duct-taped me to it. He bound my ankles to the wooden legs and taped my wrists to the armrests.
Now I can’t feel my hands either.
I spent the first hour or two tugging on my restraints, trying to shuffle my chair across the floor without making noise, trying to think of something in here that I could use as a tool or a weapon, but once my anger wore off, I remembered that it doesn’t really matter.
What’s the point of escaping when you have nowhere else to go?
This used to be my home.
Then, Wes became my home.
And now … I’m just homeless.
I picture Wes’s face, bitter but not broken, defiant but not desperate, as he stood before the governor. Since the moment they ripped him away from me, I’ve thought of him as dead. But he’s not. I looked at him, and he looked at me. And somehow, that makes it hurt more. Knowing he’s out there and I can’t get to him. Touching his cheek and feeling nothing but dust and static beneath my fingers. Knowing that he’s locked in a cell somewhere, while I’m locked in one of my own.
If the tables were turned, Wes would come for me. I know he would. He would storm the castle and slay the dragons and burn the entire kingdom to the ground to save me.
But no one’s coming for him.
And the saddest part is that no one ever has.
The door to the kitchen swings open, and I wince when the overhead fluorescent lights come on. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to bury my face in my shoulder to hide from the unbearable brightness.
“Dinnertime.” Mrs. Renshaw’s voice is raspy but strong as she drags another dining room chair across the cement floor.
I hear the click-clack of high heels and the crinkle of a paper bag, which I assume holds the French fries and greasy hamburger I’m smelling.
Once my eyes adjust to the light, I blink them a few times and find Mrs. Renshaw sitting directly across from me—legs crossed, pantyhose on, wig smoothed down, jewelry for days. She glares at me like I’m in an interrogation room, and with this lighting, I might as well be.
Mrs. Renshaw places a Styrofoam to-go cup in my right hand, which is still lashed to the armrest, and then rips the piece of duct tape covering my mouth off in one swift motion, taking the skin off of my dry, chapped lips along with it.
I open and close my mouth, working my sore jaw. Then, I lean forward and take a huge slurp from the red plastic to-go cup straw. Cool water fills my mouth, but it could be gasoline for all I care. I haven’t had anything to drink all day.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Mrs. Renshaw says, her penciled-on eyebrows arching to the heavens as she leans forward, wrapping her forearms around the bag in her lap. “I ain’t sorry for what I done. You can be mad at me all you want, Rainbow, but I will never apologize for trying to protect my family.” She drops her eyes to my belly. “One day, when you’re a mama, you’ll understand.”
A wistful smile tugs at the corners of her glossy lips before she sits up straighter and furrows her brows at me. “I always thought of you as one of my own. I loved you like you was family. But I was wrong about you.” She wags her finger at me like I’m sitting in the principal’s office. “You are no child of mine. You are yo’ daddy’s child through and through. Evil. Violent. Disturbed. Just like your savage friend who attacked my boy.”
I squeeze the to-go cup in my fist, digging my fingernails into the Styrofoam until I feel tiny streams of cool water running down the sides of my fingers and over my palm. When the water reaches my wrist, I get an idea.
“You’re carryin’ my grandbaby, so I can’t turn you in, but … I can’t let you come near me or my family again either.”
Mrs. Renshaw reaches into the bag and pops a handful of French fries into her mouth, closing her eyes as she savors the food just to torture me. Luckily, it gives me an opportunity to twist my wrist back and forth to help the moisture make its way underneath the duct tape.
“So, I decided”—Mrs. Renshaw swallows her mouthful of fried potato and licks the salt from her freshly painted fingertips—“I’m gon’ keep you out here till the baby’s born.”
“What?”
Her lined lips curl into a sneer as she takes
