V
Seeing X hurt like that had almost killed me, though I had done my best not to let my emotions show. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw his bruised, swollen jaw, and the hole in the back of his hand. I could only imagine what other injuries he hid beneath his prison clothes.
I knew he was more worried about me than he was himself. I was going back to visit him again, no matter what he said. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for people to see us together, but I couldn’t go months without seeing his face. Having to go for days and weeks was hard enough. All I wanted was to be with him, and yet the universe had conspired to keep us apart.
No, not the universe. My fucking father. If he’d only left X alone, we could all have gotten out of the city—hell, the country—by now. Even Nicole had come to the understanding that staying in New York wasn’t going to be any kind of future for us. I think losing Mateo had made her realize that. The possibility of losing another person she loved to violence was enough to make her want to start somewhere new. I noticed how all her old friends no longer hung around, no one had called or been to see her. She was tainted goods now, and people had been most likely warned not to get involved with us. Couldn’t say I blamed them.
“How was he?” asked Nicole when I got back to the house.
“Not good. Someone had been beating on him, though he wouldn’t say who.”
Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, no! I can’t imagine X ever letting someone get away with that.”
“It’s different in there.” Sadness filled my voice. “Everything’s different.”
I could see she didn’t know what to say. I was normally the strong one, but right now I felt sapped of strength. I couldn’t make her feel better right now.
Exhausted from the emotional strain of the day, I went to bed. Sleep was something I needed more than ever. I could sleep for twelve hours straight now if given the chance. Before I’d gotten pregnant, it would have been a good night if I managed to get six hours.
I didn’t even bother to undress, just climbed beneath the covers in my clothes and tried not to think about what might be happening to X.
***
I opened my eyes, staring into the darkness. What had woken me?
My hands slid down to my belly, the skin stretched almost impossibly thin, a swollen abdomen that didn’t feel like it belonged to me. My mind hitched. How was it possible the baby was so big? I was only four months along, wasn’t I? How had I missed the last five months? I didn’t know. I was confused, but at the same time I seemed to accept it. Inside of me, the baby pushed, a tiny fist pressing back against my palm. I gasped in surprise, a smile spreading across my face.
“Hello, little one,” I said, softly, hoping my child would be able to hear me. The baby pushed again and awe filled me. I’d never felt so connected to another person before. The child was a part of me, but was another person in his or her own right, too. It suddenly struck me what a miracle carrying a child was.
A weight pressed down on the end of the bed, something large and heavy, and the feeling of wonder I’d been experiencing at feeling my own child vanished, and was replaced by dread.
“Hello, Verity.”
My father’s voice.
My breath caught in my chest, tears prickling my eyes. How was he here? He was supposed to be dead.
Not dead. He never died out there. You knew that all along, you just didn’t want to consider the possibility.
I forced myself to look, sitting up slowly, my eyes widening in the dim light.
I knew it was impossible, just as my massive belly was impossible, but he was there, nevertheless, sitting on the end of my bed, watching me with cold, impassive eyes. He turned something over in his lap, running his fingers across the object. I realized what it was ...
A knife
“No!” I tried to move away from him, scrabbling under my pillow for the gun I always kept within easy reach, but it wasn’t there, and the size of my distended body made it impossible to move quickly.
“You have my grandchild, Verity. I want the baby.”
“You can’t. It’s not born yet.”
“I don’t care.” He lifted the knife and I stared at him in horror. I was pinned to the bed with the sheer size of my belly. I wanted to get away, but I couldn’t move. All I could do was lie there and wait for him to come. He got to his feet, moving slowly forward, brandishing the blade.
“You took my daughter from me, so now I’m going to take yours from you.”
“I didn’t take Nicole. She came of her own free will!”
“No, you turned her against me. You owe me a child.” He brandished the blade. “Now hold still. If you struggle too much, I’ll hurt the baby.”
“No, please, don’t!”
The blade pressed against my skin, pin pricks of blood blooming on my distended flesh. I felt my baby’s hand push back against the knife, just as it had done against my palm only moments before. In my head, I could see its tiny fingers being sliced by the blade, and I opened my mouth and screamed ...
***
I bolted upright in bed, the scream lodged in my throat. My hand instantly went to my belly, only slightly rounded, not huge and swollen like in my dream. I’d expected my fingertips to come away hot and sticky with blood, but they only met with smooth skin. I was panting hard, my clothes, which I’d fallen asleep in, wet with sweat and clinging to my body.
Still, my father’s presence had followed me out of my dream, and I reached out and flicked on the bedside lamp, desperate to reassure myself it had only been a figment of my imagination. Ever since I’d been pregnant, my dreams had been increasingly vivid, often filled with paranoid visions about the baby, but that one had been the worst. The memory of the blade sinking into my skin, of knowing the baby was right beneath the surface, caused a shiver to wrack through me.
It had been a mistake to leave my father up in the Catskills without first seeing a body. But we’d been running out of time, and I’d been through a physical trauma. We couldn’t have spent the rest of the night out there looking for him, when we’d never have found him.
If he was still alive, he’d have turned up by now, I felt sure. We’d taken the keys for the car. He had no way of getting away from there, even if he’d been in any state to drive, which I was sure he hadn’t. I’d heard the crack when Nicole had hit him. She must have fractured his skull. Surely, he wouldn’t have walked away from that?
A surge of longing for X rose inside me. I missed him desperately in that moment, as though an actual part of me was missing, something deep inside me, intrinsic to keeping me functioning as a normal human being. The strength of the feeling stole my breath and I sat on the edge of the bed, and put my head in my hands, just waiting for the emotion to loosen its grip.
I knew I wouldn’t sleep again that night. Reaching beneath my pillow, I removed the gun I’d placed there before drifting off. This time, it was right where it was supposed to be. Keeping it in my grip for reassurance, I took the gun downstairs to make some coffee and wait for morning to arrive.