Slow Agony (19 page)

I peered up at him. “I don’t know.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “If you were pregnant again, would you want...?” He drew in a noisy breath. “I don’t want you to feel pressured by me. If you aren’t ready, then it would be horrible for us to go through with it.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. That was seriously the last thing I’d ever expected him to say. “But Griffin, you want a baby, don’t you?”

“I...” He pulled his hand away. “I don’t know. I don’t like the idea of choosing to get rid of a baby. It makes me feel...” He looked into my eyes, pleading. “I thought I explained this to you? The biological stuff?”

“So you don’t want one?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “What do you want?”

I took a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to have another abortion.”

“No?”

I looked at my hands again. “It’s hormones and stuff, and I know that, but I was so depressed afterwards. And I...” I got off the couch again. I walked over to the entertainment center and began toying with the ceramic figurines his mother decorated with. “I don’t feel guilty about what I did. Not really. But that doesn’t meant I don’t think about what would have happened if I hadn’t gone through with the abortion. I mean, actually, I try not to. Because it only makes me sad, and I don’t want to feel sad about it. I don’t want to think about it at all. Sometimes, it’s...” I turned back to Griffin.

He was watching me, his expression tough to read.

I set down the figurine. “If I’m pregnant, it’s hard for me not to feel like we’re getting a second chance. Like it’s a sign that it’s meant to be, you know?”

“You really mean that?”

“Of course I do.”

“You’re not saying it because you think it’s what I want to hear?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t figure you right now, anyway. I don’t know what you want to hear.”

“I don’t either.” His mouth tugged into a rueful half-smile. “Jesus, doll, it’s weird. I remember the way I felt back in Thomas when you told me about the abortion, and I remember how much rage I felt. Like you stole something from me. You did it all behind my back. I was so self-righteously angry. I was sure that if you’d told me beforehand that you were pregnant, I would have wanted us to keep the baby.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

He swallowed. “I’m not sure.”

He had to be joking. “You can’t tell me that now you want me to—”

“No,” he said. “
No
.” He crossed the room to me and pulled me into his arms. He wrapped himself around me, whispering into my hair that he loved me. And it was only at that moment that I started to feel better. Griffin’s touch made me feel stronger. When we were connected, we were better than when we were alone. “Maybe it’s only because there’s a psycho chasing us, and I’m not sure if we’re going to live through this.”

“Yeah, being imprisoned in your mother’s basement is not the ideal time to think about having babies.”

He put a finger under my chin and tilted it up so that I was looking at him. “But if we’re going to have a baby, then we’ll have to deal with it.”

“Deal with it?” Maybe I was crazy, but part of the whole reason I hadn’t had the baby before was that I imagined the idea of pregnancy as something good and exciting and wanted. Not an inconvenience.

“Yeah, is there something wrong with dealing with it?”

“I...” I pushed away from him. “I thought you’d be happy. Well, I hoped you would. I thought you wanted—”

“We don’t even know, Leigh,” he said. “All we’re going on here is that you forgot your birth control.”

I nodded. He was right. “That’s true.”

He touched my arm. “Hey.”

“What?”
“If you are pregnant, and you want it, then I want it.”

I gazed into his gray eyes. “You do?”

He kissed me. “Yes. Hell, yes. I’m just worried. I can’t protect my family from Marcel. I can’t stop Marcel. I mean, how can I possibly have a child on top of that?”

“We’ll fix this thing with Marcel first.”

“How?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t think hiding down here is helping us. We’re treading water. We have to go on the offense.”

He turned away from me. “Doll, you have no idea what this man did to me. And now I have to face him? Fight him? I don’t know if I can.”

“Then let’s call the twins.”

He sank down on the couch and buried his face in his hands. “No. No, I’m not doing that.”

I sat down next to him. Gently, I patted him on the back. I tried to think. In order to know whether or not I was pregnant, I needed to get a pregnancy test, which meant going to a store. Griffin wasn’t letting us out of the basement, let alone the house. Should I convince him to let us do that? Or would we all be killed, like Marcel had threatened?

There was the soft sound of a throat clearing.

Both Griffin and I looked up to see Beverly in the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but your voices woke me up, and...”

“Dammit, Ma,” said Griffin. “I don’t want you to worry.”

“Griffin James, I’ve been trapped in my own basement for the past week and a half. I’ve used all my personal days and there’s no end in sight, is there? You honestly think I’m not worried?”

He looked down at his hands.

“I don’t know who this Marcel person is,” said Beverly, “but I do know that right now he’s controlling us. He’s done that with fear. I was ready to do whatever he said because I thought he’d hurt Christa, but it turned out that he didn’t even have her. Now he’s threatened all of us, but we have no reason to think he’ll actually hurt anyone.”

“Sure we do,” he said. “He’s hurt people before.”

“I think you need to call his bluff,” she said. “If he were really outside this house, and he wanted to hurt us, don’t you think he could have done it already? He’s had a week and a half. He could have found a way in. He hasn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t, though,” Griffin said.

“You know,” I said, “he hasn’t been very truthful with us, has he? He asked you to show up at that rendezvous, and he didn’t show. He lied about Christa. Maybe your mother’s right.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t take the chance.”

“We’re running out of food,” said Beverly. “We need to eat. We need more toothpaste. Your sister needs tampons.”

Griffin made a face.

“And,” she continued, “it seems like Leigh needs a pregnancy test.”

“You heard that too,” said Griffin.

I looked away in embarrassment.

“I heard some things,” she said. “Most of it wasn’t my business, I don’t suppose. Of course, it’s hard for a mother to believe that anything involving her child isn’t her business, no matter how old her baby is.” She put a hand to Griffin’s cheek.

“Oh, come on, Ma.”

“Look at me, both of you,” she said.

I raised my gaze. I was thankful to see that she didn’t look angry or disgusted with me. Her expression was kind.

“It doesn’t matter when it happens, the idea of having a baby is always scary, even if no one is trying to kill you.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m not trying to oversimplify things here, but there’s no time when you’ll ever be really ready for it. There will always be something that makes it seem like a bad idea. But if it’s happening, then... well, I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t want a grandchild.”

I covered my hand with my mouth.

Beverly reached over and rubbed my shoulder. “We need to go to a store, Griffin. We need to get out of this house.”

He stood up. “We can’t.”

“You’d rather we starved to death in here?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said. “If we don’t get food, we will have nothing to eat.”

He sighed. “Okay, look. We’ll do it in steps. Leigh and I will go out tomorrow and go to the store. You and Christa can walk around upstairs. If nothing bad happens, then we’ll all try leaving. Is that okay?”

Beverly nodded slowly. “Your sister’s not going to be completely pleased, but I’m willing to try that.”

He turned to me. “You think this is a good idea?”

“I think we have to do something,” I said. “I don’t think we can hide here forever.”

The back of the car was full of groceries, and we were driving back to Griffin’s family’s house.

“So, how long does the test thing take to work?” Griffin asked from behind the wheel.

“Three or four minutes,” I said.

“Oh, wow, it’s that fast.”

“Yeah.” I grinned at him. “What did you think?”

“I never thought about it at all,” he said.

“You’ve seen people take pregnancy tests on movies or on TV.”

“I don’t watch those kinds of movies,” he said.

I laughed. His cluelessness was adorable.

“So, if you were pregnant,” he said, “and assuming we don’t die, then we’d be doing this in Morgantown while we’re both going to school?”

“I guess so,” I said. “I haven’t made my schedule for fall yet. Have you?”

“I did,” he said, “but I could switch things still. I guess we’d try to have one of us home all the time.”

“We could maybe use daycare,” I said.

“Oh, right,” he said. “Daycare.” He turned to me. “We can totally do this.”

“Watch the road, Griffin.” But I was smiling.

He faced forward. “Don’t you think we can?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do. I want to. I wasn’t sure if you did.”

“I’m just having trouble thinking about it,” he said. “I keep worrying about Marcel.”

“I know.”

“But we could do it,” he said. “We could both keep going to school, and we could take care of a baby at the same time. And it would be kind of cool.”

I laughed again. “You think?”

“Why are you laughing at me?”

“I don’t know.” I was still laughing. “It’s like it’s the first time you’ve ever contemplated having a baby.”

“It is.”

“What? How can that be true? You were so angry about the abortion.”

“Well, I didn’t really think about it that way,” he said. “I didn’t think about the day-to-day activities I would have had if you’d kept the baby. I thought of it more... I don’t know, in the abstract.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “I really don’t.”

“It was more like I thought about the things I would miss, like teaching the kid how to shoot or—”

“Shoot? Like a gun? I so don’t think so.”

“What? Any kid of mine is going to learn his way around a gun. It’s basic safety.”

“There’s nothing safe about letting kids play with guns!”

“Not little kids,” he said. “Like when they’re older, you know.”

“Like how old?”

“I don’t know. Seven?”

“Thirteen,” I said.

“Ten?” he said.

I narrowed my eyes. “We’ll see.”

His hand snaked across the car to rub my knee. “See, you’re good at this already. You’re already thinking of how to keep our children safe.”

“Am I good at it?” I wasn’t sure. “Maybe the test will be negative.”

“Sure,” he said. “I mean, that would probably be better all around.”

“Right,” I said.

“Because we’re just getting back together, and we’re on the run and in danger, and it’s just not the ideal time to be starting a family.”

“Right,” I said. But for some reason, hearing him say that was... disappointing.

We rounded the corner to the street that the house was on, only to be greeted by the flashing lights of an ambulance. I sat up straight. “Griffin, is it parked in your driveway?”

“Goddammit,” he said. “I never should have left.”

“Wait, can’t one of us go in the ambulance with her?” Christa was saying to the EMT outside. They’d just loaded Beverly inside on a stretcher. She was unconscious. She’d been shot.

“Sorry,” said the EMT. “You’ll all have to meet her at the hospital.”

“But on the movies—”

“Those are the movies,” said the EMT.

Christa turned to us, looking scared and sad.

“Come on,” said Griffin. “Get in the car.” He put his arm around his sister and led her to the passenger side.

I got in the back seat. “What happened?”

“She was in the kitchen,” said Christa. “The bullet came through the window. She yelled. And then she was lying on her back, and she was bleeding.” Tears leaked out of her eyes.

Griffin started the car. “Why didn’t you call my phone?”

The ambulance was pulling out of the driveway. Griffin pulled our car out after it.

“I didn’t know your number anymore. The old number only rang and rang,” said Christa. “It was that man, wasn’t it? The one who threatened you? He wasn’t playing around after all.”

“It probably was,” said Griffin.

“I should have listened to you,” she said. “I thought it was all some big joke, and I didn’t take it seriously. And now, Ma’s...”

“Your mother’s going to be fine,” I said, reaching up and grabbing her hand.

“You can’t know that.” Her voice was choked with tears.

“We have to believe it, though,” I said. “That’s what she needs. She needs us to be positive.”

“So you called an ambulance,” said Griffin.

“I had to,” said Christa.

“And now we’re going to have to explain what’s going on,” he said.

She turned to him in shock. “This is our mother. Are you saying I should have let her die?”

“No, but I can’t explain this to the authorities.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “We tell them she was shot through a window for no reason. The truth. Honestly, Griffin, is now the time to worry about that?”

He clenched his teeth. “This is my fault. This is all my fault. I should have kept you safe. I should never have let you go upstairs.”

I put my hand on his shoulder.

He shrugged it off.

Griffin came back into the waiting room. “She’s out of surgery, but she isn’t awake. They got the bullet out of her, and they repaired her lung. You can go back if you want.”

They only let two people in the room at a time, so Griffin and Christa had been in there. I shook my head. “I don’t need to see her if she’s asleep. Unless you think Christa would want me there?”

Griffin nodded.

I patted him on the back and left the waiting room. To get into intensive care, I had to hit a button and be buzzed through by the nurse on duty. I did that and waited until the doors swung open. Then I walked down the hall to Beverly’s room.