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 in my horrified expression. “Don’t worry; we’ll find you somethin’ to sleep on and a place to do your business, which, honestly, is more than you deserve.”
Mrs. Renshaw digs around in the bag again. The crinkling sound masks the noise the tape makes when I give my wrist one final twist, breaking the adhesive bond. Water runs down my forearm and drips out the other side of the tape, causing a jolt of fear to surge through me. I hold my breath and shift my hips in my seat just in time to catch the stream on my thigh. It lands on my jeans almost silently, and I exhale.
Leaning forward, I pretend to take another sip from the cup, holding it in place with my chin so that I can let go of it with my hand. I manage to wriggle it free from the now-useless tape as Mrs. Renshaw swallows another mouthful of fries.
“Now …” she mumbles, rummaging in the bag and pulling out a King Burger wrapped in shiny yellow paper. She peels the wrapper back on one side and holds it toward me. “Open up and say—ahh!”
Mrs. Renshaw lets out a shriek as my to-go cup flies toward her face, spraying water in all directions like a loose fire hose. She drops the food and squeezes her eyes shut, shielding herself with her hands. It buys me just enough time to reach into the back of my jeans, grab my Daddy’s Beretta, and hit her upside the head with it as hard as I possibly can.
Her eyes snap to mine but only for a split second before they glaze over and roll up under her eyelids. Mrs. Renshaw slumps sideways in her chair, knocking over the Burger Palace bag along the way. Golden fries spill onto the oil-stained floor as I clutch the gun between my thighs and struggle to unwrap my left wrist.
Mrs. Renshaw moans and makes a smacking sound with her mouth as I free my left hand and start on the tape around my ankles.
The moaning gets louder as I free my right foot, but when I go to work on the other side, a hand shoots out and grabs my wrist.
I scream and try to pull my arm away, but all that does is jerk her body closer to me. Mrs. Renshaw is still slumped over sideways, and her wig has fallen halfway off, but her eyes are open and trying to focus on me. A trickle of blood flows from her temple down to the corner of her eye, turning the white part bright red. Then, it darts from my face to the gun between my legs.
Shit!
Her grip around my wrist tightens violently as she strains with her free hand to grab the weapon. My heart pounds like a desperate fist against my ribs as I snatch the gun out of her reach. Then, it stops completely as I bring it down like a hammer on the top of her head.
Crack.
Mrs. Renshaw’s body goes limp, landing in my lap before sliding down my legs to the floor.
Oh God.
I roll her off my feet so that I can free myself. The Burger Palace bag crinkles loudly underneath her, and my stomach growls. Once the duct tape is off, I hold my breath and roll her onto her side, pulling the pulverized burger out from under her lifeless body.
I know I should check for a pulse, but I … I just can’t.
She’s fine, I tell myself as I shove the flattened sandwich into my hoodie pocket. She’s gonna be fine.
Running over to the wall, I reach up to hit the automatic garage door button, but the sound of Wes’s voice stops my hand in midair.
“Supplies. Shelter. Self-defense.”
I picture his face the way it looked on the morning of April 24, when we woke up and realized that the world hadn’t ended after all. His exhausted green eyes, bloodshot and rimmed with red. His battle-worn face, covered in dirt and ash and stubble. His blue Hawaiian shirt, smeared with Quint’s blood. And I hear his pep talk again, too, but this time, I listen. I really listen.
“All you gotta do is say, Fuck ’em, and survive anyway,” he said, wiping the tears from my filthy cheeks. “That’s it. First, you say, Fuck ’em. Then, you figure out what you need to survive. So … figure it out. What do you need today?”
“Food,” I whisper to myself.
“Good. Do you have any?”
I picture my tree house full of cans and vitamins and nod.
“Supplies … check. What else do you need?”
“A way to get to you,” I mumble, dropping my forehead to the wall next to the garage door button.
“A vehicle. That can be your shelter, too. What else?”
“An army to help me get you out.”
“That would be nice, but let’s start with …” I picture Wes tapping the handle of the revolver sticking out of his shoulder holster with a smirk.
“My daddy’s gun,” I sigh.
“Self-defense. Supplies, shelter, and self-defense. That’s all you need.”
I remember the way Wes smiled at me after that little speech. His tired green eyes didn’t even crease at the corners. There was a sadness in them I’d never seen before. A resignation that made me nervous.
“See?” he said, letting his fake grin fall as two miserable mossy eyes stared right through me. “You got this.”
“No,” I corrected him. “We got this.”
I don’t know if I believe those words any more than I did on April 24, but I take a deep breath and push open the kitchen door anyway.
Because Mrs. Renshaw was right.
When you’re a mama, you really will do anything to protect your family.
And Wes is all the family I got.