Their days became mostly silent, a monotonous cycle of sleep, prepare food, eat, rest, prepare food, eat, rest, and on and on and on. Grace kept track of the passing days in a spiral-bound notebook, on a page entitled: Time Spent in Captivity. The attempt at humor was feeble, but it was the best she could produce under the circumstances.
She couldn’t shake the sensation of being an animal in its den, venturing outside only to use the outhouse, then scurrying – or lumbering, rather – back inside to hunker by the stingy fire Quinn allowed them during the day. The shutters over the tiny windows were kept closed at all times. Unlike before, they didn’t play games or read together. To speak was to unleash truths that neither one of them were prepared to deal with, truths that would strand them on opposite sides of an unbridgeable chasm.
Quinn came and went, adding to the ever-growing pile of supplies in the corner farthest from the fire. Grace tried not to see but found her eyes drawn over and over to the diapers, the cans of formula, the bassinet, the cute little black-and-white animals on a wind-up mobile. Where was he finding this stuff? Were these the leavings of dead babies? That was as much as she allowed herself to wonder before she turned her eyes away. All of it seemed abstract, unconnected to her in any way.
She had finished her account of her time with the gang and was strangely sorry she had. She was left with nothing to occupy her mind or her time, and though Quinn had brought her hundreds of books, she couldn’t seem to bend her mind around any of them. Hour after hour, day after day, she stared at the fire, her mind flitting around and touching an image here, a fragment there, none of it connected or purposeful. Waiting. Always waiting.
Only once during the long days had they attempted to talk. They had been sitting in their usual positions by the fire, Grace staring while Quinn paged through a book on the flora and fauna of the Pikes Peak region, which he’d found in the general store. He read all the time these days, lips moving silently as he plowed determinedly through the words. If he wasn’t reading, he was tinkering with a farm implement or repairing something. Stillness was not in Quinn’s repertoire. So it had startled Grace to glance up one afternoon – or had it been evening? Did it matter? – to find him staring at the fire, a troubled frown on his face.
“What are you thinking?” She had blurted the question without thinking.
Quinn’s eyes swung in her direction, but he didn’t really focus on her for long moments. Then, he sighed. “I was just wishing we had never come in off the plains. That we’d stayed out at Ramah. Or back at our ranch.”
Grace frowned. She tried not to think of their ride into Colorado Springs, of the time they’d spent at the wildlife refuge, of waking in the mornings to sunshine and birdsong. Of Buttons, cropping grass nearby, the morning sun gleaming on her glossy neck. That had been a different world. A different Grace. She couldn’t return to either. “I guess I don’t really get that. Why not just wish the plague never happened?”
“I wasn’t warned about the plague,” he replied, sudden sharpness and heat. “Not like I was warned about the city. About what happened.”
They stared at each other for a few moments, the rustling and hissing of the fire the only sound. Grace pondered his answer, then decided it couldn’t hurt to ask the next logical question. “Have you had any other dreams like that? Warnings?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t hesitate, nor did he elaborate. He just gazed at her steadily, telling her without words that once again, the warning had been about her. Did she want to know? Was it bad? Of course it was bad; warnings always were. Grace turned her eyes back to the fire. If she asked, he would lie to her. So she wouldn’t ask. Nor would she speculate. What good would it do?
That seemed to be her criteria for making all kinds of decisions these days: Should she learn how to sew by hand, so she could repair their clothes? Should she teach herself how to crochet? Study one of Quinn’s flora and fauna books to learn more about foraging for food in the surrounding environment? Why should she do any of those things? There was no guarantee she’d be here to put those skills to use. No guarantee that she’d wake up tomorrow. What good would any of that effort do?
So she did nothing. Nothing but stare, and drift, and wait.
After a while, Quinn got up and left the cabin without so much as a murmur of goodbye. They hadn’t spoken since, beyond the occasional word of necessity. She forgot he was there for long stretches of time as she drifted on an internal sea of nothingness, only vaguely aware that her body was resting, changing, preparing.
And then, one night, she dreamed. She was back with the gang, on the day she escaped, hiding under the semi trailer. She was naked, and so cold, still filthy and sticky from the rapes of the night before. She could hear the men shouting to each other as they searched for her, but this time, they didn’t move away. Around and around they circled, their voices getting closer and closer, until she couldn’t silence her gasps of terror. She had to urinate so badly, the pain and pressure so intense, she doubted she could stand up straight. Finally, to her horror, she couldn’t hold back any longer. Water gushed from her, water that became blood, flooding out from under the semi trailer, giving her position away. Hands reached into her hiding place, hands she tried to slap away, hands that dragged her through the mud her blood and urine had created, into the cold, cold light.
“Grace! Wake up! Gracie, you need to wake up!”
Grace heaved out of the dream with a guttural scream, a horrible, tortured-animal sound. She blinked and blinked, lost. Quinn’s worried face above her, the soft murmuring, shushing sounds he was making, his strong hands propping her up and stroking her back were her only anchors. It took forever, to come back to the where and when: They were at the cabin. She had been sleeping on her pallet by the fire. But that was where things stopped making sense. She was soaking wet, freezing, shivering.
Quinn eased her back down. “Your water broke. I’ll get you some dry clothes and bedding, and we’ll get ready.”
There was an excitement about him, an air of anticipation she did not understand. She didn’t understand any of this. She watched in silence as he bustled about, feeling her heart rate slow and her breathing calm. She was not grasping something major here. She knew that. What had he said? Had she wet the bed from the terror of the nightmare? That had happened to her a few times when she was little, she suddenly remembered. She had a flash of her mother’s silhouette in the door of her bedroom, her soft, exasperated voice saying, “Oh, honey. Here, it’s okay, let’s get you cleaned up.” But before she could puzzle it all out, the first contraction hit.
Grace wheezed and arched her back, trying to relieve the sudden, red-hot agony. Her back hurt all the time these days, a constant dull ache, but this was different. It felt like a giant was trying to break her spine over his knee. Then, as quickly as it had come, it eased. Quinn was back beside her, and she clutched at him wildly. “Quinn! Something’s wrong! My back!”
He smoothed her hair back from her forehead in long, soothing strokes, frowning down at her. “What do you mean wrong?” When she just stared at him blankly, his frown deepened. “Gracie, you’re in labor. The baby is coming.”
Labor. Baby. That’s what he’d said – that her water had broken. Grace’s head swam, and she heaved over onto her side, breathing until the dizziness retreated. Quinn stayed beside her, stroking her hair, her arm, massaging her shoulders with firm gentleness. She closed her eyes, lulled and comforted in spite of the chill of her wet clothes. He hadn’t touched her since they’d moved to the cabin. She hadn’t realized it until this moment, hadn’t realized how much he had touched her before: a strong hand cupping her elbow when she stood, a calming palm placed on her contorting belly. It was so good to be touched again, so good to be close to his warmth and scent. She nearly drifted into a doze; then the second contraction hit.
Quinn was ready this time. When she arched, he held her shoulders firmly and put his face right next to hers. “Gracie, look at me. Look at me!”
Her eyes snapped to his and clung. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. All she could do was try to twist away from the red hot pain. She tried to say his name, but the agony took her breath. This couldn’t be right. She was going to die. When it finally eased, she started to sob. Quinn lay down beside her, right on her soggy pallet, and held her. He pressed his forehead to hers and gazed into her eyes.
“You’re going to be okay, shh, I’ve got you. Tell me what’s happening, what it feels like, so I know how to help you.”
“My back.” Grace struggled to speak without sobbing. “My back feels like it’s going to break.” She started sobbing again, and though she had known true terror, had survived horrors she couldn’t have imagined, she had never been so scared in her life as she was at that moment. “Quinn, I’m afraid I’m going to die. What if I die? I want my mom – please – I just want my mom!”
“You’re not going to die.” But he closed his eyes. He kept his forehead pressed to hers, swallowed hard several times, then seemed to shake himself. He opened his eyes again. “I read about this. I think you’re in back labor. Let me get the book so I can see what they say helps…”
Too late, too late. Twisting, grinding pain. The bones of her spine were grating together, they had to be. This time, the pain locked around her middle like a vice, her stomach tightening into a rock-hard mound between them. She heard a roaring sound, then Quinn’s voice cut through it.
“Breathe with me! Gracie, you’ve got to breathe through it – I’ll breathe with you!”
He pressed his face to hers and forced her breath into rhythm with his, his eyes burning into hers. When she gasped along with him, his face broke into a relieved smile. “That’s it. Just keep breathing with me. We’ll make it.”
Again, it eased, and she could breathe on her own. She lay on her side in a stunned stupor, vaguely aware of Quinn bustling around her, pulling off her wet clothes, shifting her, naked, to a fresh pallet that crinkled when she moved. It didn’t even occur to her to cover herself. Quinn slid a big, soft sweatshirt over her head but left her lower half bare, covering her with a light blanket. When the pain came again, he was already lying on his side next to her, face pressed to hers, forcing her to breathe with him while she writhed and twisted.
Each contraction brought back memories she never wanted to revisit, awful flashes of casual, brutal slaps, of flinching away from teeth on her skin, of humiliating, tearing, private pain on public display, over and over. But this was worse, so much worse, the pain enormous, bone-grinding, like nothing she could have imagined. Her body was not hers to control. Worse, neither was her mind. She struggled to listen to Quinn – she knew that he was trying to help her – but it was no use. Grace went away, as she had never permitted herself to do during the rapes.
Between the escalating contractions, she drifted in a bizarre half-doze. Nothing seemed real, foggy and insubstantial, as if she’d become a ghost. She heard herself moaning, then screaming, but couldn’t connect the sound with any kind of meaning. Quinn’s face shimmered in and out of her vision, and his lips moved, but she couldn’t hear him.
Time passed, and passed, but she couldn’t keep track of it. Hours? Days? She had been in this agony-punctuated drift forever, and would be in it until she was at last allowed to die.
She would have died, had Quinn not hauled her off the pallet and onto her feet.
“Grace, god damn it to hell! Look at me!” He roared the words in her face, spit flying, and she was startled into awareness. My god, he looked awful – white as a sheet, black circles of exhaustion ringing his wild eyes. He held her up by her shoulders and though his voice was softer, it was no less forceful. “If you don’t push, now, you are going to die. Grace, you are going to die! Can you hear me?”
He lowered her to a squatting position, and when the next wave hit, he roared at her again: “Push! Push now, as hard as you can!”
What could she do but obey? Grace pushed, feebly at first, then stronger, as her body took over. Something ancient rose up, something that went deeper than knowledge or experience, an instinct that knew what was necessary to preserve her life. The contraction ended, and she panted along with Quinn, staring into his eyes, suddenly hyper-focused. It was like being possessed. He didn’t need to tell her what to do the next time, or the next.
Grace felt a huge, tearing pressure, and swore she heard the bones of her hips crack, the sound transmitted through her body to her ears. She sucked in huge breaths of air, knowing, somehow, that this was it. On the next contraction, she bore down with all the strength she had left, and felt a sudden rush, a give, a parting.
Quinn eased her back hurriedly, and reached down to cradle a tiny, scrunched face emerging from her body. Propped on her elbows, Grace stared, shocked, while Quinn muttered hoarsely to himself. “Let the baby come naturally. Don’t pull. Make sure the chord isn’t around its neck. Don’t pull…”
Another contraction, another stinging pain as the shoulders slid free, and his hands were suddenly filled with a slug-white, blood-covered baby.
The look on his face. She would never forget it. Stunned awe. Sudden joy, so incandescent, it should have burned her eyes. He lifted the baby from between her legs, cradling it to his chest, gore and all. Grace heard a tiny cough, a whimper, and then a shockingly loud wail. Quinn’s face split into the biggest smile she’d ever seen, and he laughed, laughed with pure delight. His eyes lifted from the baby’s face, bright with tears. “She’s here. She’s here, Gracie, and she’s okay.”
Grace eased from her elbows to her back, staring at the rough ceiling above her, and waited to feel something. Anything. Her eyes drifted to Quinn; it was if all feeling, all emotion, everything had been expelled with the squirming, screeching baby in his hands. The adrenalin from the birth seeped out of her body, leaving her limp, with involuntary tremors vibrating through her arms and legs. She closed her eyes, and must have slept, because when she opened them again, everything was different.
She was dressed in a soft, clean sweatsuit. When she shifted her weight gingerly, she could feel something, a towel maybe, pressed against the sore ache between her legs. Her pallet was clean and fresh, and her hair had been brushed and secured into a soft braid. She turned her head.
Quinn was lying on a pallet beside her, a bundle tucked against his chest. He looked as exhausted as she’d ever seen him, but in spite of that, he opened his eyes when her gaze touched his face.
“Hey. You’re awake.” At the sound of his voice, the bundle stirred and a tiny fist shot free. The baby’s skin had warmed to a dusky rose. Quinn patted the baby, soothing her. “Do you want to see her?”
Grace returned her gaze to the ceiling, still waiting for any feeling at all to pierce the numbness that had enfolded her like a thick, rubber coating. She thought about what would happen if she recognized the eyes of a rapist in that newborn face, but still, felt nothing. No rage. No resentment. No curiosity, or tenderness. Nothing.
When she didn’t answer, Quinn cleared his throat and started talking, obviously just filling silence. “Ah, well, you’re okay, too. You were out-of-it when you delivered the afterbirth, but I’m pretty sure you’ve stopped bleeding. You tore a little bit, but just a little…”
Grace didn’t want any of this information. Besides being gross, it just seemed so…irrelevant. It was over, and she was alive. That was all she needed to know. She closed her eyes and turned her face away, and Quinn stopped talking. She must have slept again, because when she woke, she was hungry and needed to use the outhouse.
Quinn and the baby were still sleeping on the pallet beside her. He had shifted to his back with the baby on his chest, a little bottle filled with formula on the floor next to his hip. Neither one of them stirred when she eased into a sitting position, then slowly stood up. The room swung a little, and she moved to brace her palm against the rough log wall until it stilled. She was sore in strange ways she didn’t want to explore, and her legs felt shaky, but when she breathed in, the lack of restriction was a welcome surprise. She took an experimental step towards the door, then another, and before she knew it, she was standing outside.
The sun was so bright, she had to squint for several minutes until her eyes adjusted. The warmth soaked into her skin like a healing balm, and she lifted her face to the winter blue sky, sucking in breath after breath of the fresh, soft air. The last time she’d been outside, it had been bitter cold and snowing. Now, it felt like springtime. Her dad always said, “If you don’t like the weather in Colorado, wait five minutes. It’ll change.” At the thought of her father, she felt a stirring in her chest, but it never connected with an emotion she could name.
Grace picked her way across the muddy clearing to the outhouse, trying to adjust to her newly restored center of gravity. The fluting call of a meadowlark, Quinn’s favorite, sounded nearby, and Grace paused to listen. It hit her, then, that she was alone. Truly alone. For the first time in ever so long. Once again, she felt a lift in her chest and would have called it happiness, if she weren’t still so curiously numb.
Once in the outhouse, she blanched at the amount of blood on the towel between her legs, then hissed in pain when she finally worked up the nerve to sit down to go. Her appreciation of the beautiful day flagged in the face of physical realities she didn’t want to deal with, leaving her wrung out and shaking again. She opened the outhouse door, intent on getting back to her pallet for more sleep, and found Quinn standing in the door of the cabin with the strangest expression on his face. When he saw her, he sagged against the doorway, shutting his eyes in obvious relief.
She started towards him, waving him off when he would have helped her. “I can do it.”
He obeyed her wish but watched her progress with worried eyes. Under the numb, irritation stirred. She was so sick of him looking at her like that. By the time she reached the cabin door, though, she didn’t care how he looked at her anymore. She was so tired, all she could think about was lying down. Quinn shadowed her movements until she was settled on her pallet.
“Are you hungry? I’ve got some soup I can heat up quick.”
“Yes, hungry,” Grace mumbled, her eyes rolling as she tried to keep them open. “So sleepy.”
“Sleep.” His hand stroked over her heavy eyes, closing them. “I’ll wake you when it’s ready.”
He was true to his word. Through the rest of the afternoon, she slept and woke, and he was always there with a cup of soup, a granola bar, a drink of water. Increasingly, she woke to the sound of the baby crying and Quinn’s worried murmurs as he tried to soothe her.
She sensed it was the middle of the night when next she woke, once again in need of the outhouse. As before, Quinn was sleeping on his pallet with the baby next to him, but this time, there were four different bottles filled with formula surrounding their still forms. Even in his sleep, his face was creased and old with worry. Grace felt a brush of curiosity, but no more, and turned her eyes away.
When she shifted to rise, she gasped in shock; her breasts were swollen, rock-hard and hot. She gazed down at them, baffled, then recoiled when two wet circles appeared on the front of her sweatshirt. Oh. That. Moving as quietly as she could, she rummaged through her clothes until she found a fresh shirt. Then, she took two small towels from their supply and opened the outside door. Sure enough. Full dark. She sighed and stood there, looking out at the moonless night.
Grace hated using the bucket, but they had agreed it wasn’t safe to go outside at night. Not only was there the pack of dogs to consider, but other wildlife as well. Quinn had seen coyotes, and the tracks of mountain lions, and last fall, Grace had come face-to-face with a foraging black bear, roly-poly and mellow with winter fat. He had been as surprised as she, and after a moment of stare-down, he had waddled off into the scrub oak, leaving Grace with a pounding heart and a crazy grin on her face.
She had still been hiking the trails in Garden of the Gods then, the growing burden in her womb hardly slowing her down. After a long, wet season, some of the trails were eroded and overgrown, but she loved those best of all, loved the solitude and the sensation of being hidden, safe. Quinn hadn’t really approved, but she never once suffered a fainting spell while on one of her hikes, so he couldn’t put his foot down.
She could feel the pull of those trails now, a longing that swelled in her chest, the first feeling she could readily identify. Solitude and safety. Her long ordeal was over. She could go, just walk away from this dark, dirty cabin and…and…never come back.
A soft gasp left her, a breath that lifted and froze, obscuring her view of the black night sky. Why not? It seemed like someone else whispered the words in her mind. She waited for an answer to that question, waited for a sense of responsibility, or loyalty to Quinn, or any kind of obligation at all to rise in her, but nothing volunteered.
The damp front of her shirt clung to her skin, making her shudder with chill. Reluctantly, she shut the door and turned around. Quinn was standing by the fire, and again, there was a look on his face she couldn’t define. She didn’t say anything, just looked down and went to the corner of the cabin to use the bucket, slipping behind the sheet he’d hung for privacy. While behind the screen, she changed her shirt, pressing the towels to her aching breasts to absorb what was leaking out of them. She didn’t want to come out; somehow, she was sure, he knew what she’d been thinking. She waited until she heard him settle back down, then hurried to her pallet.
She hesitated a moment, then dragged her pallet from its spot in front of the fire, settling the bedding against the wall to the side. She just wanted more room. Some distance and space. She glanced at Quinn and found him watching her. She gestured at the pallet but found that she didn’t really have anything to say. Instead, she lay down facing the wall, huddling under her blankets while she tried to ignore her painful breasts and the disgusting dampness of the towels. The baby started to cry, and she wrapped her head in her pillow, dropping swiftly into sleep in spite of the wails.
Her inner sense told her it was morning when she woke again, sensing movement nearby. Quinn was pacing in front of the fire, the baby in his arms. As Grace watched, the baby twitched, and started crying suddenly, the sound both frantic and weak. The cries gradually whimpered into silence while Quinn paced and shushed, paced and shushed. The pattern was repeated three more times; then, Quinn stalked to stand over her.
“I need help!” He blurted.
Grace gazed up at him, and knew that she should feel bad. She should. He was so tired he was staggering, and his eyes were wild with despair. Why couldn’t she feel bad for him? “Excuse me?”
“I need help,” he repeated hoarsely. “I can’t get her to drink the formula. I’ve tried four different kinds, but she just spits it up and cries. She’s getting so weak, Gracie, I don’t know what else to do!”
Grace’s heart started to pound, and feeling stirred. What, she wasn’t certain, but it wasn’t good. “What are you asking me for?”
Quinn’s jaw clenched. He was blinking rapidly. “I can’t feed her, and she’s suffering. I can’t stand it, Gracie. I just can’t stand it. I’ll do everything else for her, if you’ll just feed her.”
Grace sat up, leaning against the wall behind her, staring at them both. She was hyper-aware of her heavy, hot, leaking breasts. “I don’t –” Her voice came out as a rough croak. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to say. I don’t want to? I don’t want to touch it? What came out of Grace’s mouth was, “I don’t know how.”
Quinn dropped down beside her so fast, she started back. “My mom nursed my little brothers,” he said in a rush, “If you just lift up your shirt, I can –” He broke off, dull red blooming on his face. “I can, ah, just hold her to your –” He gestured with the baby to her breast, unable to meet her eyes.
She was definitely feeling now: An almost overwhelming urge to get out of this cabin, away from this situation. Quinn waited, not looking at her, and she tried to think of a single good reason – other than the fact that she desperately didn’t want to – to deny him his request. He had saved her life; she knew that for certain. Probably several times over. He never asked her for anything.
Grace swallowed hard and shut her eyes. Without giving herself any more time to think about it, she yanked up her shirt, exposing her swollen breast to the cool air. She kept her eyes shut while Quinn maneuvered the baby into position, felt his hands brush her body and couldn’t stop the jump and twitch of her flesh as she fought not to yank away. Then she felt a small wet mouth clamp onto her nipple so hard it stung. Her eyes flew open, and she glared accusingly at Quinn.
“That hurts!” She hunched her shoulders against the pain, refusing to look down. She wished she was still numb, but feelings, awful feelings, roiled around inside her. This was gross, disgusting, this was not happening to her body. She slammed her eyes shut again, feeling her whole face tighten as she fought the urge to scramble to her feet and get away.
The baby’s squirming increased, her small mouth chomping harder and harder, her angry whimpers finally ratcheting into an enraged scream. Grace looked down reflexively, and caught the first glimpse of her daughter’s face, glowing red and scrunched tight with rage.
“What does she want? Why is she screaming?” Grace covered her ears with her hands. “Take her away, Quinn! She doesn’t want me any more than I want her!”
Quinn’s head dropped for a moment, and he shook it slowly. Then he straightened his shoulders, and repositioned the baby again. His voice stayed level, but it was shaking. “Listen to me,” he said over the baby’s shrieks. “You have to relax, so your milk lets down. My mom used to talk about it. Said she couldn’t nurse the babies if she was stressed out. So just…calm down.”
“Just calm down?” Grace repeated, her voice rising. “How am I supposed to calm down with a screaming –”
“Shut up, Grace!” Quinn’s voice was a lash, his face set in hard, unfamiliar lines. “Just shut the hell up! You can either do what I tell you, or you can live the rest of your life knowing you let this baby die! What’s it going to be?”
Grace stared at this harsh stranger, barking commands at her, telling her to shut up, looking at her with hot, angry eyes. The disapproval she saw there made her own eyes fill with tears. God, she couldn’t stand this. She swallowed. Again. “I’ll try,” she said finally.
“Okay,” he said gruffly. “Just – close your eyes again. And think of something far away. Think of your best memories when you were a little girl, or whatever, just something that makes you feel calm and peaceful…”
Grace obeyed, and his voice murmured on, soothing all of them. It was magical, what he could do with his voice; he was an animal-whisperer, a Grace-whisperer, too. The thought made an actual smile touch her mouth. Behind her closed eyelids, she conjured visions of holidays on the ranch, the 4th of July picnics with family and friends bringing potluck dishes wrapped in newspaper and towels to keep them warm; Easter, with the eggs she had loved to color even as a teenager, and then hold snuggled in the palm of her hand; and best of all, Christmas, all warm scents and twinkling lights. And all the while, she listened to his instructions to lower her shoulders, to take a deep breath, to roll her head on her neck.
“Holy shit!” Her eyes flew open, and once again, she looked down reflexively. The baby had clamped onto her nipple, and she felt a tingling, pulling sensation spread throughout her breast. The baby was gulping audibly, her tiny body curving with fierce intentness towards her source of food. Something huge stirred in the center of Grace’s chest, and she looked away, terrified.
Quinn kept his calming murmur going for the next half hour, stopping partway through to shift the baby to her other breast. Grace kept her eyes closed, concentrating on keeping her body relaxed, her hands lying loose at her sides. The baby fell asleep between one drawing pull and the next, her body going abruptly limp. Quinn lifted the baby away, set her against his shoulder, then stood, swaying and bouncing while he alternately rubbed and patted her back.
Grace pulled her shirt down, and slid back down to curl up on her side. In spite of herself, she watched through slitted eyes. Quinn kept up the bouncing and swaying until the baby let loose with a wet-sounding burp. Then he shifted the baby in his hands to look at her face. He stayed that way for a moment, eyes worried and intent. Then, his chest lifted in a huge sigh, and his eyes once again filled with tears. His face contorted, and he buried it against the baby, who slept on in spite of the sobs ripping out of him.
He slid down the wall beside Grace, still clutching the baby to hide his face. “I miss my mom,” he choked. “I miss my baby brothers, so much. I was so scared she would die – I don’t want any more people to die, Gracie, I just can’t – just can’t –”
His broken voice dissolved into quieter sobs, and he lay down beside her, a lost and heart-broken boy. His misery sliced into her heart, and she wished, truly, that she could go back to numb.
As he had done for her, she stroked and soothed and murmured, tucking his face into the curve of her neck. It felt good to be the strong one again. For too long, she had been so utterly dependent. The baby was tucked between them, but she did her best to ignore it, keeping her face turned away as she evened the scales, giving back some of the comfort he’d given to her. Gradually, his sobs subsided into hitching breaths, then into the deep rhythms of sleep.
Grace eased free and stood, looking down at the two of them. The baby was on the pallet, Quinn half off, but she didn’t want to disturb him, even to roll him off the cold floor. She pulled a blanket over them both, tucked another under Quinn as best she could, then grabbed her coat and dragged one of the rickety wooden chairs towards the door.
The sun was up, but just barely, and the sky held thousands of shades of orange, peach, rose, and pink. It was cold, but not bitter. She would bet they were in for another unseasonably warm day. Her legs were stronger, she noted, as she trekked to the outhouse and back, and it hurt less to go. The release of pressure in her breasts was a relief, too, but she didn’t linger on that. Instead, she eased down onto the chair and absorbed the outdoors, drawing in breath after breath after free breath. She stayed there until her coat couldn’t hold the chill at bay any longer, and she was shivering convulsively.
When she stepped back inside, Quinn was still sleeping, though he had rolled onto his back. The motion had pulled the blanket off the baby, and though she wasn’t crying, she was awake. Grace watched the squirming, softly squeaking bundle warily, out of the corner of her eye. She knew Quinn would wake if the baby started crying in earnest, and he needed more rest so badly. She fidgeted, reluctant to go closer. Maybe she could just cover her up, and she would go back to sleep.
She sidled over to the pallet and knelt, pulling the blanket from under Quinn’s hip. She leaned to drape the blanket over the baby, glancing down to be sure she wasn’t covering its face, and froze.
Those eyes. She knew those eyes.
Grace fell heavily onto her hip, staring. Her daughter stared back, from dark eyes only slightly hazed with newborn blue. Memory slammed into her, her arms heavy with the warm, blanket-wrapped weight of her new baby brother, baby Benji, her mother’s voice tickling the curve of her ear as they both looked down at his sweet, scrunched-up face.
“Look at the way he looks at you. He knows his big sister, doesn’t he? His eyes are going to be dark, like yours, and your father’s. I’m so glad – I love your beautiful dark eyes.”
The same face, the same eyes, here in an awful cabin – how was this possible? Was she seeing a ghost? Had Benji come back, somehow, to inhabit the tiny body of his…niece? My god, he would be this baby’s uncle, if he were alive. Her mom would be a grandma, her dad a grandpa? She could hardly conceive of it, couldn’t connect her Marine-tough father with her own twinkly-eyed grandpas. And that would make Grace…
She scrambled backwards, panting, and the world shrank to a single goal: She had to get out of here. She stood up and quivered, wanting to dart in four directions at once. She needed supplies. She needed clothes, and some food, though she wouldn’t take much. She couldn’t leave Quinn low on food. Her brain clicked into gear, and she was able to move with purpose, grabbing her saddlebags and filling them with swift silence.
She changed her clothes for the warmest she had, then layered on all her outdoor gear in spite of the warm day. She could always shed down as she went. In her mind was a vague plan: She would stop at the Chambers house, see if there was anything she could use, and then she would…go. Just go. Over the ridge and into the Garden of the Gods, through the familiar, silent monoliths on secret, solitary trails.
She grabbed her walking stick, and paused with her hand on the door. Under the singular, pure purpose that filled her roiled the kind of chaos she hated. She would never be able to make sense of it, put it in a logical order. She couldn’t delve into it without losing her mind, so she clung to her purpose. This was the only thing she could do. This was the only thing that made any kind of sense. And then, in spite of herself, she turned to take one last look.
Quinn was watching her. His eyes. Oh, his eyes. He opened his mouth and spoke a single word. “Go.”
Grace whirled away and fumbled with the door. When it was finally open, she stepped through, shutting it behind her. Her boots crunched in counter-point with her walking stick as she headed south, following the path that curved around the barn to the Chambers house.
Quinn’s eyes came back to her, the way they had glittered – hard, angry, jagged. Already betrayed. Her stride faltered then. He knew. He knew what she was just recognizing.
She wasn’t coming back.