Robert kept the gun steady. "He never will."
"He will!" she screamed. "At the autopsy!" Robert's jaw set, and she kept talking as fast as she could. "Is that how you want him to find out? Do you want him to find out when I'm dead? He'll find out, Robert. That's how he'll find out."
"Stop," he ordered, pressing the gun to her skull. "Just shut up."
"It's a boy!" she screamed, almost hysterical with fear. "It's a boy, Robert. His son. Jeffrey's son."
He dropped the gun to his side again, not laughing this time.
"You know what it's like to lose a child," she told him, her body shaking so badly the chair began to rock. "You know what it's like."
He ignored her, nodding his head slowly, as if he was having some sort of conversation with himself. Sara saw his lips moving, but no words came out. He engaged the safety before tucking the gun back into his pants, then picked up the roll of tape again.
Sara watched him work the tape, knowing that he was going to tape her mouth shut so he could shoot her.
"He loves me," Sara gripped the arms of the chair with her hands, trying to break free.
Robert tore off a strip of tape.
"You're going to take that away from him," she said, the words rushing out of her mouth. "You're going to take away his child, Robert. His unborn child." Sara's voice caught on the words, mostly because she knew that there was no other time in the world when she would be able to say them. "Our child," she said, loving the way the words felt in her mouth. "Our baby."
Robert obviously heard the passion in her voice, because he stopped what he was doing.
"I'm carrying his child," Sara repeated, feeling herself letting go. She was at peace with this and whatever happened next. There was no explaining the logic behind her calm; it was simply the way she felt. "Our baby."
"He's gonna hurt you," Robert said. "Anybody who loves him always ends up getting hurt."
"When you love somebody," Sara told him, "that's the risk you take."
He put his fingers to her bottom lip, tracing the broken skin. Before she knew what was happening, Robert leaned down and brushed his lips across hers. It was the softest kiss Sara had ever received, and she was too shocked to pull away.
He said, "I'm sorry," then taped her mouth shut before she could answer. He stood in front of her, arms crossed over his chest. "I'm sorry for hurting you," he said. "I've hurt enough people in my life already." A sour look crossed his face, as if he'd had a thought that did not agree with him. "Jeffrey's gonna think I was into him," he said. "You tell him that's not true, all right? I never thought about him that way – not ever."
Sara nodded because that was all she could do.
"Tell him he's gonna be a great father, and that I would never take that from him." Robert's voice caught. "Tell him he was the best friend I ever had, and that there was nothing else to it."
Sara nodded her head again, trying to understand what had changed.
"I'm sorry about taping up your mouth. I know I promised."
Sara watched him go, helpless to do anything. Seconds later, she heard a car door slam and an engine start. She recognized the shoddy muffler of Robert's truck as he backed out of the driveway.
He was gone.
Sara began to cry again, this time from relief. She could not remember shedding so many tears in her life. Her nose began to run, and she sniffed, choking because of the tape. Her elation was quickly replaced by panic as she labored to get air into her lungs. Several seconds passed before the claustrophobia that threatened to overwhelm her started to recede. She had to get out of this chair. She could not just sit there waiting for Nell or Possum or Jeffrey to rush in and rescue her. She could not let any of them – especially Jeffrey – find her like this; helpless, afraid. No one was ever going to see her that way again.
Sara scanned the room, trying to find something that would help her get out of the chair. Rocking forward would land her face-first on the floor, so she rocked the chair side to side until she managed to tip it over. Her head whacked into the hardwood floor with a firm thud and she felt the same dizziness from before as her eardrum vibrated from the impact. A sharp pain ran up her shoulder where she had landed on it, but the arm of the chair had loosened from the fall, too. She jerked the wood back and forth several times, trying to dislodge the dowels, but the arm held firm. The chair was probably older than all of them, something Nell's ancestors had built to last a lifetime.
Sara took a breath, trying to think what to do next. The rockers on the bottom of the chair kept her from uprighting it and crawling to the door. Robert had taped her wrists, but not her fingers. Even if she could not manage to get free of the chair, she could try to take the tape off her mouth. If she could get the tape off her mouth, she could scream. If she could scream – even if no one could hear her – she would be okay.
Using all her strength, Sara pulled her arm up toward her mouth. After several minutes, perspiration on her arm helped the tape fold into a tight line that cut into her flesh, but she still forced up her arm, stretching the tape to its limit. When the tape had given as much as it would, Sara slid her arm back and forth, rubbing a nasty burn from the friction. The adhesive balled up in black dots, and Sara managed to force her arm a few inches forward. She tried to move it back, but the tape pinched up her skin, blood seeping out from underneath.
She considered the situation like a math problem, calculating the variables, adding in her pain threshold before attempting anything else. She arched her back as much as the tape around her chest and upper arms allowed, contorting her body until her shoulder screamed from the pain. Still, she kept pushing herself, stretching the tape around her chest until her mouth was inches from her hand. Her fingers had turned almost completely white from the lack of circulation, but Sara managed to touch the edge of the tape with her middle finger.
She gave herself a break, counting to sixty, letting the minute pass as the throbbing in her arm and shoulder leveled off to a dull ache. Her fingers had touched the tape. That was enough to keep her trying. Sara stretched again, trying to reach the tape covering her mouth. Sweat from her skin and blood and saliva from her mouth had worked on the adhesive, so that when she gave one final effort, she managed to grab the edge of the tape between her thumb and index finger and pull.
Though not enough to pull off the tape.
Sara's breathing was labored and she felt the room closing in on her again, but she coached herself not to quit, knowing she could not give up this close to the goal. Her body ached from the effort, but still, she managed to contract her muscles enough to make another grab. This time, the tape came off, and she opened her mouth, panting like a dog with its head out the window.
"Ha!" she screamed to the empty room, feeling as if she had vanquished some great foe. Maybe she had. Maybe she had vanquished her fear. Still, she was taped to the chair, lying pretty much facedown on the floor with few options and nothing but time.
"Well," Sara told herself. "No reason to give up now." This same kind of thinking had gotten her through medical school, and she was not about to abandon it now.
She focused on her arm, wondering if she could reach the tape with her teeth. The tape around her chest was already cutting into her breasts. She could not imagine what the bruises would look like, but Sara knew that bruises eventually faded.
Suddenly, she heard a noise in the front of the house. She opened her mouth to call for help but stopped herself. Had Robert changed his mind? Had he returned to finish the job?
Footsteps crunched across the glass from the broken coffee table, but no one called out. Whoever had entered the house was taking their time, going from room to room. She heard movement in the kitchen, and waited to see where they would go next. Had Robert forgotten something? When Sara surprised him, had he been looking for something other than Possum's gun? If it was someone who belonged in the house, they would have surely called out by now.