“What about the wife and kid?”
“What about them?”
“They’re a. family. Look at them. They look happy together.”
She looked at the photos again. At least he wasn’t smiling.
“They weren’t.”
“It’s still a family. Why would you want to break up a family?”
“I didn’t.”
“You would have. You would have sooner or later.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I think it’s fucking selfish of you. You’re better off here. It’s better for everybody.”
If what Kath felt was a mix of shame and excitement Sara felt only the shame. But as with Stephen she submitted. Not to do so would be murderous as well as suicidal. The photos were proof if she even needed proof by then. The Organization existed. Whether they knew it or not, everyone she loved was depending on her behavior.
Stephen had shown her a pistol one afternoon. He said it was a.45. Spun the barrel for her. Threw the safety. Pointed it at her. Clicked.
She’d already seen the shotgun. Very up close and personal.
She behaved.
And as a result the whippings and the torture became less frequent. She hardly even saw the headbox anymore. They let her out of the Long Box now for long periods at a time. Insisting that she exercise for the baby’s sake. Upper body bends. Belly-crunches. Leg lifts. Diagonal curls. Her diet still consisted mainly of sandwiches but they gave her juice and and milk and herbal tea and the occasional leftover Chinese takeout or slice of pizza.
She was allowed to dress.
Faded print housecoats or shifts that even with her belly still hung loose on her frame. Kath said they’d belonged to her mother and they looked it. Cheap old ladies’ clothes that were hopelessly out of style. But she was as grateful for them as she’d have been for Ralph Lauren originals. She was not allowed panties or a bra.
She still had to strip on demand.
But it was Kath these days who did most of the demanding.
After the first three months or so Stephen had changed. She could pinpoint easily exactly when the change began.
The last time she’d disobeyed him.
The first and only time she’d tried to run.
She was upstairs by then, out of the cellar a good part of every evening and weekends so she could do the housework Steven and Kath both hated. At first she was appalled at the state of the place. A nice place basically, or it could have been. Two bedrooms, one bath, a living room, a small kitchen and dining area and an attic, built just after the end of World War II on somebody’s GI Bill. But everywhere evidence of casual filth and disorder. A film of grime over everything in the bathroom, balls of hair and dust in every corner, crusted toothpaste in the sink. Dust thick on all the furniture. The drapes needed washing. The rugs needed washing. The kitchen was a greasy mess.
But she set to all of it gladly. Anything to relieve the isolation and boredom and depression of the basement. At the kitchen sink she could look out a window to the yard and the trees and squirrels and the birds pecking at the lawn and rarely even think that beyond the trees they’d buried a man. She could open the windows and let in cool fresh air.
Though she set to it carefully too. Any mistakes and she was up on the X-frame again or tied to the chair, her pregnancy be damned.
The cat seemed always at her feet.
After a while she got the house in shape and from then on it was only maintenance. Vacuuming, dusting, laundry, cleaning after meals.
The bathroom was spotless. The windows gleamed in the sun.
Kath laughed. “You’re a pretty good slave,” she said.
She was.
There were times during her third trimester when her back ached terribly and she felt very short of breath. She knew that the shortness of breath was her uterus expanded and pushing up against her diaphragm. She had to explain this to Stephen. Who’d get annoyed with her whenever she stopped working. She was relieved when the baby dropped lower in her abdomen and made breathing easier.
For a while she’d hated the baby. The baby was the reason for her captivity. But she’d gotten used to the notion of actually having her now. Of bringing her to term and delivering.
She’d gotten used to so much else. It wasn’t hard to get used to this.
Then one sunny September day there was nobody around to watch her. Nobody.
No Kath. No Stephen.
She realized this while she was letting the cat out through the back door.
The silence. The emptiness. Looming with potential.
There was nobody in the whole damn house but her, free upstairs. Just finishing up the breakfast dishes.
Kath had driven into town to do the usual Saturday shopping.
She didn’t know where Stephen was. He just wasn’t there. Though his pickup was in the driveway.
She couldn’t believe it. She looked around to be sure. The bedrooms, the bathroom, the cellar. Even walked upstairs to the attic. She peered out the windows front and back. Nobody there. The narrow dirt road that wound down the hill to the mailbox was empty. So was the back yard all the way to the woods. The garage door was closed.
He had a shop there but if he were in it he’d have left the door open and even in broad daylight she knew a light would be on inside.
She could leave. She could do it. She could walk away.
She could run.
Her heart was pounding. What about the Organization? What would they do if she got away? She could warn everyone, couldn’t she? Of course she could. Tell her mother and father and Greg and the kids’ parents and get the cops to protect them. Get these two arrested. Make them pay.
For kidnapping. For murder.
The Organization had a long reach, they said. They could wait and bide their time and even if Kath and Stephen were locked up in jail they’d get her. Get all of them. That was what they said.
But how could she not run? How could she not try?
Oh, god. She couldn’t.
She walked to the front door and did the simplest, most amazing thing.
She opened it.
Walked down the wooden stairs she had walked only once before in all these months and that was going up, not down them, walked them slowly and carefully because they creaked and moaned under her feet and she was looking for him side to side all the time, around the tall hedges that needed trimming, along the line of trees far off to her right and then she was on the gravel path that led through the front yard to the road and she was running, aware of her bulk and the weakness of her legs, the legs complaining of too little exercise and her breath coming hard and then heard him behind her on the gravel, turned and saw him drop the rake why hadn’t she checked the sides of the house? he was out there raking the leaves for god’s sake and she stopped dead in her tracks because there was no way she was going to outrun him and stood her ground and looked at him.
He stopped running. Walked up to her, shaking his head, brows knit tight.
Then slapped her to the ground.
“Get up,” he said. “Get your ass up
He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. Marched her back to the house, up the stairs and in. The kiss of warm sunlight disappeared behind her back like a fair-weather friend. He slammed the door. She was crying so hard she could barely see and her ear was ringing where he’d slapped her and throbbed with pain. He moved her through the house to the cellar stairs and down into the cold dark.
“You fat fucking cow! Strip! Get your ass over to the X-frame. You run from me?”
So furious he was spitting.
“Turn around! Spread your legs. Get your arms up.”
He strapped her into the manacles.