“I’m sorry,” the counter girl said with an apologetic shake of the head. Audra could see her gaze bouncing from Jeff to Clover to Gypsy, the three of them seated in the small waiting area behind her. The girl leaned in with a murmur. “You shouldn’t be taking those types of pills while you’re with child, Ms. Snow. Have you spoken to your doctor? Is he aware you’re expecting?”
The answer was clear. No, her physician wasn’t aware of the baby. If he had been, the prescriptions would have been different, and they certainly wouldn’t have been expired.
“Please,” Audra said, “just refill it this once. Just a couple of days’ worth so I can make a doctor’s appointment. I haven’t had time to see him. If my father finds out I’m not . . .” She quieted herself, having said too much. Would it be so bad if her dad found out? Maybe this was exactly what she needed—a change of routine to alert him that something was wrong. He’d drive down or at least call. And while she was sure that her phone call would be monitored by someone looming over her shoulder, maybe she could let him know she needed his help in some secret, undetectable way.
Staring down at the counter, the receptionist discreetly slid a slip of paper Audra’s way.
Do you need help?
I don’t know, she wanted to scream. I don’t think so, but I’m scared. I hope not, but I’m terrified.
“I have to go,” she mumbled. “I’ll be back.”
“O-okay.” The counter girl looked worried as Audra turned away. Jeffrey stood from his seat, followed by Gypsy and Clover in kind. Jeff pushed the door open with the soft ding of a bell while Clover and Gypsy rushed her out of the building and back into the car.
“What the hell happened?” Jeff demanded after Gypsy pulled the hatchback onto the road. “Where are the pills?”
“The prescription is expired.” Audra spoke toward her hands. Perhaps, had they not locked her up for so long, she would have realized it was up for renewal. And yet, for some reason, she couldn’t help but blame herself for the mistake. Maybe now they’d really abandon her, except they’d take the baby with them and Audra would be left empty and alone.
Part of her believed it would be better that way. Just give them the baby and forget this life. You were never meant to be part of this family. And you were never meant to have a family of your own. Maybe her dark fantasy of her mother finding her hanged in the summer home would come true after all. Except that a year and a half ago, her suicide would have been a way to spite her parents for their neglect. Now, killing herself would be nothing more than a cowardly way out of her own hopelessly lonely life. Because if a man like Jeffrey couldn’t love her—a man who loved so many unconditionally—if her own mother couldn’t have been bothered to care, it meant that there was something truly wrong with Audra Snow.
If they do let you keep the baby, she thought, it’ll be a wonder if it’ll be able to love you, either. And then what? Would she grow to resent her own child? Is that what happened to her own mom?
Jeffrey sat motionless in the passenger seat for a long while, then slammed his hands against the dashboard in a rage, snapping Audra back to the present. It would be a matter of days, perhaps a week, before her father would know about the expired prescription. Even if Audra managed to get an emergency appointment with her physician, the medication would change. The red flag would fly. The family’s time in Pier Pointe was up. It was time to pack, time to move on. She only wondered if they’d take her with them. It was one thing to find a place for nine grown adults, but to find a new home not for ten people but for ten, a dog, and a newborn child? Impossible. No, it was too tall an order. They’d leave her. They had to. There was no other way.
“Fuck!” The profanity startled her as it came barreling out of Jeffrey’s throat. She’d never heard him curse like that before, had never seen him lose his cool so completely.
“It’s fine,” Gypsy said after a moment. “We’re close enough.”
“It couldn’t have been long now,” Clover added, her gaze drifting to Audra’s belly. “Maybe a week or two away.”
Audra furrowed her eyebrows at that. She shook her head, not understanding. “A week or two away from what?”
“From the birth,” Clover said.
“We have to deliver it now.” Gypsy’s voice was steady. “Today.”
“What?” Audra’s heart leaped up into her throat. “What are you talking about? Deliver it . . .”
“Don’t be afraid,” Clover said, reaching across the backseat to place her hand on Audra’s stomach. Audra slapped it away, as though Clover’s touch had stung. Clover’s expression went hard. She faced forward, glaring through the windshield.
“I want to go to the hospital.” The request seemed a simple one. Logical. Of course she was going to deliver in a hospital. How else was her baby going to come into the world? But Gypsy shook her head from behind the wheel.
“Hospitals are full of demons,” she said. “Men and women who want to inoculate unborn children into a system of unhappiness and pain.”
“It’s where the pain starts,” Clover murmured, though she kept her eyes straight ahead. “It’s where the downfall begins. Doctors. Drugs. The system.”
“School,” Gypsy cut in. “Work. Taxes. Death.”
“Lack of enlightenment,” Jeffrey said, calmer now, more to himself than to any of the girls. “A life, wasted. But this life won’t be wasted. This life will be spared of pain and suffering the minute it comes into the world. It will spare us the same pain and suffering.”
“Faith will prevail,” Gypsy and Clover echoed back in unison.
“Now is our time,” Jeff said.
“Patience will prevail,” the girls called back.
“What are you talking about?” Audra felt ready to choke, somehow unable to pull in air despite the cold wind drifting in through the partially rolled-down window. “I want to go to the hospital,” she repeated. “I’m having my baby at a hospital.”
“You’re having my baby,” Jeffrey said, his tone eerily composed. “That’s all that’s important. The where of it is of my choosing, of my making. You are the vessel. I am the father.”
She wanted to scream.
What’s happening?
Had the hatchback had rear doors, she would have yanked on the handle, tried to get out, thrown herself onto the unspooling road.
“We sacrifice ourselves for each other,” Jeff told her, not bothering to twist in his seat to look her way. Reassurance was gone. Comfort was but a shadow of a memory. “Our lives mean nothing separately. Together, we are eternal.”
Those words reverberated in her head. She’d heard them before, moments before Jeff had guided the blade of a knife involuntarily clasped in her own hand across Claire Stephenson’s throat.
A strained cry squeaked out of Audra’s throat.
“Who are you?” she whispered, her words all but obliterated by her own strangled sobs.
“Fear is to be expected,” Jeff said. “You’re weak. The weak are afraid of everything.”
56
LUCAS COULDN’T BRING himself to believe what he was seeing. A young Jeffrey Halcomb stood at the top of the stairs. And despite Lucas thinking through all the possibilities, the crazy fucking possibilities, seeing Halcomb on the second-floor landing undid every scrap of remaining logic in Lucas’s head. He wanted to accept it, but, staring twelve feet up at a rejuvenated dead man, his brain rebelled. A stubborn denial.