Chapter 4 - The Web Closes
I was discharged two days later. Conrad drove us home in his polished silver Buick, keeping one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on my knee. To any driver passing us on Highway 11, we looked like a prosperous, happy couple bringing their pregnancy home to a comfortable suburban house.
My lip was still scabbed, and my left cheek had turned a sickening shade of greenish-yellow, but Conrad had bought me a pair of dark sunglasses at the hospital gift shop before we walked out the front doors. "For the sun sensitivity," he had told the nurse at the discharge desk with a warm, attentive smile.
When we pulled into the driveway, I saw that the house had changed.
The lock on the front door was new—a heavy, brass deadbolt that required a key from both the inside and the outside. The landline telephone that had sat on the small table in the entryway was gone, replaced by a ceramic bowl filled with artificial potpourri.
When I stepped into the kitchen, I reached habitually for my purse on the counter. It wasn't there.
"Where are my keys and my wallet, Conrad?" I asked, standing by the kitchen island, holding my stomach as a dull cramp pulled across my back.
Conrad opened the refrigerator and retrieved a pitcher of iced tea. "Given your state of mind, Loretta, I don't think it's wise for you to be driving right now. Your doctor recommended rest. I've taken a leave of absence from the pharmacy for the next three weeks so I can look after you full-time."
My chest seized. Full-time. He wasn't going to work. He was going to sit in this house with me, twenty-four hours a day, until the baby was born.
"I have work documents at my office," I said, trying to keep my voice flat, unbothered, practical. "Tax filings for the quarterly deadline. I need to call my supervisor, Mr. Henderson."
"I called him yesterday while you were sleeping," Conrad said, pouring a glass of tea and sliding it across the island toward me. "I explained that you've experienced severe pregnancy complications and need to begin your maternity leave early. He was very understanding. He said your health comes first."
"You resigned for me?"
"I took care of you," he corrected gently. "Drink your tea."
I looked at the amber liquid in the glass. Paranoia, sharp and metallic, flooded my mouth. He was a pharmacist. He knew every chemical compound, every sedative, every dosage that could make a person compliant without leaving a trace in a routine blood panel.
"I'm not thirsty," I said, stepping back from the island.
Conrad's eyes darkened slightly, but he didn't raise his voice. "Suit yourself."
Over the next two weeks, the house became an elegant, sunlit prison. Conrad was everywhere. If I moved from the living room to the bedroom, he followed two minutes later with a basket of laundry or a book. If I sat on the back porch to get fresh air, he stood by the screen door, watching me through the mesh.
Roberta came over every afternoon at one o'clock sharp. She brought casseroles in glass dishes that smelled of sour cream and canned soup, and she sat in the armchair across from me while Conrad cooked dinner.
"You look tired, Loretta," she said one afternoon, her knitting needles clicking together like tiny teeth. "Conrad tells me you aren't sleeping well. You always were an anxious girl. My sister had a friend like that—always worrying herself into a state. She ended up having to go away to a facility in Chattanooga for a few months after her second was born."
I looked up from the baby blanket I was pretending to hem. "I am not anxious, Roberta. I am trapped."
Roberta didn't miss a beat with her knitting. She didn't look shocked. She just smiled her small, thin smile and pulled a fresh strand of blue yarn from her tote bag.
"Young women today don't know what trapped means," she said softly. "You have a good man who provides for you, a clean home, and a healthy child on the way. If you keep fighting against the bit, Loretta, you're going to break your own teeth. Conrad is a patient man, but every man has his limit."
"Is that what happened to your husband?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet. "Did he have his limit?"
Roberta's knitting needles stopped instantly. The air between us went brittle. Her father had died when Conrad was eight—a sudden, mysterious drowning during a solo fishing trip in Watts Bar Lake that the local sheriff had ruled an accident despite the heavy bruising on his neck.
"You ought to keep your tongue behind your teeth, girl," Roberta whispered, her voice stripped of all its sweet syrup, leaving only the rusted iron underneath. "Conrad is his father's son. But he is my boy. And if you think anyone in this county is going to take his daughter away from him to give her to a woman who can't even keep her balance on a drop cloth, you are vastly mistaken."
May you like
She picked up her knitting again, the needles resuming their steady, lethal click-click-click.
That night, while Conrad slept beside me—his arm heavy across my waist, pinning me to the mattress—I stared at the ceiling and began to calculate numbers. Not payroll taxes or ledger balances, but minutes, miles, and the exact weight of a brass candlestick sitting on the downstairs mantelpiece.
