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The sound of her giggles seems farther away now, but I can’t determine which direction it’s coming from with the grass so still. I consider calling out to her again, but then I wonder if she’s actively running away from the sound of my voice.
I stand in the middle of the meadow and close my eyes as I try to determine where the girl’s voice is coming from. But when I open my eyes, my heart nearly stops at the sight of Shadow’s face. “Oh, my God. You scared me.”
I don’t apologize for taking the Lord’s name in vain this time as I’m suddenly angry at him for following me.
“I told you not to go too far,” he says. “We have to head back.”
“No, there’s a child out here. She’s lost. We can’t just leave her out here.”
He doesn’t look surprised or concerned by this information. He seems disappointed.
“There’s no one out here.”
I step sideways to look past him to the vast field beyond, and I still see no movement. But now, I also don’t hear any laughter.
I swallow hard and brush the dirt off my right foot before I slide it inside my sneaker. “It was probably just the wind,” I say, cleaning the debris off my left foot and wincing as I notice a scrape on the back of my heel.
“Did you hurt yourself?” he asks, the sharp edge of his disappointment smoothed by genuine concern.
I stare at my dirty, bloody left foot. “I… I don’t remember hurting myself.”
“I can carry you back,” he offers.
I chuckle and shake my head. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s much too far. I can walk just fine.”
I try once again to put on my left sneaker, but it hurts too much, so I opt to walk back wearing just one shoe, half limping and half hopping all the way home.
Every step we take in the direction we came, the dry debris on the forest floor scrapes against the abrasion. By the time we reach the tree line, I can feel the sticky warmth of blood on the bottom of my heel. But something else I see makes me forget my discomfort.
The door on the lean-to is wide open. I glance at Shadow as he walks next to me, but his gaze is fixed on my bloody foot. I feel a heightened curiosity building inside me the closer we get to the shed. Until we’re right in line with the open door, and my stomach drops. The walls inside the lean-to are entirely covered with shotguns.
Tomorrow’s Promise
Ten months earlier
I walked into the kitchen and set down my purse on the counter. I was bone-weary and tired of telling five-year-olds to form a straight line. Other teachers enjoyed the brief respite they got from classwork on assembly days. I preferred being in the classroom with the children rather than wrangling them like cattle.
“Hey, honey,” I said to Marc as I headed for the refrigerator to pour myself some water from the filtered pitcher.
Marc stood at the sink, looking through the window at our back terrace, but he didn’t reply.
“How did everything go with the Walton case?” I asked as I set the pitcher on the marble island and headed for the cupboard on Marc’s right to get a drinking glass.
He turned toward me as I opened the cupboard. His eyes were wide with apparent shock, and the sight of it put me on edge.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Marc looked me in the eyes. “You’re pregnant?”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, God. For a second, I thought you were going to tell me something was wrong with Dad.”
He grabbed my waist before I could turn away. “Baby, are you pregnant?”
His blue eyes almost appeared black from the size of his dilated pupils. He was searching my face for an inkling of the truth.
I pressed my lips together as I tried not to smile, not wanting to appear too pleased. God punishes hubris, doesn’t he? Isn’t that why he took all three of our last pregnancies? Because we were too happy, too celebratory?
But I couldn’t contain myself.
I smiled as I nodded fervently. “Yes,” I whispered, as tears welled up in Marc’s eyes. “I think it happened sometime around the New Year.”
His eyes sparkled like a child who’d just opened the most important gift on his wishlist. “So you’re only, what, three weeks along?” he asked, laying his hand flat on my lower abdomen.
“I didn’t want to tell you this early. In fact, I don’t even know how you found out.”
“The doctor’s office called me,” he replies. “They said they tried leaving you a voicemail, but you hadn’t returned their call.
“Oh, yeah. My phone ran out of charge. It died when I was using it during the assembly. What did they say?”
“They said they had to bump your appointment tomorrow from noon to two p.m. Doc is likely going to be up late delivering a baby tonight.”
“Oh, that’s not a problem. I have the whole day off.”
Marc looks as if I’ve punched him in the gut. “You weren’t going to ask me to come with you?”
“I…I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m so scared of something going wrong. I thought…maybe I could keep it a secret until I’m past the first trimester. I’m just…” I swallowed hard, but the lump in my throat didn’t budge. “I’m terrified.”
His breath was warm on my forehead as he exhaled heavily through his nose. “I’m scared, too, baby.” He brushed the backs of his fingers over my cheek. “But I can’t let you bear this alone.”
I let out a sigh of relief as I lay my head on his shoulder and relaxed into his arms.
I woke to the sensation of having to use the restroom. Blinking against the darkness, I tried to avoid looking at the digital clock on Marc’s nightstand as I rose from the bed. Looking at the clock always made it difficult for me to fall back to sleep. But as soon as I was on my feet, I realized Marc’s side of the bed was empty.
I padded across the bedroom, emerging onto the second-floor hallway. A thin, golden strip of light illuminated the bottom edge of the door leading into the one room that had no purpose. I approached slowly, my heart ra
te picking up as I imagined what Marc might be doing in there.
Turning the doorknob, I carefully pushed the door open, and my jaw dropped. Marc had moved all the furniture we’d bought for Mira’s nursery into the center of the room. He didn’t see me as I entered, his attention focused on painting the walls a soft, neutral gray color.
He moved the paint roller up and down as swaths of Revere Pewter gray paint covered the soft coral-pink we’d chosen for Mira. As he turned to dip his roller in the paint tray, he noticed me standing in the doorway. At first, he didn’t speak. After a moment, his face split into an easy smile.
“Did I wake you?” he asked, laying his paint roller in the tray and rounding the collection of furniture toward me.
I shook my head. “I had to pee,” I whispered. “Have you been up all night?”
He stood next to me, turning to face the room. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said, as his eyes seemed to judge the quality of his painting job. “I finally thought, ‘Maybe I should paint the nursery. Give it a fresh start.’ What do you think?”
I was more interested in watching Marc and the slightly manic look in his eyes as he considered his work. “I think gray is perfect,” I replied truthfully.
He turned to me, his smile widening. “Really? So do I,” he said, heading back toward the corner where he’d set down his paint roller. “I was thinking a gray base coat with some wispy white clouds and maybe a castle or a dragon in the clouds, or something else whimsical. What do you think?”
I chuckled nervously. “You’re going to paint a mural?”
He looked confused by my skepticism. “Of course. You can help.” He seemed to tack on the last three words as an afterthought.
I entered the room, wincing inwardly at the sight of the diaper genie and the changing table I hadn’t looked at in weeks. I rounded the furniture and stood next to Marc. We stared at the pale gray wall in front of us for a while in silence. As I saw a gray slab of drywall and plaster, Marc apparently saw a canvas.
“How about instead of a castle in the clouds, you paint one word,” I offered, raising my hand to write the letters in the air. “Tomorrow.”
