Page 96 of Dark Ugly Places

“He likes control,” I say.

Bambi nods. “He wants a baby.” She pulls her hands away and wipes her face. “But I don’t. Not with him. Not like this.”

“Do you want it to stop?”

Her expression changes, shame washing over her. When she starts crying, I can hear Nicola inside me, whispering like a ghost at the end of a long, dark hallway. Remember who she is, remember what she did, what he did. I brush her aside. She always thinks I’m like her, that I have a short-term memory.

Bambi wipes her face and looks far off, her expression stony. “My mother died when I was eight years old,” she says quietly. “One day she was there, the next, our house was dark and empty. My father made sure of that.” Her breathing stills a little, her shoulders soften. “I took care of him, you know. My whole childhood, that’s what I did. Sometimes I think Jason is just like him.”

I stroke her hand, and she doesn’t flinch from me this time. “You don’t have to suffer anymore,” I tell her. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Bambi meets my eyes. I love the way she looks at me because I know she sees me. Martha. Not Nicola. In fact, she doesn’t even know Nicola exists. Unlike Emmy, for instance. To her, I’m just a stranger dressed in her mother’s clothes.

“So, you’ll help me?”

I let a smile pass over my mouth, a rare show of true happiness. I’ve been keeping it hidden for a long time, waiting, watching, not ready to set it free. My hand finds her hand again and holds it. What is that saying about two birds with one stone? Never mind. There’s a certain joy in what I’m about to do.

“Of course I will.”

41

Bambi

Bambi slides into the breakfast nook, a plate of quesadillas on the table. Martha taps away on her iPad, both of them silent until Lucita finishes packing her carrier bag, takes her keys, and heads out for the evening. At the kitchen door, she pauses. “You need anything else, Miss Bambi, you call me.”

Bambi’s heart freezes, a tightness in her chest. “Thank you. I’m fine, Lucita.”

Lucita nods, and the empty house darkens and fills with shadows after she leaves. In a few hours, Jason will return home from the damage control press junket, and Bambi’s stomach is already knotted. She pushes her plate away and leans back, a slight bulge in her stomach from the food. Foreign and familiar at the same time, it reminds her of when she was little. Her face throbs beneath all the swelling, and she lightly touches the puffed skin with her fingertips.

She glances at the small clock above the kitchen stove. Martha’s time is almost up, and they had been holding back while Lucita was there. “So, what do we do then?”

Bambi searches her for the usual signs in someone. A nervous swallow, a flush of the cheeks, but Martha is calm, centered. “Well, we make a plan,” she says. “But are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Christ! Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe entrusting this person, with her sloppy haircut, her roots showing through, her cheap clothes, and heavy eye makeup, was a dreadful mistake. Why had she done it? Fear? Desperation? Self-loathing, perhaps? Stupid! What might happen if anyone found out?

“I’m ready, Martha. It’s you who sounds uncertain now. Why are you doing this, anyway?”

Martha puts down her knife and fork, letting them clatter against the plate. The house throws the sound back at them in the empty quiet. “You really want to know?”

Bambi leans forward. “I do.”

Martha smiles, satisfied. “Everyone has someone in their family they’d rather not talk about. Someone who, for all intents and purposes, they could go the rest of their lives not remembering, and they’d be happy. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Who was yours?”

Martha wipes her mouth, smearing grease across their good linen napkins. “My father. He had a hard time dealing with his demons. He took it out on us until he couldn’t anymore.”

Bambi has to ask. “So, you knew? When you first got here. You knew about me? About us?”

“I had a hunch, yes.”

A rush of panic. If Martha knew, did everyone? Can they smell it on her, what she tries so carefully to hide?

Martha’s eyes flick up and down her. “I knew you were afraid, that’s all. I knew it the same way I knew my father was going to kill himself.”

Bambi spits water forward onto the table. “Oh my God, Martha.”

She nods, her demeanor calm, reticent. “There was no rage that day or the night before. He wasn’t drunk or smashing things or hitting us. He spent the morning sitting, staring out the window, his hands idle, his face unshaven. An hour later, he was dead.”