by Marnie Vinge
6 YEARS AGO
The rumors began to circulate almost immediately. Whispers that the Wolsieffer house wasn’t a safe place to spend a Friday night ran like vines overtaking a rusted old truck, strangling any notion that Tom might not have done anything to Morgan Wallace.
The rumors were mainly confined to the students in the writing department, but enough had been said that Tom seemed to carry a black cloud with him. People got out of his way, avoiding the unpleasant awkward small talk that they’d have to make, sidestepping with great effort around the elephant in the room.
Birdie felt like a carrier of his disease. People treated her the same way. Like too close a proximity to her might make them contract an illness. They might as well have worn masks to breathe the same air as her, that’s how contaminated she felt.
But it was when the rumors picked up, a swirling mass frothing into a storm, that Birdie knew she had to act. It came over her like instinct. She’d been in the ladies’ bathroom down the hall from Tom’s office. Alone until two other girls came in. She recognized one of the voices almost immediately.
Morgan Wallace.
“What are you going to do?” the other girl asked her. Birdie could hear one of them washing their hands.
“I’m taking it to the president of the university. And if he won’t do anything, I’m going to the news.”
Morgan’s self-assurance in how to handle the situation alarmed Birdie. She had the self-possession of a woman much older. Or perhaps, it was the naiveté of a girl too young to know that the world doesn’t care what happens to women. We would rather they inherit the pain of their mothers than for any of us to examine it in the light.
“That’s a good plan,” the other girl said.
Birdie heard the hand dryer begin to whir. She flushed the toilet and stepped out. Morgan stood alone at the sink, reapplying lip gloss. Her friend had left her there. Perfect.
Morgan stopped mid-stroke with the gloss wand when she saw Birdie’s reflection in the mirror. It was well-known who she was, and tacitly understood where her loyalties lied.
The girl’s face took on a stern expression. My God, Birdie realized. She’s going to fight me on this.
Morgan re-capped the lip gloss and stuffed it into her bag with an impatient shove.
“Can I help you?” Morgan asked. She placed her hands on her hips.
Birdie studied her for a moment. She was so young. Probably nineteen or twenty—a child, really.
“Are you planning on spreading this any further than you already have?” Birdie asked.
Neither of them named the event in question. They both knew what they were talking about.
“I’ll tell whoever I need to,” Morgan said. “What’s wrong? You worried about losing your fellowship?”
Birdie steeled herself for what was about to come out of her mouth. She weighed it for a moment, trying to determine if it was worth it. If the cost to herself was worth the benefit to Tom.
“Morgan,” she said. “I will put this as bluntly as I possibly can.”
Morgan stepped back as Birdie leaned in.
“You need to shut up about whatever it is that you think Dr. Wolsieffer,” she paused, looked at Morgan from top to bottom distastefully, and spat the end of the sentence like a cherry pit to the ground, “did to you.”
Morgan opened her mouth to speak.
Birdie slapped her hard. The sound cracked throughout the bathroom. Morgan’s brown hair followed the involuntary turn of her face. She gasped and reached for her cheek, turning back to face her assailant.
“I will ruin your life if you breathe another word to anyone about this. I mean it, Morgan,” Birdie said. “If you ever want to get a book published, you’ll listen to me on this.” Her voice was quiet, only a shade above a whisper. The slap seemed to reverberate in the space around the pair.
Morgan’s eyes filled with tears. Whether as a physical or emotional response, Birdie didn’t care. She just hoped that Morgan would remember the way they tasted in any moment when she opened her mouth with the intent of rolling Tom Wolsieffer’s name off her tongue.
Morgan left the bathroom. Birdie stood for a moment, alone with what she’d just done. She turned to face herself in the mirror. Her eyes were sunken and her skin dull. She’d been working too much. Doing too much for Tom, she thought.
Her life had become so inextricably woven into the fabric of his, she wasn’t sure where to begin unraveling it. She twisted the knob of the faucet and rolled up her sleeves. She splashed water as cold as she could get onto her face. The sensation grounded her, making her little altercation with Morgan seem far away.
She collected herself and went back out into the hallway. She walked back into Tom’s office and took her seat at the window-side desk that he’d provided for her. She shoved a stack of papers to the side and grabbed her planner, scanning it for any remaining events before the weekend.
Tom was gone. She was alone.
She turned to grab something off of his desk and caught sight of herself in the glass of the lawyer bookcase. At first, seeing the reflection out of her peripheral vision, she’d thought it was Morgan, having followed her into the office. But she recognized herself quickly.
It dawned on her that even though she’d seen that face staring back at her from the mirror all her life, she’d never known what it was capable of—what kind of bile those lips could spew—until just now. She dropped the stack of papers she’d grabbed from Tom’s desk and they spread out like leaves ripped from their tree in a storm.
She wondered what had really happened between Tom and Morgan in that room.
She stared at herself.
And she knew.
Part Three
VANESSA
“Let me go with you,” Ione pleads.
Vanessa’s eyes dart to the door, cracked open just enough that the scream echoes into the room.
Vanessa is on her feet, bolting for the door when Ione stops her. A hand grabs her wrist, twisting, burning the skin.
“Please,” Ione begs.
“No!” Vanessa shouts. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”
The question hangs in the air between them with a weight of its own. Ione is stunned into silence and led into remembering. At least she hopes she remembers because there are things Vanessa can never forget.
Ione lets go and Vanessa squeezes out of the narrow slit between the French doors. She turns and secures the lock that Tom installed months ago. Ione’s shadow approaches the frosted panes, growing longer with each step. Vanessa recoils from the door. For a moment forgetting her purpose.
Then Birdie screams again.
She darts to the stairs, grabbing the bannister and swinging around to the steps. She takes them two at a time. At the doorway of the bedroom, she meets Tom. He looks at her, panic-stricken. He pauses just long enough that she takes the lead, opening the door ahead of him. Like a deluge, they pour into the room together.
Vanessa looks at the girl, standing next to the bed, supporting herself on the brass bed frame. Crimson stains the long white undershirt she wears beneath her flannel. It climbs up from just below the girl’s waist. The blood comes not from her shoulder but instead from between her legs.
She looks at her face, contorted with pain. Vanessa rushes to her side and in her haste kicks a piece of the glass from the shattered oil lamp. It tumbles across the floor and Vanessa thinks the girl must have knocked it over getting out of the bed.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The baby is coming, Vanessa realizes. The baby is coming and there’s no force here that can stop it. No matter what Tom thinks he can do with his will. She grabs Birdie by the arm, supporting her.
“Get back in bed,” Vanessa commands the girl.
“No!” Birdie shrieks.
She bats away Vanessa’s helpful embrace. Tom paces in the corner. Vanessa looks at him. A sheen of sweat covers his brow and darkens the neck of his shirt. He brings a hand to his jaw and rubs it anxiously.
&
nbsp; Vanessa wants to roll her eyes. She would if she had the time. But instead she turns back to the girl before her, pregnant and bleeding, about to lose this child and possibly her own life. She looks at Tom.
“We have to do something!”
“I know!” Tom roars, throwing his hands up. He brings them to his face again and runs them down his cheeks, stretching the skin and for a moment looking ghoulish.
Vanessa rushes toward him and grabs his hands.
“Tom,” she says.
He shakes her off.
“Tom!” she shouts.
“No!” he cries back.
Vanessa slaps him with the back of her hand as hard as she can. The ligaments connecting her fingers to her wrist ripple and ache against the bony surface of Tom’s cheek. He reels from the impact and rushes a hand to his mouth. He draws it back, blood staining his fingers.
“Get your shit together,” Vanessa growls at him. “I’m taking her to the hospital.”
Tom staggers backward, suddenly seeming unsteady on his feet.
“Go to the study and call out. Tell them I’m bringing the pregnant girl to the gate in a Jeep. And get me the keys,” Vanessa commands him.
Tom looks at her, his eyes weary. The wear and tear of the last week apparent in all aspects of his appearance. Vanessa wonders if there was any piece of him that thought things could end this way. Weakness reeks out of him like rotten eggs in a lunch pail left in the backseat of a car.
She turns away from him and back to Birdie.
“Go. Now!” she barks.
Tom leaves the room, the door swings back and slams into the wall behind him on his way out. She hears his footsteps scurry down the stairs and into the study below them. She can hear his voice muffled through the air vent, placing the call as she instructed.
She looks around the room and something catches her eye. Something reflective and bright. A shard of glass.
Stained red along the edge with crimson fingerprints.
Birdie’s fingerprints.
A thought dawns on Vanessa like a new morning.
The baby isn’t coming yet. But it will be. Any time now. She reaches a hand for Birdie’s belly to feel the child.
The girl sits on the edge of the bed, exhausted and weakened. Her breathing ragged, she feigns labor. Vanessa indulges her, instructing her on how to breathe. She waits to feel the baby move. The baby that she knows hasn’t moved since Birdie was shot.
And then it does.
A flutter of kicks that look for all the world like a small mammal being digested in the belly of a python. And Vanessa smiles.
The child is alive and there is hope.
But she has to get them out of here. Tom can’t take this baby from her.
Not a second time.
VANESSA
7 YEARS AGO
Tom excelled at nothing so much as being the center of attention. So, when he decided to throw his first party after receiving tenure at the university, it didn’t surprise Vanessa in the least.
She’d been working late at the hospital, taking on more shifts than she probably should have. Sometimes she slept there and might not come home for over thirty-six hours. She dedicated herself to her work, much as her husband had. But it was sometime close to then that she realized something in their marriage wasn’t working anymore.
He’d taken to working late and spending more time with his students than Vanessa thought was entirely appropriate. And there was a particular professor that he spent most of his time with when he wasn’t lavishing it on female students. Mark Rose.
Another professor in the writing department, Mark had received tenure the year before. He was slightly older than Tom. Good looking and charming. Also married and had a child in the fourth grade. A little girl. She did gymnastics. Vanessa remembered his wife telling her that at the last party of Tom’s that the Roses attended.
Tonight, the Roses were planning on coming over for one of the famous Wolsieffer parties. Students would show up, Vanessa was sure. And usually she made it a point to be working whenever Tom invited his pupils. The whole idea of him drinking with them was enough to set her teeth on edge. Tom wasn’t the most well-behaved drunk and she knew that he liked to perform when he had an audience.
But tonight, he’d begged her to stay.
So, she’d gotten ready, leaving the preparations for the party to Tom. He’d gladly accepted the responsibilities. As a host and entertainer, no one was on par with him. There was a reason the parties were famous across campus.
She slipped through the house like a spirit, letting him guide the caterers and make sure the string lights were just so on the patio. She stayed out of his way but snuck a bottle of wine out of the kitchen before the party started.
She made small talk with some of the students who bothered to entertain Tom Wolsieffer’s wife. She wondered why they would, since she couldn’t guarantee them a fellowship like Tom could. She smiled hollowly at their compliments and laughed at their jokes, a forced and artificial sound that made her ears ring.
She excused herself and went to the patio. She drifted out towards the pool on her own and pulled her dress up. She crouched down and slung her legs into the water. With September closing in on October, it would be winterized soon, and she made a mental note to make the most of the remaining warm days that they’d have.
She kicked the water, watching the surface ripple with the movement of her legs. The angle of the light distorted her calves, making her legs seem to bend at an odd angle.
The sound of her skin parting the water was soothing. She wondered why she didn’t spend more time alone out here. She’d let herself become so consumed with her work that she’d forgotten almost entirely how to relax. It seemed there was always a knot at the nape of her neck, reminding her that there was still much work to do.
But tonight, she tried to let that go. She sipped the red wine in her glass, letting it grate against the concrete as she set it back down. She leaned back on her palms and let her legs get accustomed to the temperature of the water. For a moment she thought about skinny dipping.
It wouldn’t be the wildest thing that had happened at one of these parties, she was sure.
She closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and kicked the water, letting a buzz settle over her. When she opened her eyes, Mark’s face, upside down, peered at her from above.
“Shit!” Vanessa almost shouted. She jerked forward, her hand grazing the wine glass just enough to send the warm liquid into the pool. It billowed out like a jellyfish—like blood summoning a shark—and dissipated slowly in the chlorinated water, becoming a murky pinkness that seemed like a spreading infection.
“Sorry!” Mark hissed. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that. Mind if I join you?”
“Where’s Teresa?” Vanessa asked, not spotting Mark’s wife. She clung to him like a stick tight, her spiky edges lodged firmly into the fabric of his clothes. But tonight, he was alone.
“She stayed home. Molly’s sick. She didn’t want to leave her with the sitter,” he kicked off his shoes and took a seat next to her on the concrete. He rolled off his socks and tossed them carelessly into the grass behind them. Vanessa laughed.
Mark pulled his pants up and dipped his legs into the water next to her.
“Nice night,” he said.
“Indeed.” She hated small talk.
Mark’s leg brushed against hers under the water. She felt the hair on his calf tickle her own.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“It’s alright,” she responded with a smile. His lack of self-assurance in having accidentally touched a woman was so foreign to Vanessa. Tom had never been that way. Not when they first met or ever. She could imagine Tom taking such a moment and twisting it into something else, like someone shaping wrought iron.
She looked at Mark.
His face was kind where Tom’s was handsome. He was a family man. He was everything that Tom wasn’t, and she wondered for a moment where exact
ly their friendship had sprung from. Why someone like Mark would keep coming around Tom was a mystery to her. Unless there was a side of Mark that she hadn’t seen.
We all had secret sides, didn’t we? We all had pieces that we kept tucked away, broken or too sharp for others to safely handle.
As she looked at him, she wondered if he possessed such a piece.
Mark looked back at her. His eyes locked on hers.
“So, what made you stay tonight?” he asked.
“Tom. He asked me to. I’d rather have been somewhere else,” she said.
“You know,” Mark mused. He looked away from Vanessa for a moment. “Sometimes I don’t think I appreciate Teresa enough. But then I look at you and Tom, and I know that I’m at least doing better than he is.”
Vanessa was silent for a moment, absorbing the shock of his words. Their frankness and the reality of what he’d just said. She knew it was true, but it still stung.
Their relationship hadn’t had its former glory for some time. She wondered when that had happened. If there was a specific moment in time when they’d lost what they’d had. It had been so good in those first years. She could still remember their honeymoon. A week tucked away in the snow of the Rockies. They’d fallen asleep in front of the fire almost every night, tangled up in each other. They’d barely left the cabin. It had been perfect. Now, it seemed like they couldn’t stand the sight of each other.
Even so, Vanessa couldn’t leave.
Tom was all she’d ever known and the alternative to the hollow existence they’d carved out seemed more formidable than the potential unhappiness she might face in years to come. There would be time—wouldn’t there?—to make a final decision. They were young. Time stretched out infinitely in front of them. Who knew? Maybe they would find their way back to each other. Vanessa clung to that.
Maybe it was illusion. Sitting here with Mark, she realized that she was out by the pool next to Tom’s colleague while Tom flirted his ass off with undergraduate students. Vanessa was only a few years away from being old enough to have given birth to them.
