by Megan Hart
Once settled, she stood, her nipples tight and sore in the cold air but everything else feeling better. The hot water had eased the constant aching burn from her muscles, and simply being clean made a huge difference in her outlook. When she dug through the bag again, though, she found nothing but the six or so diapers that had been left in the package from the hospital.
Her clothes were gone.
Her wallet was still there, not that it mattered since she had nothing in it but her driver's license and a couple ticket stubs from movies she couldn't even remember seeing. She'd had no cash to steal. No credit cards.
She dug again into the depths of the bag, searching, but came up with nothing. She caught sight of her reflection. Her eyes had gone wide and wild, her mouth agape.
Tori straightened. The mirror over the sink was small and age-spotted, so she could only see part of herself, but she studied what she could see. She cupped one hand over her breasts, two sizes bigger than she'd ever been, the skin taut and traced with blue-green veins. Her belly, sagging and wrinkled.
They'd taken her clothes, but surely they didn't expect her to go out there naked. What did they expect, though? They had taken her and the baby in. Fed her. Maybe they planned to clothe her, too.
When she cracked open the door, she found a pile of garments waiting for her. Thick cotton socks. A long flannel nightgown. A heavy cardigan sweater with big wooden buttons. No bra, but a pair of cotton panties adorned with pink flowers. There were clothes for the baby, too, a small set of yellow fleecy footed pajamas, a little too big, but better than nothing. Everything was warm, and, like the towels, smelled clean. She could've done worse.
Tori dressed quickly in the layers, grateful for the warmth. Still, the fact that someone had gone through her bag and taken her belongings was beyond fucked up. She lifted the baby and cradled her in one arm while she checked the hallway. Empty.
Her belly was full. The baby was sleeping but would wake soon to nurse, and Tori herself only wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep for another day or month or year. She felt like she'd been hit by a truck. Well, hadn't she been?
In the small bedroom at the end of the hall, she crawled beneath the weight of the blankets and tucked the baby against her, toward the center of the bed so even if Tori did fall asleep, the infant wouldn't roll onto the floor. She tugged open the buttons on the front of the nightgown, and the child's mouth opened, rooting and finding the nipple with more practiced ease than she'd ever had.
First the tingling built, almost but not quite a pain, and then the surge of letdown became a throb as the baby sucked. For the first time, it didn't hurt. Tori wouldn't have called it a pleasure, but there was something of pleasure in it, and as she drifted to sleep, warm and fed and with her child in her arms, Tori gave herself up to it.
11
"No." It is the first time Tori has ever said this to him, when he comes creeping into her room at night. "Get off me. Don't touch me again."
Her mother's husband, such a fucking cliché. Like something out of some goddamned movie of the week. Tori has suffered him touching her for years, her silence never acquiescence or acceptance, but a simple, misunderstood belief that someone, someday would come along and save her.
It would not be the boy who'd earlier tonight thought he was taking her virginity. He was weaker even than Tori knew herself to be. He'd fumbled and stroked her, entering her with a throbbing cock and moving on top of her while he muttered filthy words he must have thought would turn her on. And after, moving away from her as though she were as dirty a thing as he'd made her out to be, he'd looked ashamed and sorry, not for what he'd done, but that he'd done it with her.
"I am not a thing," Tori says now as she pushes her stepfather away from her. "I am not just some thing."
He has hit her before, of course, but this time she ducks the swing and comes back at him with fists of her own. She is not tall, she is not strong. Years of forcing herself to vomit up almost every meal have left her weak, but she is angry, and that is enough.
She catches him in the nose, sending him backward with a yelp, hands clapped over his face. With a grunt, she kicks him in the balls, watching with satisfaction as he doubles over and goes to his knees. She kicks him again, her bare toes crunching and breaking, agony, but worth it when he scrambles away from her.
He, at last afraid.
It is the last night she will spend in her mother's house. She runs after that. Lives on the street for a little while. Finds a job. Gets an apartment. Starts to make her life on her own, as she thinks she was always meant to.
12
The dark silhouette in the doorway startled her when she woke. The baby had fallen off the breast, which was still exposed, but Tori tucked the nightgown around herself before she sat up. Blinking away the dream, she recognized the man staring at her.
"Hi. Luka."
He stepped through the doorway. "You found the clothes. Good."
"Where are mine?" She paused. “These are great, but where are mine?"
"I took them to wash them. Everything you had was filthy. It smelled bad." He lifted his face and sniffed as though to prove there'd been a stink.
"I would appreciate it if you didn't go through my things," Tori said. "I mean, yeah, thank you and everything, but it's not cool with me for you to just go through my stuff."
Luka stepped closer, into the light. "You don't have any things worth keeping.”
"That's not true." Tori pushed herself against the headboard, a hand on the sleeping baby.
Luka shrugged. "You can have them back after they're clean, if you want. Mother would like you to come down to the parlor. With the baby."
"She's sleeping now."
"Mother says you should come down."
Tori eyed him. "Luka, when babies are sleeping, the last thing in the world you want to do is wake them up. I'm sure your mother would prefer not to have a screaming kid in her parlor."
Luka shook his shaggy head. "She says now."
"I'm not coming downstairs right now," Tori said calmly as she scanned the room for two things. An escape route or a weapon. Nothing leaped out at her, but that was okay. She would keep looking.
She would be prepared.
Luka hesitated, then came over to the bed to peer down at the baby. "You don't have a name for her yet?”
"No. She's so small, she feels too tiny for a name." Tori let her hand rest lightly on the infant's head. "My dad used to call me Little Bit. I've been calling her that."
"That's not a name."
She laughed softly, covering her mouth with a hand to keep from waking the baby. "No. It's not. But it's all I've got for her right now."
Luka sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. His weight dipped it enough that Tori had to shift to keep from leaning toward him. He rubbed his big hands on the thighs of his jeans. She hadn't noticed before that the backs of his palms were covered with hair.
"You could ask the board."
Tori's lip curled, but she smoothed her expression. She had no intention of letting some fucking spirit board name her child, whether or not it was operated by a demanding old woman or something from the world beyond. "I don't think so."
"Mother asked the board to name all of us."
"Your dad didn't have any say in the matter?"
For a moment, Luka frowned. "None of us had the same dad."
Whoa. So mama had done some getting around in her day. Tori watched Luka's face.
"My dad left when I was pretty young. I didn't see much of him. It's not easy," she said.
"It's fine," Luka said. "We have Mother."
Impulsively, Tori touched his hand. The hairs were softer than she'd expected. His fingers twitched.
"How old are you, Luka?"
"Eighteen."
She'd imagined him as much older than that. "I'm twenty-two."
He smiled at her, then, showing straight and pointed white teeth. He looked at the sleeping baby. "She looks like a Rose."
> "A rose...? Oh." For a moment she'd been confused, thinking he meant the flower. It was true, with her chubby pink cheeks and the soft fall brush of pale red hair, the baby did look like that flower. "My great-grandma's name was Rose."
"You could name her that," Luka said.
"It's a pretty name." Tori nodded. The baby...could she be named Rose? Stirred. Yawned. The baby's eyes opened, blinking, then closed as she sighed.
"You should come down now." Luka stood. "Mother will be angry if you don't, and --"
"Let me guess. I don't want to make Mother angry. I won't like her when she's angry."
Luka shrugged and gave Tori a small, secret grin and something in his expression caused a shift inside her. A languid rise of heat. A tingle. "You won't like her even when she's not angry, I reckon."
Tori giggled, her hand over her mouth again. His eyes gleamed. His tongue pressed his lower lip for a moment before slipping back inside. For a moment she wondered how it would taste to kiss him, and at the thought her womb clenched. A slow, rolling gush of warmth teased out between her thighs, which she pressed together desperately beneath the borrowed nightgown and prayed she hadn't leaked.
A low noise slipped out of Luka's throat.
"I need to use the bathroom," Tori whispered. "Can you...could you please give me a couple minutes?"
She couldn't get up from the bed without risking another gush of blood. Humiliation swept through her. Rose woke and cried, not loud or hard, but that would happen soon enough. Luka had moved to the bed and scooped up the baby in one big hand before Tori could do anything to stop him. She grabbed the front of his shirt as he leaned over her, but let it go at once. The scent of his skin at the base of his throat, the part that had been closest to her face, lingered.
"I'll hold her while you go."
Since leaving the hospital, Tori had been the only one to hold the baby. Here in a stranger's house, wearing borrowed clothes and awaiting an audience with a woman who relied on a Ouija board to name her children, Tori should not have felt comfortable enough with the huge man to allow him to take her baby from her, but the thought of once more struggling to get up, go down the hall and tend to her body all while also taking care of the baby left her on the verge of tears. Then she was no longer on the verge, but tipping over into strangled sobs.
"Everything hurts," she whispered. "Every part of my body aches."
"I'll hold her," Luka said as he slid a thickly muscled arm behind her back to help her up, all while effortlessly cradling the baby against his chest. "If it makes you feel better, I'll stand with her outside the bathroom with the door open, so you can see her the whole time. I won't look. I promise."
She wanted to say no, but all she could do was cry a little harder at the kindness. "I'm so tired, Luka."
"I'll help you."
Nodding, Tori let him help her out of the bed. She clutched his arm until her feet could touch the floor, and then she stood, still clamping her thighs together. Another hot, wet slide of fluid eased out of her, along with a lower belly cramp. She was beyond embarrassment now.
In the bathroom she lifted the hem of the gown and eased onto the toilet, wincing at the sound of what felt like half her insides splashing into the water. The cramping discomfort eased at once, though. She leaned to rest her elbows on her knees, watching Luka, back turned, rocking from foot to foot as he soothed Rose.
"You seem to know what you're doing." Better than she did, almost, since Rose had quieted almost at once.
"I told you. I like babies."
Tori reached beneath the sink to pull out another clean rag, one of the last in the bucket. Using one of the washcloths he'd given her earlier, she ran water in the tub since it was easier to reach without getting up. She cleaned herself gingerly, grateful again that she hadn't needed stitches. Everything hurt bad enough without that. She rinsed the cloth a few times, getting clean as best she could, then hesitated.
Luka had gone dead still. Rose wasn't crying, but something in the way his back straightened bespoke of tension. He'd half-turned his head. Not enough to see her, but she could glimpse his profile.
"I'm sorry, this must be...it's gross," Tori said. "I'm sorry."
"It's not gross. It's natural." Luka's voice was low. "I know you can't help it. Do you need...something?"
"I do. I will. I'm sorry," she added. "This isn't something you should have to deal with, not from someone you don't even know."
"I know you now. That's enough."
She didn't have anything to say to that. After a few quick minutes of cleaning up, she washed her hands at the sink, wincing at the crimson beneath her fingernails.
"Some people eat the placenta," Luka said. "Animals do it. But some people do it, too."
Tori grimaced and caught sight of her startled reflection in the mirror. "Gross."
Luka laughed and rocked the baby again, lifting her to his shoulder. Rose goggled comically at her mother around the fall of his dark hair. He patted the baby's back.
"It's supposed to be healthy. Full of nutrients," he said. "Some people think it has almost magical properties."
Tori finished washing her hands. "I would never do that. I mean, I didn't even see mine. They didn't ask me if I wanted it or anything. Anyway, I don't believe in magic. Do you?"
"Yes." He turned a bit more, this time able to see her. "Are you all right?"
She nodded and flushed, then rinsed the cloth once more to hang over the edge of the tub. "Yes. For now. Thank you."
"You should go see my mother now," Luka said.
13
Tori had not slept long enough for it to be time to eat again, so she was surprised to find the dining room table set as though for an elegant meal. Mother hadn't moved from her place at the table's head. Neither had the board. Her fingertips rested on the planchette making its customary slow figure eights.
It stopped when Tori entered the room. It spun to point at Luka, who still carried baby Rose. Tori had asked to take the infant back, but not too insistently. Her shoulders, neck and back ached, and although she was still the tiniest bit leery of leaving her child in the care of a stranger, something about Luka had calmed her. She couldn't say she trusted him, not completely, but so long as he stayed within her sight, she was willing to let him shoulder the weight for a bit.
"Luka said you wanted to see me?" Tori rested her hand on the back of the chair at the opposite end of the table, but she didn't sit.
YES
"Thank you for the clothes," Tori gestured at the nightgown, "but I'd prefer my own things back. If you let me know where they are, I can get them."
NO
"My things," Tori repeated.
"I had Micah burn them."
Anger rolled through her. "You had no right!"
"They were filthy, as was everything else you brought in with you. We don't allow filth in this house."
The planchette moved toward YES in agreement. Tori gripped the back of the chair until her fingers hurt. Her belly cramped, but it was not as bad as the burn of acid in her throat or the sting as her teeth clipped the edge of her tongue.
Without another word, she reached for her baby. Backache or no, she wanted to be holding her. Luka handed her over after a moment's hesitation that gave Tori a chill and made her regret ever trusting him, even for a few minutes.
"As soon as we can get cleared out, Rose and I are leaving. I won't trouble you a minute longer," she said.
Mother's voice snagged her in the arched doorway. "You gave the child a name?"
Tori turned. "Your son named her."
YES
The planchette spun from side to side and went still. Mother took her hands away. Her jaw gaped open before her lips twisted into a grin so full of wicked delight it set Tori back a step.
"Oh," Mother said. "Oh, did he, now?"
Luka gave his head an uncomfortable shake. "I suggested it. But I didn't name her. That was her mother's job, not mine."
Tori looked at the baby,
who was wide-eyed. Then at Luka, who was looking at the floor. Finally at the old woman in the chair, still grinning, who stared intensely at her youngest son.
"Rose. What a pretty name," Mother said.
"I liked it."
Mother looked at Luka. "Where are your brothers? You should bring them in to see the child. Tell them what you named her."
"They've seen her," Tori said, annoyed. "Look, do you have any idea when your driveway might get plowed? I really don't need to be a burden here any longer than necessary."
"Oh my dear. You're far from a burden."
NO
NO
Mother looked at the turning planchette as though in surprise. Her head tilted. She lifted her fingers from the plastic triangle and worked them as though they pained her, then put them back.
"I would in fact say it's a blessing you found your way to us. You and little Rose."
NO
NO
NO
NO
This time, Mother didn't lift her fingertips from the planchette, but jerked them away with a gasp. Her eyes narrowed as she stared across the room at Tori. Her hands looked as though they were trembling before she curled them into fists and put them on her lap. The board looked naked without her wrinkled hands covering it.
"It snowed again last night," Luka said.
Tori turned to him, feeling betrayed. "It did?"
"Yeah. More's coming, too." He shrugged, not looking at his mother. "You'll have to stay at least a few days longer."
Tori rocked Rose and eyed him. She went to the window, hung with heavy velvet drapes, and looked out. It was hard to tell if more snow had fallen since so much of it already covered the ground, but the sky was indeed overcast. A path had been shoveled from the house toward the forest, but it was only wide enough for a person, not a car. A movement caught her eye and she strained to look, but she could only see a series of shadows in the woods.
A moment later, one of the brothers came out of the trees with an armful of wood. Coatless, hatless, he wore heavy leather gloves that were meant to protect his hands from splinters, not so much the cold. Jackson, she thought it was. The oldest. They all looked so much alike it was difficult to tell them apart. Behind him, the two others appeared, also carrying wood.
