Chapter 13
“Oh, shit.” Yíxīn stared as the pickup rolled into its parking spot. “What do we do?”
Tiny turned around and moaned. Clare felt like all the breath had left her body, replaced by icy water.
Cal got out of the pickup. He stood there for a moment, as if trying to process what he was seeing. Finally, he said, “What the hell? Tiny?”
He walked toward them, and Clare could see the point where he spotted their footsteps leading to the back door and put the pieces together.
“What. The. Hell!” He lunged forward and grabbed Tiny’s arm, hauling her toward him.
“You been in the downstairs? You brought strangers into my house?” She shuddered, sobbing.
He shook her, hard, jerking her back and forth.
“Let her go.” Clare stepped forward. “We’re only here because she’s worried about you. She wants to keep you safe.”
“Safe?” He hauled Tiny closer to him. “Bitch, I’m the one who decides what’s safe or not! Who the hell do you think you are, getting between a man and his wife?”
Yíxīn held her phone up. “Let her go or I’m calling the cops right now. And we can have a conversation with them when they get here about your previous arrests for domestic violence and your assault and battery conviction.”
“Who the hell are you?” He still had Tiny’s arm in a viselike grip.
“I’m a lawyer.”
“A lawyer!” Cal spun his wife away from him violently. Tiny slipped in the snow and fell to her knees, still sobbing. “You hired a bitch whore chink gook…” His rage and vitriol seemed to choke his words.
“You forgot slant-eyes,” Yíxīn said. She pressed a button on her phone, and a voice erupted from its speaker. “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
Cal lunged at the smaller woman. Clare launched herself into his path, arms crossed over her face, and slammed into him like one of her brothers in their glory days playing football at UVA.
Cal’s momentum tumbled him sideways across the slippery ground, and he clawed and lurched, trying to right himself.
“Bitch,” he wheezed. She rolled over her shoulder and came back up onto her feet.
Clare had forsworn violence after her last tour of duty in Iraq, but right now, she really wished she hadn’t, because it would take two hard kicks to put him back on the ground and to break one of his knees.
Instead, she helped Tiny up and began walking her toward the stairs, arm around her shoulder.
Behind them, Yíxīn was giving details of their location. “No,” Tiny wailed. “No, don’t call the cops. Please!”
“Yes, we’ll wait with her until help arrives,” the lawyer said into the phone. She hung up and ran to catch up with them. “It’s already done.”
Tiny shifted out of Clare’s embrace and stumbled toward her husband, who was standing like an angry bull, his shoulders hunched, his head swinging. “Cal, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I’ll tell them to go! I don’t need any help!”
He pushed her away. “Get out of my house.”
She staggered back. “You don’t mean that. Honey…”
“You think these whores can take better care of you than your own husband can? Fine. Get the hell out of my house.” He stormed past her, heading for the stairs.
Oh God, the baby. Clare sprinted for the stairs and thudded across the ramp. She scooped Rose from the playpen and grabbed Yíxīn’s backpack.
Cal burst through the door, trailed by Tiny, weeping and begging.
Clare clutched Rose to her chest. She could feel the weight of the gun on the shelf in their bedroom and kept her eyes on Cal.
If he headed in that direction—what? Break for the door and hope she could make it to her car carrying an eight-month-old?
Or drop the infant on the sofa and try to take him out before he reached the weapon?
“What about Rose?” Tiny cried.
Cal picked up the diaper bag sitting beneath the hanging coats and kicked it out the door. “You think she doesn’t need her daddy. Fine. Take her. I can have another woman in here tomorrow if I want. A grateful woman, who knows how good she’s got it!”
Tiny wrapped her arms around the bag and hunched over.
“Go on! Go on!” Cal lunged forward, stomping his boot on the wooden floor. “Get out of here!”
Tiny could scarcely talk. “I need … she needs her clothes! Her diapers!”
“I paid every penny for that shit! Hard work! Long hours on the road, while you sat here getting fat and playing house! You don’t get that stuff. Let the goddamn lawyer and your friend here set you up. Bitch.”
“Cal … please! I’m sorry!”
He turned his back on her and crossed his arms. “You be off my property before the police come, or I’m claiming trespassing and theft on you.” He whirled around and stared at Clare. “All of you!”
“Tiny.” Clare kept her voice low and calm. “We need to leave.”
The woman flung herself on Cal instead, trying to wrap herself around him. He wrestled out of her hold and twisted her arms behind her back. Tiny shrieked.
Clare set her teeth and backed out of the door.
There was nothing she could do to help Tiny with the infant weighing her down.
As she crossed the deck, step by exacting step, Cal marched his wife out the door.
When they were halfway to the ramp, Cal gave her a hard push.
Tiny fell sprawling onto the wooden flooring, snow scattering around her as she skidded toward Clare.
“Get out and stay out!” Cal slammed the door behind him.
“Yíxīn!” Clare needed another pair of hands. Tiny was rumping up from where she had fallen like a baby attempting to crawl. “Yíxīn!”
The lawyer brushed past her. “I got the car running.” She twisted her hands in the shoulders of Tiny’s coat and hauled the other woman off the deck. She turned toward Clare, her face saying, Now what?
Clare stepped forward and pushed Rose into her mother’s chest. Despite her distress, Tiny wrapped her arms around the baby.
Clare moved even closer, trapping the child between the two of them, staring directly into Tiny’s reddened eyes.
“Tiny.” She took a deep breath, and the other woman copied her.
“We can fix this. We will fix this. But right now, we have to go. Your daughter might be in danger, and we need to go. Just for now.”
Tiny jerked her head in a nod.
Clare stepped back. “Yíxīn, grab the diaper bag.” It was sitting where Cal had thrown it, slowly whitening under the snow. Clare took Tiny’s hand in hers and led her down the ramp to where, as promised, the car was running.
“I don’t have a car seat,” Tiny whispered.
“It’ll be okay for a little while. Go ahead and get in.” Clare shut the door on the woman and child.
Yíxīn came up beside her and took her briefcase from Clare’s shoulder. “You okay to drive?”
“I have to be, don’t I?”
The lawyer glanced at the tree-shrouded drive, blurred by the fast-falling snow. “I can give it a shot.”
Clare took a deep breath. “No. Sorry. I’m just feeling a little shaky.”
“Really? You were so calm!”
Clare smiled sideways. “I fake calm really, really well.” She opened the driver’s door. “Let’s get out of here before he remembers that gun in the bedroom.”