Chapter Seventy-Eight Dottie
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Dottie
We opened the door in the far corner of the basement and entered the fallout shelter with one last load of mason jars.
Suddenly, Peggy cried out, doubled over, and dropped a jar of beet pickles on the hard-packed dirt floor. The jar broke open. The liquid inside seeped into the dirt.
She moaned softly, then sank onto one of the cots we keep inside the shelter.
I set my crate of preserves on the table next to the shelf holding the blankets, board games, and first aid supplies. Then I sat beside her.
“Are you okay?”
She closed her eyes, then nodded. “The baby’s coming.”
“Right now?” I asked, alarmed.
“The contractions started at dawn.”
“But you aren’t due until the end of the month,” I argued, as though this would somehow make the contractions stop.
“Sometimes babies come early,” she said, wincing.
“Shouldn’t you go to the hospital?”
“I can’t.”
My mouth went dry, and I swallowed. “Why not?”
“Because I’m giving birth to your baby. Remember?”
“This is crazy.” I took her arm and attempted to pull her up, off the cot. “You need a doctor.”
She waved this advice away with a sharp groan. Then she turned to me, her pale face urgent. “We don’t have much time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for saving your life.”
I turned to stare as her mask fell away. And suddenly I saw her for what she truly was. A young woman, poor, scared, desperate. And all my jealousy fell away. The fear and the anger dissolved, too, leaving only the truth behind, like a residue after all the lesser elements have burned away.
“You’re trying to poison me, aren’t you?”
She shook her head. “The foxglove was designed to make you feel sick and weak and lethargic. To keep you from running away. To keep you here until I went into labor. I’m sorry about that. I truly am. But I can’t . . . I can’t help Dickie with the rest. I won’t.”
The top of my scalp prickled. “What do you mean . . . the rest?”
“The locks.” She grimaced as she waved a limp hand toward the door. “He reversed them.”
I rose from the cot and examined the door to the fallout shelter. The dead bolt, the throw bolt, and the hook and eye bolt. Everything used to be on the inside. Now the door to the fallout shelter locks from the outside.
I shuddered. “Why would—”
“He wants to lock you inside the fallout shelter. Then he’ll shut the garage door and start the car. There’s this small hole, above us, in the corner of the garage. He’ll kill you with carbon monoxide poisoning.”
My body froze. “And then tell everyone I died in childbirth.”
She nodded, eyes enormous in her pale face.
“After you’re . . . dead . . . he’ll haul your body upstairs.
He’ll stage it all. Everything . . . that comes out of my body will bolster his story.
The bloody sheets . . . the afterbirth .
. . the placenta. He’ll call the doctor, and it will all look so convincing.
So obvious. No one will bother to examine you.
No one will doubt his story. Not when there’s a dead woman and live baby lying in his bed. ”
“What happens to you?”
“I stay. We get married.” Her lip twisted and her face went hard. “And then we live happily ever after.”
I rubbed my hands over my face and sat down beside her on the cot. “I’m so incredibly stupid.”
“No, you’re not.” She reached out to touch my arm and I flinched and pulled away. “You’re kind and trusting and good, so it would never occur to you to do something this depraved.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I turned to face her. “Isn’t this what you wanted? With me out of the way you get to raise your own child. You have a husband to claim your . . .” I can’t bring myself to say the word.
“I have a husband to claim my bastard?”
“Yes.”
“I was fine with giving you my child. I was fine with you raising my baby and pretending it’s yours. But I’m not fine with murdering you and then taking your place as Dickie’s wife.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s wrong,” she said simply.
“Ah yes. And you’re such a moral person.”
“I’m not a bad person.” She looked hurt.
“You sure fooled me. You’re sleeping with my husband.”
“That’s not . . . it’s not what you think.”
I thought back to the mattress above my head. “What else could it possibly be?”
“Look, when I started having contractions this morning, Dickie told me to lock you in the fallout shelter. And I think we should still do that.”
“Why on earth would I let you—”
“Just listen. Please.” She winced and pressed her hands into her back. Then she turned her pale face toward me. “I lock you in here. I have the baby. And then I leave.”
“How does that help me?”
“If I’m gone, he can’t kill you. He needs a wife. And he needs a mother for the baby. You’ll be safe, once I give birth.”
“No.” I shake my head slowly. “I’ll be safe until the next pregnant mistress comes along. Then he’ll do the same thing again. I’m not staying here with him. I can’t.”
“You don’t have to stay forever. Just a couple days. Then you take the baby and run.”
“And then what?”
“And then you raise my baby as your own. You have money. You have a nice place down in Florida. You can raise him there.”
“But it’s your baby. Don’t you want to raise this baby yourself?”
“With what? Love and fairy dust?” Her face twisted in anguish as tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“I have no money. No husband. No job. I don’t even have a place to live anymore.
And I can’t get a job with a baby to care for, even if someone were willing to hire an unwed mother.
No.” She shook her head. “I’ll leave. And you take the baby. ”
Silence filled the space between us as a kaleidoscope of ideas bloomed inside my mind.
“We’ll go together.”
“How?”
“We lock Dickie in this stinking room. We take the baby and head to Florida. When we get there, we call the police and tell them everything. He’ll go to jail, and we’ll never have to worry about him again. And we’ll raise your baby. I’ll get a job. I’ll help you.”
She looked up at me with those big eyes. “You’d do that, for me?”
“I’d do it for your baby.”
“The baby isn’t Dickie’s.”
I sink back against the cinder block wall behind the cot. “What?”
She nodded, a small smile creasing her face. “He thinks he’s the father. But he’s not.”
“Then who—”
“The baby’s father died in Viet Nam.”
A quick intake of breath. “Danny.”
“Yes.”
“You’re the girl with the green eyes.”
“He talked about me?”
“All the time. In his letters from basic training.”
She smiled. “We met when he was at Fort Leonard Wood. I moved up here to work at the dealership before he shipped out. We were going to get married. But then his orders came, a week after I arrived. And then he died . . . over there. I don’t know if my last letter ever reached him . . . telling him about the baby.”
She stroked her swollen belly. “When I realized I was pregnant, and Danny was dead . . . I panicked . . . and Dickie . . . well, he was always making passes at me. Always touching me. Always asking me to bend over and pick up the pencil he’d just dropped on the floor.
So I stopped fighting him off. It was impossible anyway, trapped in that office with him after everyone else had gone home, on those days when he asked me to stay late to take ‘dictation.’” Her lips curled downward in a sneer as she said the word.
Her expression hardened. “I let him do what he was going to do anyway, whether I wanted him to or not. I figured I could get some cash out of him if he thought the baby was his. Figured he’d put me up somewhere while I was pregnant.
And he did. Paid my rent and all my expenses these last few months once I started to show and had to quit working .
. . and then he told me if I just stayed here until the baby was born, you would raise it .
. . and I was fine with that . . . but I never in a million years imagined that he’d try to kill you. ”
“When did you find out?” I asked.
“This morning, when the contractions started. He told me what I needed to do . . . and I can’t. A tiny trace of foxglove to keep you here until the baby came is one thing. But this . . . this is murder. And I won’t do it.”
She gasped as another contraction gripped her body. “We don’t have much time . . .”
I grabbed her hand, and she squeezed so hard I thought she’d break my fingers.
“After the baby comes, I’ll send him out to get something, something to get him out of the house.
He has no idea, about babies or childbirth or what a woman needs after.
I’ll tell him we need talcum powder for the baby.
Or aspirin or orange juice or pickles for me.
Something. He’ll be so happy when he sees it’s a boy. He’ll do anything I ask.”
“How do you know it’s a boy?”
“Danny told me.”
My mouth dropped open and all my words dried up.
She looked sheepish. “He comes to me sometimes. Just before I fall asleep. He tells me things. He told me to trust you.”
Another agonized cry erupted from her body.
“Tell me you’ll do it.” She squeezed my hand so hard I thought the bones would break.
“You’re asking me to let you lock me up in here?”
She nodded. “And then I’ll let you out, after he leaves.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then Dickie will hunt you down and kill you. You know he will.”
The accuracy of her prediction sank into my skull.
She was right. He couldn’t get remarried if I was still alive and well and living in Florida.
He couldn’t claim this baby as his own, marry Peggy, pursue his political ambitions, or continue with his life as Daddy’s son-in-law. None of this worked with me alive.
But if Peggy and I left together, we could go to the police. It wouldn’t be just my word against his. Peggy could prove he’d been unfaithful. I could divorce him. And they could arrest him for attempted murder.
“Does that car of yours actually run?” she asked.
I smiled. “It does now.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced. “The minute he leaves . . .” she panted out the words. “We take the baby and go.”
“We could go now—”
“This baby . . .” She let out a low moan as her gaunt face twisted in pain. “This baby is coming . . . and I can’t give birth alone . . . in the back seat of a car . . . while you drive.”
My mind rushed ahead, sprinting through my options. I could push her away, run up the stairs, jump in the car, and leave.
But what would Dickie do to her when he realized I got away?
I shuddered as the truth washed over me.
Dickie will kill her. And he’ll kill the baby too. He’ll cover the whole thing up. Pretend Peggy and the baby never existed. And then he’ll hunt me down. His story only works if he has my dead body and her live baby.
I can’t leave them here to die at the hands of Dickie. Her plan is the only way to save all three of us and send Dickie to jail for the rest of his life.
Did I trust her?
I looked into her eyes and saw my own fear of Dickie reflected back.
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Pack a bag. For us both. Don’t take too much from the closet, or he’ll notice.”
“He’ll be home in an hour.”
“I know. We don’t have much time.”
“I’ll put the bag in the trunk of the car. Then you lock me in.”
“Okay,” she grunted through gritted teeth. “I’m gonna stay here a minute. Catch my breath. Do you trust me?”
“Strangely, I do.”
We sat there for a long moment, me stroking her back, her squeezing my hand.
Dickie thinks we have no power because we are women. But oddly, we have power together because we are women.
But just in case something goes wrong, I’m leaving these diaries behind, leaving them hidden.
If all goes well, I’ll come back for them. After we’re divorced, after Dickie is arrested and locked up in prison, away from all women, where he belongs.
But if Dickie succeeds in killing me, I will leave a clue, buried in the past, leading to the truth.