Chapter 17
When Sylvie falls, it is Morrow who moves toward her instead of freezing like the others in the room do. This is motherhood, she thinks, this instinct. She did not use to have it. It showed up with her children. With the arrival of her son, then several years later, her daughter,
she came to understand why mothers fought wild animals, faced off villains, lifted whole cars to save their children. It starts
with your child, then extends to the world. This kindness, this love, this grace that comes with opening your heart as wide
as motherhood does. No one child—or children—can hold it all. So you give it away any chance you get, knowing it is a renewable
resource. At least it has been that way for Morrow.
Her fall happens so fast, so unexpectedly. One minute Sylvie is leaving the window in spite of Tommy’s protests. The next
she is pitching forward, her arms scrambling for something to hold on to as she goes down. Morrow rushes to her side. “Are
you okay?” she asks as she kneels beside her. Sylvie nods, momentarily confused as she focuses on Morrow’s face. Morrow sees
that she hit her forearm on the edge of the stool as she grasped for it. She will have a bruise.
The phone rings, a shrill burst of sound that startles them all. But everyone is focused on Sylvie, so no one moves to get
it, and then the ringing stops. Gingerly, Morrow helps her to her feet and rights the stool so she can sit. “I—I—” Sylvie
tries to speak.
“Yes?” Morrow prompts her. She sees that Sylvie is gesturing at the fruit basket the woman dropped when she ran out of the post office.
Apples and oranges lie scattered about on the tile.
There is a package of cheese crackers and a package of peanuts and other things besides that still inside the basket.
“Are you hungry?” she asks Sylvie.
“Hypoglycemia,” Sylvie manages to say, looking ashamed, her voice barely above a whisper.
“What’d she say?” Tommy asks, the concern plain on his face. He should be concerned, Morrow thinks. He has further victimized an elderly woman.
“She said she has hypoglycemia,” Morrow tells him, her voice clipped.
Tommy looks confused by this. He turns to Nadine. “Is that like that dog your sister got?”
Nadine’s laugh in response to his question is more like a jeer. “That’s hypoallergenic, Tommy,” she says. She rolls her eyes
and shakes her head.
Morrow sees Tommy bristle at her reaction and hurries to cover over Nadine’s derision. “Hypoglycemia is a condition where
your blood sugar drops, and it can make you quite weak,” she tells the room, as if Tommy isn’t the only one who might not
know what hypoglycemia is.
She pats Sylvie’s shoulder. “My daughter had it when she was little.” She gestures at the contents of the spilled basket.
“You just need some food, and you should be right as rain,” she tells her.
Blythe makes herself useful, hurrying over to the food items, grabbing an apple, an orange, and the package of peanuts, then
running back over to Morrow and Sylvie. She thrusts it all in Sylvie’s direction, as if to ask, Will this work? and Morrow smiles at her effort, then takes the package of peanuts and tears it open before handing it over. When Sylvie
accepts it, her hand is shaking.
Nadine goes over to the basket as well, crouching to paw through it as Tommy intently keeps his eyes on her.
Not for the first time, Morrow wishes he would let the customers go, since it is clearly Nadine he is here for.
He couldn’t care less about the rest of them.
So why keep them here? Morrow does not understand.
Nadine shrugs and stands up. “I was hoping there was a bottle of water in there. Might be good for her to have something to
drink too.”
Morrow remembers the bottle of water in her tote. “I’ve actually got one,” she says and stands to go and retrieve it. She
reaches inside and paws around, pretending to look for her water as she sneaks a peek at her phone. Nothing from Maya.
She pulls out the water bottle and takes it over to Sylvie, who is already looking a little less peaked. Sylvie takes it,
looking grateful but still ashamed. Ashamed, Morrow knows, of falling, of being weak, of needing. Morrow would feel the same
if it were her. In a few years, Morrow thinks, I will be you. She can’t believe how quickly she has already become a woman in her fifties. Time just keeps moving, faster and faster.
Sylvie finishes the small pack of peanuts, then tries to get off the stool to throw away the wrapper, but Morrow stops her.
“I’ll do it,” she says.
“Thank you,” Sylvie says, her voice a bit stronger now.
“Happy to help,” Morrow replies. And it is true. She’s been thinking lately about what she can do next year when Maya is off
at college and her nest is empty. She will need something to fill her days. Perhaps she could do something with the elderly.
Nadine, also wanting to do what she can, goes behind the partition and gets three more stools, ignoring Tommy’s hollering
that she can’t go back there as she drags them across the floor one by one, creating a little circle for them all to be able
to sit.
“Where’s mine?” Tommy asks when she is done.
Nadine gives him a look. “This is all we’ve got,” she says. She bites back a smile at the look on Tommy’s face when he doesn’t get a seat. But he doesn’t protest as the three women tuck their belongings under their stools like Sylvie’s and settle into their places.
They sit silently as Sylvie sips Morrow’s water and the clock on the wall tick, tick, ticks away the time. It is the only noise in the room until the post office phone rings again, startling them a second time. It
is not a normal ring, so loud and shrill it makes a person want to answer it just to make it stop.
“That’ll be the police,” Sylvie says to Tommy. Her voice is stronger, and the color has come back to her face, thanks to the
food. Blythe thinks of the woman who carried that fruit basket into the post office and the fear on her face as she dropped
it and ran from Tommy and his gun. And yet it was good for Sylvie that she had left that fruit basket behind. Her gran used
to say that everything works out for a reason, and in this case, it is true.
Tommy doesn’t answer the phone, which doesn’t surprise Blythe at all. Instead, he looks at the four of them, as if the obnoxious
ringing noise is their fault. The phone rings again, then again, the shrill burst of sound sandpapering Blythe’s frayed nerves.
Mercifully, the phone stops ringing and Blythe sees her fellow captives’ shoulders relax in tandem with her own, hears the
rush as they exhale breath they were all holding. No one says anything as they sit in the silence. Blythe thinks about her
dog, Murphy, a Lab mix who passed away just six weeks ago. Blythe misses him all the time, is still surprised when he’s not
there to greet her at the door when she comes home. He was a wonderful dog, the best. Except for when the phone rang. He would
bark and bark and run around in circles till she answered it. Murphy would really lose it if he heard that ring. She smiles despite the lump in her throat.
Just then, Blythe’s phone goes off. She pulls it out of her pocket and places it in on her lap, but she doesn’t dare answer.
She doesn’t move. She just waits for the ringing to end. They all look to Tommy as Sylvie’s phone goes off next, then Morrow’s
after that, then Nadine’s, a sequence of buzzes and beeps and song. Tommy raises the gun again. Blythe wonders if the more
he does that, the less it will impact her. For now, the action still resounds, her heart picking up speed at the sight of
the barrel’s hole pointed in her direction.
“Not a one of you’d better answer,” Tommy says to them through clenched teeth.
Blythe holds up her hands, an expression of surrender. Tommy passes the gun by them all, going counterclockwise around their
little circle. “No one’s talking to the cops,” he says. He seems to ponder this, then adds, “If anyone’s going to talk to
them, it’ll be me.”
He lifts his gaze toward the ceiling, then looks back at them and holds out his free hand. “In fact, give me your phones.”
When they don’t move at his command, he makes a grabbing motion. “Hand ?em over,” he tells them, impatient. They look at one
another, conferring with their eyes as they grip their phones.
Should we give him our phones? their eyes say.
What will he do if we refuse—shoot us all?
That’s a bit extreme.
Blythe can read the whole conversation just from their expressions. She looks to Sylvie to see what she will do. Sylvie simply
stares Tommy down, stone-faced, not surrendering her phone. Blythe’s gaze travels from Tommy to Sylvie and back again. She
can see Tommy begin to waffle on his demand, realizing that, beyond shooting them, he has no recourse if they refuse to give
him their phones. This is good, Blythe thinks. They are standing their ground together.
But the spell is broken as, one by one, Tommy simply goes around the ring of stools and takes the phones from their hands.
They do not fight him, releasing the phones along with whatever power they may have momentarily reached for.
Blythe feels a sense of defeat that goes beyond the loss of her means of communication as Tommy walks away with her phone.
They should’ve stood up to him. They should’ve fought back like Morrow did.
But Blythe will not fight back alone, and everyone else has given in. So she does as well.
Blythe watches Tommy try to balance all of the phones, plus his gun, as he goes behind the counter and deposits the phones
into the same box where Nadine dropped her package hours ago. Again she thinks of asking to retrieve it. Again she keeps silent.
She looks away from Tommy and wonders if she will get out of here. And if she does, if she will be able to take that package
with her. She made a mistake in mailing it, repeating an old pattern of appeasing her mother. The one good thing in all of
this, she thinks, is that perhaps her mistake can be rectified. There is still time, she hopes, to undo what’s been done,
still time for everything to work out for a reason.