6 - SHATTERED GLASS #4
"Talk?" Joey laughed. The sound was jagged. Broken. "We're past talking. We were past talking the moment you stuck your dick in my wife."
Joey lunged.
The knife arced toward Brock's chest. Victoria screamed—a wordless sound torn from somewhere primal—and Brock moved with a speed that belied his fifty years.
His left arm came up. Deflected the blow.
The knife clattered to the floor. His right arm wrapped around Joey's torso, and he twisted, using his body weight to drive his son to the ground.
Joey thrashed beneath him. His fists pounded against Brock's shoulders, his legs kicking, his mouth spewing a stream of curses and sobs and words Victoria couldn't understand.
But Brock held him. His arms were iron around Joey's chest, and his voice was still calm, still steady, still the correctional officer who had seen worse than this.
"It's over," Brock said. "It's over, Joey. Just stop. Just stop."
The sirens were in the driveway.
Red and blue lights painted the bedroom walls.
Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs. Voices shouted commands—"Police! Drop the weapon! Show me your hands!"
—and Victoria registered distantly that the knife was still on the floor, that Joey was no longer holding it, that Brock was already pulling back with his hands raised.
Four officers filled the bedroom. Two of them pulled Brock off Joey. A third secured the knife. The fourth hauled Joey to his feet, his hands wrenched behind his back, his face twisted with a grief that had curdled into something unrecognizable.
"Sir, were you the one who called?" An officer was in front of Victoria. Her name tag read Rodriguez. Her voice was calm, professional, the same voice the dispatcher had used. "Ma'am, can you tell me what happened?"
Victoria opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"My husband," she managed. "Ex-husband. He broke in. He had a knife. He tried to—" She couldn't finish the sentence. Her hand pressed against her belly, against the baby, against the son who had almost lost his mother before he was even born.
"He's my father," Joey was saying. His voice was distant now, muffled by the hands that were cuffing him, the officers who were reading him his rights. "He stole my wife. He stole my baby. I just wanted her back. I just wanted my life back."
"Sir, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—"
They led him down the stairs.
Victoria watched him go. Watched the man she'd married, the man she'd loved, the man she'd destroyed, disappear down the hallway in handcuffs. The last thing she saw was his face—his brown eyes meeting hers for one final, terrible moment—before he was gone.
Then Brock was beside her. His arms were around her, and she was sobbing into his chest, and the baby was kicking, and the officers were asking questions, and everything was too loud and too bright and too much.
"It's okay," Brock was saying. Over and over. Like a mantra. Like a prayer. "It's okay. We're okay. The baby's okay. It's over. It's over."
"I did this." Victoria's voice was muffled against his shoulder. "I pushed him to this. I destroyed him, and this is the result."
"No." Brock pulled back. Cupped her face with both hands. His gray eyes were fierce, certain. "You didn't do this. We didn't do this. Joey made a choice. Tonight, he made a choice. And we are not going to carry the blame for his choices anymore."
The officers took their statements. Took photographs of the broken window, the scattered glass, the knife on the bedroom floor.
A paramedic checked Victoria's vitals, asked about the baby, assured her that the stress hadn't caused any immediate danger.
Someone offered to drive them to the hospital. Victoria refused.
"I just want to stay here," she said. "I just want to be home."
—
The police left at two in the morning. The house was quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet—the quiet after a storm, the quiet of shattered glass and broken locks and violence that had come too close.
Brock swept up the glass. Nailed a piece of plywood over the broken window. Checked every door, every lock.
Victoria sat on the bed and watched him. The flannel shirt was still buttoned wrong. The ultrasound photos were still on the nightstand, their son's profile visible in the lamplight.
Brock Thomas Carter Jr. Their son. Their future.
"Come here," she said when he was done.
He came. Lay down beside her. Pulled her close, his hand resting on her belly, his thumb tracing the curve where their baby was sleeping.
"I was so scared," Victoria said. "When I heard the glass break. When I saw the knife. I thought—I thought I was going to lose everything. You. The baby. Everything."
"You didn't lose anything." Brock's voice was a rumble against her hair. "We're all right here. All three of us."
"He's going to jail. Joey's going to jail."
"Probably. For a while, at least. But that's not our fault. That's not your fault."
Victoria closed her eyes. She wanted to believe him.
She wanted to believe that Joey's choices were his own, that the blame didn't extend to her, that the guilt she'd been carrying for five months could finally be set down.
But guilt was a stubborn thing. It clung.
It burrowed. It whispered in the dark that she was responsible, that this was the price of her happiness, that she would be paying it for the rest of her life.
But not tonight. Tonight, she couldn't carry it. Tonight, she was too tired, too heavy, too full of the man who held her and the son who grew inside her.
"The stress isn't good for the baby," Brock said. He was quoting Dr. Chen—the pamphlets she'd given them, the lectures about cortisol levels and prenatal health. "You need to rest. You need to sleep."
"I don't think I can sleep."
"Try. For BJ. Try."
She tried.
Brock turned off the lamp. The room went dark except for the faint glow of the security system's keypad, the tiny green light that meant the house was locked, that meant they were safe.
His breathing slowed. Deepened. But Victoria knew he wasn't asleep—his hand still traced patterns on her belly, his body still tense beneath hers.
"Will he come back?" she asked the darkness. "When he gets out. Will he come back?"
Brock was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I don't know. Maybe. But if he does, we'll be ready. We'll have more security. We'll have a restraining order. We'll have—"
"I don't want to live like that. Always looking over my shoulder. Always being afraid."
"We won't live like that forever. Eventually, this will be over. The divorce, the court cases, all of it. And then it'll just be us. You and me and BJ. Our family."
"Our family." The words were a balm. A promise. A future she could almost see if she closed her eyes tight enough—a house with a nursery, a little boy with gray eyes and dark hair, a man who loved her with a ferocity that still surprised her.
"Sleep," Brock said. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here."
Victoria pressed her cheek to his chest. Listened to his heartbeat—steady, strong, the heartbeat that had been the first thing she'd ever loved about him. Above them, the ceiling fan spun its slow, familiar rotation. Outside, the December wind rattled the plywood over the broken window.
She thought about Joey. About the man she'd married, the man who'd held her hand through every doctor's appointment, the man who'd cried over ultrasound photos of a baby that wasn't his.
She thought about the knife in his hand.
The wildness in his eyes. The love that had curdled into hatred and the hatred that had curdled into violence.
She'd done that. Maybe not directly. Maybe not intentionally. But she'd done that.
And yet, she couldn't regret it. Couldn't regret Brock. Couldn't regret the baby. Couldn't regret the happiness that had grown in the wreckage of her old life like a flower pushing through cracked concrete.
"I love you," she whispered. She wasn't sure if Brock was still awake. It didn't matter. The words were for her as much as for him. "I love you, and I love our son, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life proving that this was worth it. That we were worth it."
Brock's arm tightened around her. His lips pressed against her hair.
"Sleep," he said again.
And this time, Victoria did.