18. Carrie
— ? —
Carrie
Tom’s hospital room is quiet except for the beep of monitors.
He lies motionless in the bed, his face pale against the white pillows. His right arm and shoulder are wrapped in thick bandages, and there’s an IV line snaking into his left hand. He looks smaller somehow, fragile in a way I’ve never seen him before.
He went back into that cabin for a reason he never explained. He almost died for it, and I still don’t know what it was.
I pull a chair up to his bedside and take his unbandaged hand in mine. His skin is cool, his fingers limp. He doesn’t stir.
“Hey,” I whisper. “It’s me. Can you hear me?”
No response. Just the steady beep of his heart monitor.
“The doctor says you’re going to be okay. The burns are bad, but they got you into surgery fast. You’re going to have scars, probably. On your arm and shoulder. But you’re alive.” My voice catches. “You’re alive, and that’s all that matters.”
I lift his hand and press it against my belly, flat and warm through the thin hospital gown they made me change into.
“I have something to tell you.” The tears are starting again. I let them fall. “I’m pregnant, Tom. It worked. The deal we made, it actually worked.”
His hand is motionless against my stomach, but I keep talking anyway. I need him to hear this. I need him to know.
“Five to six weeks, they said. Which means it happened early. Those first weeks at the cabin.” I laugh through my tears. “Remember that night? When you carried me to bed and I cried because you were so gentle? Because you touched me like I mattered?”
The monitors beep steadily. Tom doesn’t move.
“I never thought this would happen. After everything the doctors said, after years of trying and failing, I’d given up.
I’d accepted that motherhood wasn’t going to happen for me.
And then you.” I stop, overwhelmed. “You gave me everything Ulises never could. Not just the baby. The hope. The belief that I was worth something.”
I lean forward and press my lips to his forehead. His skin is warm, slightly clammy.
“Wake up,” I whisper against his skin. “Please wake up. I need you to meet our daughter. Or son. I don’t care which. I just need you to be there.”
The door opens behind me.
I know who it is before I turn around. I can smell him, whiskey and smoke and a sourness underneath. The reek of a man who’s been drinking all night, who hasn’t showered, who’s been slowly falling apart.
“How touching.”
Ulises stands in the doorway.
He looks wrecked. His clothes are wrinkled, his hair disheveled, his eyes bloodshot and wild. There’s a bruise on his jaw from where Tom hit him, was that only last night? It might as well have been a lifetime ago, and his hands won’t stop moving, clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Get out.”
“I don’t think so.” He steps into the room, and the door swings shut behind him. “I heard the doctor in the waiting room. Congratulations are in order, apparently.”
My hand goes to my belly instinctively. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“Doesn’t it?” He laughs, and there’s nothing sane in the sound. “You couldn’t give me a baby in six years. Six years of treatments and tests and tears and drama. And you spread your legs for my brother once and suddenly you’re pregnant?”
“It wasn’t once.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. A few times then. A few weeks of fucking and you manage what you couldn’t do in six years of marriage.” His voice is rising, the words slurring together. “What does that tell you, Carrie? What does that say about us?”
“It says you were the problem.” The words come out quiet. Steady. “It was never me, Ulises. It was always you.”
His face contorts. “You lying bitch.”
“I’m not lying. I’m not the one who cheated. I’m not the one who spent six years making his wife feel worthless while sleeping with half the city. I’m not the one who set fire to a cabin with two people inside.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“I saw you. I saw your car pulling away from the trees. The police are going to find evidence, accelerant, probably, or your fingerprints, or whatever else you left behind in your hurry to watch us burn.” I stand up, putting myself between him and Tom’s unconscious form. “It’s over, Ulises. You lost.”
“I haven’t lost anything.” He takes another step toward me, and I can see the madness in his eyes now.
The man I married is gone, burned away along with whatever humanity he once possessed.
“You think you can make a fool of me in front of everyone I know? Destroy my reputation? Take my brother and flaunt it in my face?”
“I didn’t take anything. Tom chose me. The same way you chose Martha. The same way you chose all those other women.”
“Tom doesn’t get to choose.” His voice drops to a hiss. “Tom doesn’t get to have what’s mine. He’s spent his whole life in my shadow, taking scraps from my table. And now he thinks he can just, what? Steal my wife? Give her a baby? Play house in his pathetic little cabin?”
“The cabin you burned down.”
“The cabin that should have burned with both of you in it!” He’s shouting now, spit flying from his lips. “You think I’m going to let you walk away? You think I’m going to let my brother raise my wife’s child while I rot in some prison cell?”
“You don’t have a choice.”
He moves fast. Faster than I expected. His hand closes around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, and he backs me against the wall, his face inches from mine.
“I always have a choice, Carrie. Always.”
“Let go of me.”
“Or what?” His breath is hot and sour on my face. “You’ll scream? Call for help? And who’s going to believe you? The confused little amnesiac who can’t even remember her own husband?”
“Everyone knows the truth now. Your grandmother. My parents. Everyone.”
Doubt moves through his eyes. Or fear. But it’s gone as fast as it came.
“Then I have nothing left to lose, do I?”
He releases my throat and steps back. His eyes are cold now, calculating, the madness tamped down behind a colder thing.
“You don’t get to keep her,” he says quietly. “Not for long.”
He turns and walks out.
The door clicks shut behind him, and I collapse against the wall, gasping, my hand pressed to my throat where his fingers were. My pulse slams against my own fingers.
He’s going to act. He’s not done. He’s.
“Carrie.”
The voice is weak. Hoarse. But it’s Tom.
I spin around. He’s awake, barely, his eyes half-open, his good hand reaching for me.
“Tom!” I rush to his bedside, take his hand in both of mine. “You’re awake. How do you feel? Should I call the nurse?”
“Ulises.” His voice is barely a whisper. “Was he here?”
“He just left.”
“Don’t leave this room.” His hand tightens on mine with surprising strength. “Promise me, Carrie. Don’t leave this room until I can stand.”
“Tom.”
“Promise me.”
The fear in his eyes is real. Deep. The fear of a man who knows his brother better than anyone.
“I promise.”
He nods, his eyes already closing again. “I love you. The baby...”
“I know. The baby’s fine. We’re both fine.”
“Good.” His grip loosens as consciousness slips away again. “Don’t leave... don’t...”
He’s asleep.
I sit beside his bed, holding his hand, watching his chest rise and fall. The monitors beep steadily. The room is quiet.
But I can’t shake the feeling that the worst is still coming.