“...touch a fucking hair on her—”
“She’s dying.” Paula smiled at Laura’s abrupt silence. She held the phone under Andy’s chin. “Tell her, sweetheart.”
Andy clutched her hand to her side. She could feel the blood seeping out of her.
“Andrea?” Laura said. “Please, talk to—”
“Mom...”
“Oh, my darling,” Laura cried. “Are you okay?”
Andy broke down, a strangled cry coming from deep inside her body. “Mom—”
“What happened? Please—oh, God, please tell me you’re okay!”
“I—” Andy didn’t know if she could get the words out. “I was shot. She shot me in the—”
“That’s enough.” Paula raised the gun and Andy went silent. She told Laura, “You know what I want, Dumb Bitch.”
“Edwin—”
“Is dead.” Paula raised her eyebrows at Andy, as if this was a game.
“You stupid fucking idiot,” Laura hissed. “He’s the only one who knows—”
“Shut up with your bullshit,” Paula said. “You know where it is. How much time do you need?”
“I can—” Laura stopped. “Two days.”
“Sure, no problem.” Paula grinned at Andy. “Maybe your kid will go into shock before she bleeds out.”
“You fucking cunt.”
Andy was rattled by the hateful words. She had never heard her mother like this.
Laura said, “I will slice open your fucking throat if you hurt my daughter. Do you understand me?”
“You dumb bitch,” Paula said. “I’m hurting her right now.”
Andy saw a flash.
Everything went black.
* * *
Andy was aware that something was wrong even before she opened her eyes. There was not a moment where it all came back to her, because she had never for a moment forgotten what had happened.
She had been shot. She was inside the trunk of a car. Her hands and feet were bound by some configuration of handcuffs. A towel was duct-taped around her waist to stanch the bleeding. The gag in her mouth had a rubber ball that made it hard for her to breathe because her nose was filled with blood from being pistol-whipped into unconsciousness.
As with everything else, Andy could recall the blows from the revolver. She hadn’t really blacked out. She had felt more as if she’d been caught between the edge of sleep and wakefulness. When Andy was in art school, she had craved that stasis because it was where she found her best ideas. Her mind seemingly blank but still working through the various shades of black and white she would elicit from her pencil.
Did she have a concussion?
She should’ve been panicked, but the panic had gurgled back down like water circling a drain. An hour ago? Two hours? Now, her only overriding feeling was intense discomfort. Her lip was split. Her cheek felt bruised. Her eye was swollen. Her hands were numb. Her wrists had fallen asleep. If she lay the right way, if she kept her spine bent, if her breathing remained shallow, the burning in her side was manageable.
The guilt was another matter.
In her head, Andy kept playing back what happened inside the farmhouse, trying to identify the point at which everything had gone wrong. Edwin had told her to leave. Could Andy have left before the front of his shirt was ripped open by the bullets riddling his back?