She had managed to sleep, but only fitfully. Her thoughts kept bouncing around to different topics, different books and songs and stupid lists. She had tried to name all of the sorting houses from Harry Potter, recited some passages from Goodnight Moon that she recalled from her pediatric days, listed all of the elements in the periodic table from hydrogen to lawrencium then back again, tried to count the seconds into minutes by scratching a mark on the wall, but then she kept forgetting her place and finally gave up because what was the point? They were going to leave her locked inside of this tomb until they needed her again.
“For what?” Sara asked herself in the gray light. The women in the bunkhouse were doing everything they could to make the children comfortable. Sara was not needed until the medications arrived.
If the medications arrived.
Could Sara allow herself the hope that Beau would be the one who filled the shopping list? He would surely be in custody by now. Back in the motel bathroom, his name was the first word that Sara had written on the ceiling. Was she stupid to think that the list she’d dictated to Gwen would somehow fall into Will’s hands? Was she stupider still to think that he would be able to figure out the code?
Faith would spot the letters. Amanda. Charlie. Will had people around him who could help.
“Help.” Sara kept her voice at no more than a whisper.
She was mindful of the sentry outside her cell. For the most part, he sat on the stair with his rifle on his lap. The two-inch gap under the door gave her a sliced view of his left shoulder. Sometimes, he would stand, stretch and walk from one side of the cabin to the other. Occasionally, he would check the perimeter. She could hear his feet shuffling, his sniffles and coughs and frequent bouts of intestinal distress that took place mercifully downwind.
Sara made herself stand up from the dirty floor. She felt light-headed. She pressed her palm to her growling stomach. She hadn’t eaten much lunch. The vegetables and venison had looked delicious, but the food wasn’t the problem.
Watching Dash play the good father to his doting girls was nauseating. He was clearly putting on a show. Sara had seen the real Dash down by the river when his formal, gentlemanly mask had slipped away. He had spoken about Michelle’s daughter as if her heritage made her less than human. Less than American.
Jeffrey had been murdered by a gang of Neo-Nazi skinheads. Hearing Dash regurgitate their racist ideology had made Sara look at the man’s children through a different lens. Their blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes and white dresses that made them look like they belonged on top of a wedding cake now felt more Stepford than Laura Ingalls Wilder.
She blinked in the darkness.
Who wrote that book—The Stepford Wives? The original movie starred . . . the woman who played Mrs. Robinson’s daughter in The Graduate, and wasn’t she in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, too?
The names had disappeared from Sara’s memory. Her brain was melting. She needed to eat. She needed to figure out a way into that greenhouse. She needed to get the hell out of this stifling box.
She turned and paced back the way she’d come. The heel of her sneaker caught on the sheet trailing behind her. Sara mumbled a curse. The material had torn. The hem was stained from the floor.
She had been forced to change out of her dirty clothes. She’d improvised with the sheet from the bed. There was a way to tie a toga that didn’t make you look like an idiot, but the skill was beyond her reach. After endless, frustrating minutes, Sara had ended up wrapping the sheet once around her body, then tying a giant, rabbit-eared knot over her right shoulder. She looked like Joan of Arc, but older and sweatier and bored out of her ever-loving mind.
“Fuck.” She had reached the wall. Again. Sara pressed her hands against the boards. Outside, the sentry sniffed. He was clearly not feeling well. His cough was tight in his chest.
She hoped he died of pneumonia.
Sara turned and paced a diagonal line. Then she zigzagged, which brought some novelty to the exercise. Then she exercised. Lunges, squats, deep knee bends. She thought about the gym in her apartment building. The treadmill. The elliptical machine. She didn’t miss her phone or her computer or television. She missed air conditioning. She missed having things to do. She missed Will.
Frankly, she didn’t just miss him.
Sara longed for Will the same way she had longed for him during the first year of their relationship. Not that it could’ve been called a relationship during those early months. Angie, Will’s wife, was still in the picture. Sara was still mourning Jeffrey. They had met in the ER at Grady Hospital. Will had looked at Sara the way a man looks at a woman. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she had craved that look. His desire had drawn her in, but in truth, Sara had fallen in love with Will because of his hand.
To be completely accurate, it was his left hand.
They were both standing in one of Grady’s long, subterranean hallways. Sara was enduring one of Will’s maddening, prolonged silences. She had been about to walk away, but then he had grabbed her hand.
His left. Her right.
His fingers had laced through hers. Sara had felt like every nerve in her body was suddenly awake. Will had traced his thumb along the inside of her palm, caressing the lines and indentations, then pressing gently into the pulse at her wrist. Sara had closed her eyes, trying not to purr like a cat, thinking about nothing but what his mouth would feel like against her own. There was a jagged scar above his lips, a faint, pink line that followed the ridge up to his nose.
Sara had spent hours wondering what that scar would feel like if she kissed him. When she kissed him, because she had eventually realized that she was going to have to make the first move. Will wouldn’t pick up on a signal if it reached down and cupped his balls.
She had seduced him in her apartment. He’d barely had time to walk through the front door. Sara had unbuttoned the cuff to his long-sleeved shirt and licked the scar that traced up his arm. Will’s breath had caught. She’d had to remind him to exhale. His mouth had felt perfect against hers. His body, his hands, his tongue. Sara had wanted him so badly, had anticipated that moment so many times, that she’d started to come the second he was inside of her.
She stopped pacing the cabin floor. She looked up at the ceiling. The sun was baking the tin roof. Sweat poured from her skin. She was torturing herself.
She kept going.
That first time, they hadn’t even made it to the bed. The second time was slower, but somehow more exciting. For all of his missed signals, Will was exceptionally good in bed. He knew exactly what to do and when to do it. Rough sex. Sensual sex. Dirty sex. Kinky sex. Hate sex. Love sex. Make-up sex. Missionary. Mutual masturbation. Oral.
“Shit,” Sara whispered into the dark, not because of Will but because from out of nowhere, she heard a song lyric pinging around inside her head—
My man gives good lovin’ that’s why I call him Killer, He’s not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, he’s a thriller . . .
Sara groaned.
What was the name of the song?
She shook her head. Sweat flung onto her bare shoulder. Two women rappers. 1990s. One of them had the side of her head shaved.
He’s got the right potion . . . Baby, rub it down and make it smooth like lotion . . .
Sara covered her ears, trying to trap the melody. Tessa had sung it to her over the phone. Sara was telling her about Will, then suddenly her sister was rapping about mac shit and—
From seven to seven he’s got me open like Seven-Eleven . . .
Sara started laughing. She couldn’t stop. She doubled over. Tears came into her eyes. There was something hilarious about a toga-wearing white woman being held hostage on a militia compound trying to remember rap lyrics about a man who knew how to fuck.
“Oh, Christ.” Sara stood up straight. She wiped her eyes. She tried to think of a different song to get the first one out of her head. The one about the waitress working at a . . . was it a motel bar? Hotel bar?
Sara shook her head again, longing for a reset. Will got so annoyed when she could only remember fragments of songs. She would wake him up at night asking him to finish the lines, name the band, the album, the year. Now, she was awash in fragments—
With a lover I could really move, really move. ’Cause you can’t, you won’t, you don’t stop. They’re laughin’ and drinkin’ and having a party. Run away turn away run away turn away run away. Take my hand as the sun descends. Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep. Give it away give it away give it away now.
“Salt-N-Pepa!” Sara yelled the group’s name so loudly that it echoed off the ceiling. “Whatta Man” was the song that Tessa had rapped over the phone.
Sara gripped together her hands and looked at the ceiling. “Thank you,” she said, though she was certain this wasn’t what her mother had in mind when she told Sara that she needed to pray more.
Two voices came from the other side of the door. Sara recognized Dash’s distinctive tenor, but couldn’t make out his words. The sentry was probably telling him that Sara had started screaming for seasonings.
Ain’t nobody perfect, as Salt-N-Pepa would say.