Raising the Stakes

“Harman—”

A whimper drifted through the thin wall. Dawn grew rigid with fear as the whimper grew stronger.

“Wazzat?”

“The wind,” she said quickly, “it’s just the wind.”

“Mama?”

The baby’s cry was soft but it seemed as loud as a church bell in the silence. Tommy, she thought, Tommy, no, please, baby, no. Go back to sleep.

“Mama?” her son said, and began to cry.

“It’s the kid,” Harman grumbled. “Just listen at him, sobbin’ like a girl.”

“He’s not. He’s just—we must have woken him. He heard us and he’s afraid. He’s only a baby.”

“I’ll give him somethin’ to be afraid of,” her husband said. He rose up on one elbow, groaned and fell back against the pillows. “In the mornin’. I’m too wore out now. Man works all day, comes home for a little peace and quiet and does he get it?”

“Maaamaaa…”

“Go shut the kid up, you hear me, Dawn? You keep him quiet, or else.”

Dawn sprang from the bed. She tugged what remained of her nightgown together and ran into the next room. Tommy was standing up in his crib. He was too big for it, really, and suddenly she knew why she hadn’t suggested it was time to put him into a bed, because she’d been afraid of this all along, afraid of Harman taking a good look at their child and realizing he wasn’t a baby any longer.

“Mama?”

Tommy sobbed her name, lifted his arms to her and she scooped him up, held him close, soothed him with whispers and kisses.

“Hush, sweetheart,” she said softly. “Mama’s here. She won’t let anybody hurt you.”

Except, it was a lie. Harman would hurt him and she’d be powerless to stop it from happening. Hot tears burned her eyes. Why had she denied the truth for so long? Her husband was a monster. He took pleasure from inflicting pain on those too weak to fight back. Tommy’s life would be even worse than hers. He was a child, and helpless. Harman would brutalize him…and when he grew up, what kind of man would he be? One who’d learned to beat others into submission with his fists?

No. God, no. She couldn’t let that happen. She was the one who had brought her baby into this and she was the only one who could save him. Dawn knew it as surely as she knew that the silk moth outside would be dead by morning.

Sounds came through the thin wall. Harman was asleep and snoring. He’d snore straight through to morning and wake up mean-tempered and even more dangerous than he was now.

Quietly she stole from the baby’s room to the kitchen where the day’s laundry lay neatly folded in a wicker basket, awaiting the touch of the iron. She always ironed on Saturdays. Harman preferred it like that. He liked to sit by the stone hearth and watch her iron. She’d told herself it was a charming, homey thing to do. Now, for the first time, she saw it for what it was, a fabrication that made them seem like a real family when they were actually something out of a nightmare.

Tommy had fallen asleep. Holding him carefully in one arm, Dawn dug into the basket for a change of clothes for her son and a cotton dress and underwear for herself. Gently she laid him in the basket while she stripped off her torn nightgown and put on the fresh clothes. She knew she looked a mess, not just because her dress was unironed but because her face had to be bruised. Almost as an afterthought, she looked down at her feet. No shoes. Well, that was all right. Shoes were easy enough to come by.

Life wasn’t.

Dawn settled the baby in the crook of one arm as she took the flour canister from the cupboard and dug down inside it for the few dollars she’d managed to squirrel away from what she earned selling her blackberry preserves each season. She’d never let herself think about why she’d saved the money and hidden it; it had been a terrible risk that would surely have brought her a beating. Now, she knew she’d put the money aside in anticipation of this moment.

Harman’s keys lay on the floor, glittering in the light cast by the lamp. She picked them up, opened the door and stepped onto the porch where the thwarted silk moth still beat against the window screen. Dawn hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she went back into the house and reached for the lamp.

The light blinked out. The awful sound of the moth’s wings thudding fruitlessly against the screen stopped in almost the same instant. Carefully Dawn eased the door open and stepped outside. In the faint wash of the moon, she could see the creature hovering in confusion at the window.

As she had done so many years before, she scooped up the silk moth with her hand.

“Fly away,” she whispered. “Fly away, and don’t ever come back.”

The moth’s great wings beat. It lifted into the air, hung suspended before her for an instant, then flew into the night. Dawn climbed into her husband’s truck, strapped her baby into the seat beside her. She took a deep breath, stuck the key into the ignition, turned it and stepped down, hard, on the gas.

In her heart, she’d always known it would come to this, that she would have to take her child and run for his life and for hers.

She was leaving the monster she’d married and she was never, ever coming back.