Chapter 2
I opened the door.
Linda begged me not to.
That alone told me enough.
“James, listen to me.”
I turned the key.
“Please.”
Click.
The room smelled stale.
Curtains shut.
No television.
No phone.
One narrow bed.
A chair.
A tray on the floor with yesterday’s bread hardened beside an empty water glass.
Emily’s maternity coat hung from a hook.
Her shoes sat beneath it.
And on the dresser were three things.
Her cellphone.
Her prenatal vitamins.
The emergency transmitter I had given her when she married Ryan.
All confiscated.
I looked at my daughter.
“How long?”
Emily’s eyes filled.
Ryan shouted from the bedroom:
“She needed space!”
I turned.
He had pulled himself upright.
Blood at his lip.
Still arrogant.
“You locked a pregnant woman in here.”
“She gets hysterical.”
Emily flinched.
Ryan saw it.
“See?”
He laughed bitterly.
“She cries, Dad appears, everybody stops functioning.”
I walked toward him.
“Call me Dad again.”
His smile faded.
Linda stepped between us.
“Ryan was protecting the baby.”
I looked at the empty water glass.
“By controlling water?”
“She drank too much at night.”
Emily whispered:
“I was thirsty.”
Linda rolled her eyes.
“Pregnant women always think they’re dying.”
I stared at her.
She continued.
“No one starved her. No one broke bones. You military men love turning discipline into tragedy.”
Emily wrapped both hands around her belly.
“When did they start locking you inside?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“Why?”
Silence.
Ryan answered.
“Because she wouldn’t listen.”
“To what?”
He looked at Linda.
Mistake.
I saw it.
Emily whispered:
“They kept asking me when your convoy leaves the Bennett estate.”
The apartment became completely still.
Not marriage.
Not anger.
Not domestic cruelty alone.
They had been interrogating my pregnant daughter about me.
I looked at Ryan.
“What did you want with my routes?”
He smiled again.
Then said the wrong thing.
May you like
“Ask your colonels who’s been missing shipments.”
I had never told him shipments were missing.
