The world should be able to rejoice.
Theo agreed, though with clear reluctance and a nod of his head, Christian left.
We watched him drive off, waving at him from the porch until we couldn’t see him anymore. Then we were alone at long last.
But instead of falling into each other, there were more pressing matters. Husband in the basement.
My heart beat slow and steady as I sat in a chair opposite Rafael, watching him glare at me. He was tied up good, arms and legs wrapped tight to the limbs of his own chair, a gag in his mouth and nails pounded into the back of his hands to keep him from being able to move at all. Dark blood coagulated around the long, rusted over nails, the skin angry and raw. Infected, I hoped. Burning and eating at his flesh, even better.
His eyes burned with rage, impotent, incompetent rage. He knew I had him. It settled in me like an ocean breeze.
He was two days with no water, no food, no light or fresh air. In the basement of Christian’s cabin, locked away and ignored until now. And all I did now was stare at him. Seeing him in such a pathetic position gave me such pleasure it was almost worth being his willing company. The turn of the tables, the way he glared at me, trying to express his extreme anger through just the fire in his eyes — it made my body shiver with giddiness.
For the first time in our entire marriage, I found joy in his company.
I didn’t speak to him, didn’t feed him or give him water to drink, didn’t tell him what I was going to do, or cry at him about what he’d done to me. I just sat in a chair across the room and watched him realize how screwed he was.
I would have stared all day if Theo hadn’t come for me.
“Come on, love,” he sighed, striding down the stairs with a waft of Mexican food following him down. Theo said he didn’t want to spend any time down here while we figured out our next move, but he respected my wish to. He’d seemed uncomfortable when I stepped down here, but never tried to stop me. Theo was my unwavering support, as ever, trusting me to know what I needed and only helping me do it.
“It’s time to eat.” He spared Rafael a single, admonishing glance. “I’ll give him some water when you’ve gone.”
Rafael scowled at my brother when I listened right away, jumping up from my seat and moving across the room, giving Theo’s arm a squeeze as I walked past him. We had decided I would do none of the work in keeping Rafael alive. While we figured out what to do with him, Theo was tasked with making sure we didn’t accidentally starve him into an empty husk. He never spent more than two minutes down here doing his tasks, once or twice a day depending on his mood.
Rafael already was a dead husk, void of human emotion, but I wasn’t ready for him to leave the world yet. Gabe’s death had been unsatisfying for how much horror he had caused me; I wouldn’t make that mistake again. With Rafe, I was taking my time. Making him pay for every lick of pain he’d commanded.
And I wasn’t touching him unless it was to cause him that suffering.
Upstairs, I found our dinner laid out on the kitchen counter and smiled. I was starving, my appetite roaring back only this morning. I still couldn’t get the taste of Margaret out of my mouth, the way the meat felt when I’d chewed it. Her flesh wasn’t the only I’d had in my mouth, but it was the only one cooked, forced upon me, presented as a regular meal. The other times had been self-defense. But with her, it was nothing more than another bout of rotten torture.
Food was repugnant until suddenly, it wasn’t. Until all of a sudden, my stomach clawed at me to fill it.
So we ate; we didn’t think of the horror of what went on in that compound; we didn’t let ourselves sink into the fact that our entire family was dead. Not yet. I’d killed both our parents. Theo took our brother’s life. Our sisters were murdered viciously in front of us. And our uncle, our uncle maybe earned his death after all.
It was… so much that it just canceled out. Like a fire that grew so hot it put itself out.
So we ate. We embraced. We lay in the dark and ignored the world as we looked ahead at healing.
What was to come now?
I was shoveling a taco into my mouth when Theo appeared at the basement door, shutting and bolting it behind him. He wore a frown on his face that he tried to hide when he turned and saw me.
Limbo.
“The food good?” he asked, nodding to the taco fisted in my hand.
“Delicious,” I said, watching him as he moved closer. “What’s the matter?”
He shrugged as he sat down on the stool on the opposite side of the counter and picked up a piece of lettuce, rolling it into a ball and shoving it into his mouth. “It’s not enough.”
“What’s not enough?” I had a bad sense as I waited for his reply. He didn’t want me now. This was too much. He wanted to go back to his life in Chicago with Christian and all his amazing friends—
Theo shot me a look that stopped me in my spiral. “It’s not enough to let him sit in the basement. It’s not enough to let him keep breathing. It’s not enough.”
I sighed and walked to him, wrapping my arms around Theo’s neck, pressing my nose to his. As ever, I felt at home right away. How I once existed outside of his hold, I didn’t know. Every cell in my body was always screaming to return to his warmth.
“It won’t ever be enough,” I told him. “But the worst part for me was the times he made me wait.” I ignored the flashes of all the horror he’d put me through, squashed that all down for another bloody time. “The times I was convinced no one was coming back for me and I would die. Alone and afraid.”
