There is a long pause, and if she couldn’t hear his breathing on the other end, she might’ve assumed he hung up. But then he speaks. “There is something.”
“What?” she asks, doing her best to sound unfazed by this unexpected turn.
“Hang on,” he says. She hears movement, footsteps. He must be moving away from the women, out of earshot. His voice goes low, so low she can barely hear him. “I need something stronger than bottled water,” he says. “Maybe like a fifth of Jack Daniel’s? I was thinking you could send it in here with the food.”
“Tommy?” she asks. “I can barely hear you.” This is not true. Even though he’s talking softly, she can hear him just fine. “Can you speak up?”
“No,” Tommy says, continuing to whisper. “I don’t want them to hear.”
“Why not?” She realizes she is lowering her voice to match his.
“Because they won’t want me drinking,” he says. “Especially my wife.”
When she says the next words, she uses her full voice. “Why doesn’t she like you drinking, Tommy?”
“Because I do stupid sh—” He amends his choice of language, and Hope wonders if this is just his southern upbringing (never curse around a lady) or a sign of respect for her.
“Sometimes I don’t make good choices if I’ve been drinking,” he says instead. Hope can’t help but think this a direct quote from his wife.
“Are those choices why we’re all here today?” she asks, thinking of birthrights and bowls of soup.
Tommy goes silent again. “Maybe,” he says finally. Then, “Yeah.”
“So you think drinking more in front of her might help that?”
“I don’t know. I just need it to get through this.” He huffs his exasperation into the phone. “You ask me what I want, and then when I tell you what I want, you argue with me about it.”
An idea pops into her head. Maybe she could agree to this. Or at least pretend to agree with it to get him thinking about another option. “Okay,” she tells Tommy. “I’ll tell you what. You let one of the hostages go, and I’ll get you that bottle.” She sees that Bo, who had walked over to the post office to get eyes on the hostages again, is coming back toward the car. She watches as he looks over his shoulder, then keeps walking, his face etched in concern.
She continues with Tommy. “But you need to hang up now and decide which one you’re going to let go. I’ll wait for you to call me back once you’ve made a decision.”
Across the room, as Tommy is speaking to Hope, Sylvie takes advantage of the opportunity to offer some words of encouragement to lift her fellow hostages’ flagging spirits. Even as, privately, her own worries about Robert continue to bombard her, she pushes them aside as she surveys the other three women. Blythe looks like she is about to dissolve into tears at any moment. Morrow looks perpetually concerned. And Nadine just looks broken.
Sylvie feels like a coach in the locker room at halftime. “This will be over before we know it,” she says. “He’s getting tired, starting to wear out. Which is what we want. We want him to lose hope.” She glances over at him to check that his back is still turned. “Because then he will give up,” she says. “He will surrender.” She smiles at them. “Or we will outsmart him, whichever comes first.” Nadine pats her pocket, and they all trade quick, conspiratorial smiles.
Across the room, Tommy hangs up the phone and turns to study the women, considering who he should release. They are back to sitting on their stools, talking quietly among themselves. He knows the right one to release is the old lady, but he feels a fondness for her he doesn’t feel for any of the others. She reminds him a little of his grandma, who would be—will be, he thinks with a pang—so disappointed in what he’s doing here today. The next oldest woman is closer to his mother’s age, with long dark hair and a serious expression on her face. He can take her or leave her.
Then his eyes land on the woman who fought with him over her package.Yes, he thinks,her. He will send her and her package packing. He smiles at his own joke. The smile stays on his face ashe thinks about taking the first swig of liquor, how it will burn as it goes down, warming him from the inside. He needs the liquid courage, a reason to keep going, something to look forward to. If only he hadn’t broken that bottle.
When he returns to where the women are, they go quiet. He scans the ring of them like a coyote checking out a pack of lambs, then claps his hands together. They flinch at the sound.
“So the food’s on the way,” he says. They all sit up straighter. “I’ve asked for one more thing when they bring it, though.” He points at the windows where there is, conveniently, an ABC store right across the street. “I asked them to run over there and get me a fifth of Tennessee’s finest.” He smiles without showing any teeth. “Just to take the edge off.”
Sylvie drops her head into her hands. She wonders just how experienced this Hope person is and what she could possibly be thinking in saying yes to this scheme. Then Tommy says something that makes it make sense. “So I told them that, in exchange for the booze, I’d let one of you go.”
I get it, Sylvie thinks. One less hostage means one less liability. And in letting one go, he will potentially be able to see himself letting the rest go. It is a step toward resolution.
She thinks about asking to be the one let go. She is the oldest, after all; it would make the most sense. She envisions herself getting home in time to fix dinner. If that happens, she wonders if she will even tell Robert. Probably best not to upset or confuse him. No, she decides, if she’s the one released, she will keep this whole thing from him, just like she’s kept the reason she came here today to herself. She thinks about the envelope she never mailed and wonders what she will do with it now. It is still sitting, innocuously, under her stool. She can take it with her when she walks out of here and mail it another time, though likely shewill go to the post office in Shallotte instead. She’s not sure she will ever come back here again.
“Maybe I should let you guys decide who gets to walk out of here,” Tommy says and smiles again, like this is funny, or fun. He is clearly enjoying the power as he points at each one of them. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” he says.
“Shut up, Tommy,” says Nadine. There is fire in her eyes. She wanted to be the one to free them with the keys hidden in her pocket. She liked being the one who took charge, who got him to take down the barricade so they could walk out together. On their terms, not Tommy’s. A look passes between the four of them. A look that says if one of us walks out of here and he gets more alcohol, then the rest of us could be in trouble. Nadine gives a little shake of her head, the movement almost imperceptible but the sentiment clear:No. We don’t go along with this.
Sylvie sees the other three make a silent, but certain, agreement, knowing they expect her complicity. She has assumed she will be the one let go. But what if she isn’t? What if he lets Blythe or Morrow go because they’re the ones who’ve fought him and he wants to be rid of them? Her freedom is not guaranteed. She thinks again of the envelope under her chair, of what it contains and what it means. And she knows what she must do. Maybe she really is stronger than she thought she was.
With a single nod, she adds her assent, and then Nadine speaks up for everyone. “If we walk out—” She corrects herself, saying, “Whenwe walk out of here, we walk out together. No one’s leaving here alone.”
Tommy’s face gives away his surprise. He thought he was losing one of them but gaining a fifth of whiskey. He’d already made the trade in his mind. He shakes his head. “That’s not the way itworks,” he says, a whiny tone creeping into his voice. “I promised to let one of you go. We agreed.”
