“Yeah, and look where it got you,” says Nadine. “Where it got us both.”
“I hope someday you can forgive me.”
Nadine gives a bitter laugh. “Don’t count on it,” she says. Then a little smile crosses her lips.
And Tommy smiles too. It’s the first time he’s smiled, a real smile, not the sadistic one they’ve all seen earlier. He turns to Hope. “Can I still ask for something I want?” he asks her.
Yes, Hope thinks.You can ask me to facilitate your surrender. We are here, finally.“Sure,” she says.
“I want my wife back,” he says. With no warning he moves toward Nadine, taking her into his arms. For a millisecond her arms hitch slightly, as if she is going to hug him back. But then they go stiff and remain at her sides.
She looks up at him. “Tommy, what are you doing?” she asks, her face close to his. But instead of answering her, he leans down and kisses her.
Nadine immediately recoils at the kiss. She rears back, and her hand flies through the air, making contact with Tommy’s cheek in a slap heard round the room.
Tommy, dazed, backs up as Nadine turns her head to look at Hope, her mouth an O of shock as they exchange wide-eyed expressions. In the moment that her gaze is averted, Tommy pulls her to him with one arm and pulls something from his pocket with the other, placing it at Nadine’s throat. Hope sees that it is a box cutter. He must have found it at some point in the room and pocketed it. No wonder he didn’t balk at surrendering his gun. He knew he still had a weapon if push came to shove.
Hope looks at Dale at the same moment he looks to her. She wants to ask Dale, “Didn’t you pat him down? Wasn’t that your job?” But then she thinks of how Tommy had surrendered his gun, then immediately gotten down on the floor to greet the dog when they walked in. Their collective attention had gone to the touching reunion without a thought of another potentialweapon. But none of that matters now. Dale raises his gun and yells at Tommy to drop the box cutter. Blythe, Morrow, and Sylvie all come off their stools. Out in the vestibule Hope hears SWAT starting to make entry.
“Tommy, don’t do this,” Hope says. “You don’t want to do this.” She looks over her shoulder at Dale. “Give me one last try,” she says to him. She turns and gestures for the SWAT leader outside not to enter, holding up one finger. Meaning what? One more minute? One more chance? But she can’t have them storming in here. Not yet. Though they would no doubt take Tommy out, he could harm Nadine as well in the process. Hope won’t let that be the ending they get, not if she has anything to say about it. She just has to keep believing in the power of words.
“Why not?” Tommy asks. “All I have on the other side of that glass is jail.” He leers at Hope. “You can’t give me what I want. No one can.”
“But you promised,” Hope says, hearing her own words as she says them, how childlike they are, how simple they sound. And yet she sees the flicker behind Tommy’s eyes that shows he also remembers the promise. “You promised me that no one would be harmed today.”
“So?” Tommy scoffs. In his arms Nadine squirms, but he only grips her tighter. At their feet Covey paces and whines.
“So this is your chance to not let your anger get the best of you. This is your chance to be the man you want to be, the man you just told Nadine you wish you’d been. You can still be that man,” she says, hearing the pleading tone in her voice, the barely disguised desperation.
“It’s too late,” Tommy wails. In his arms, with the knife pressed to her throat, Nadine cries.
“It’s not too late,” says Hope. “There’s still hope.”
“No, there’s not!” Tommy says and in one smooth motiontakes the box cutter away from Nadine’s throat and presses it to his own as he releases Nadine.
“No!” The word is screamed above the sound of the outside officers ramming their way in. “You can’t! You can’t do this!” Hope sees that it is Nadine, who has not moved away from Tommy. She is standing with her fists clenched at her sides as tears stream down her face. “Please,” she says, her voice softer this time.
“What do you care?” Tommy says, his voice rough. But his words are already a little softer than they were a moment ago, the box cutter a little lower. “You just want to be rid of me.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “And I had to do something. Because...” She stops and looks around, as if suddenly remembering she has an audience. Her eyes meet Hope’s and Sylvie’s and Blythe’s and Morrow’s. They have all told their secrets today. It is time to tell hers. She looks back to Tommy. “Because I’m pregnant.”
The box cutter clatters to the floor. “What?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you for... well, a long time. Not till I absolutely had to. I wanted for you to get yourself straightened out, and then I figured we could talk about it. I just... I didn’t feel safe the way things were.” She pauses, thinks about that day just a few months ago, recalling how it felt to be happy and scared and sad all at the same time. “When I found out I was pregnant, well... I had to get us out of there.”
“Us...,” says Tommy.
Blythe studies Nadine’s midsection. She doesn’t look a bit pregnant to her. Maybe it’s early days still. Or maybe she’s one of those women who doesn’t show till further along. Or maybe she’s lying. If she is, it’s an Oscar-worthy performance. But if it gets them out of here, then more power to her.
Nadine looks over her shoulder at Dale, who is still holding his gun on Tommy even though he has released her and droppedthe box cutter. She turns back to Tommy. “What I’m trying to say is, you have to go out there”—she waves in the direction of the windows—“and deal with whatever comes next. And after that, well, you need to be here, to be this baby’s father.” Covey comes over and nudges her knee. She bends down and gives him a pat.
“Father,” says Tommy. He breathes the word like a prayer.
“You had a good father,” Nadine says, more to the dog than Tommy. “You can’t see it now, but you’ll be one too. I just know it.”
When Tommy begins to cry, he is too wrapped up in the swirl of emotions he is feeling—loss, joy, sadness, and, yes, hope, even in the face of all that awaits him when he leaves this post office—to take notice of something that is happening in the room. If he looked around, he’d see that the women in the room are crying too.
Chapter 37
