Blythe watches with something akin to pity as Nadine softens her voice and says sweetly, “Let’s go back up front and I’ll tear up the papers and these ladies can all go home and you and I can go somewhere and talk.” There is a plea in her voice that borders on begging. None of the other women like hearing it. And yet they understand and even admire her for trying to intervene.
Tommy shakes his head, a grim look on his face. “It’s too late,” he says. “They’re already calling the cops.”
He doesn’t say who “they” are, but the women know who he means—the woman with the gift basket and the one who just made it out the door to freedom. They also know he’s right; the police have probably been notified. And they are relieved at the thought. The cops will come and put an end to this soon. For their part, they just need to cooperate, to do whatever needs doing to get them out of here. Though they never say it aloud, it is understood and agreed upon with the looks they exchange between them.
Tommy backs toward the exit door, the gun aimed at them as he locks it. That done, he spies a chain on the floor, giving a sadistic little laugh as he grabs it and quickly loops it around the door handles, making it even harder for anyone to get in from outside. That done, he turns and waves the gun at them.
“Now, let’s all get back to where we were and figure out what to do next.” His gaze falls on Sylvie, and he raises his eyebrows as if in question, even though he hasn’t asked one. In that moment, with that look, she sees uncertainty, anxiety, the need for reassurance. She sees a little boy playing at a man’s game. Now that she has seen it, she can’t unsee it. She isn’t sure if this glimpse into Tommy’s humanity is good or bad. She hopes that soon he will let them go and it won’t matter either way.
Chapter 8
The women make their way back to the front of the post office where it all started. They move much slower, their shoulders slumped, defeated as they come to a stop just inside the room, uncertain what to do next. Morrow doesn’t suppose she will be mailing her package today after all.
Maya.Her daughter’s name comes to mind as she watches Tommy step into the room and pass his outstretched gun in front of each one of them, a warning. It is Maya she thinks of as she watches the barrel of the gun go past her, how like a gun her daughter had been this morning: loaded, aimed in her direction, with the potential to blow things apart. It was that threat and Morrow’s need to do something in response that brought her here, to this moment in this room.
They’d been continuing a conversation that bordered on an argument from the night before. Maya wanted a tattoo because, using the timeworn argument, all her friends were getting one. Her latest strategy had been to convince Morrow to get a matching tattoo with her. Though it was an obvious ploy, she had to hand it to the kid. Her tactic was clever, and insightful. Much of Morrow’s time was spent trying to do things with her daughter.
“Want to watch TV?” “No.”
“Want to go out for dinner?” “No.”
“Want to take a walk on the beach?” “No.”
“How about we go shopping?” “No.”
Nothing worked. There’d once been a time when spending time together had been Maya’s favorite thing to do. Morrow remembers longing to go to the grocery store by herself, a rare treat. Maya had been her “mostly companion,” a phrase they picked up from reading the Eloise books, a favorite of Maya’s. Morrow had thought it would always be that way, a string of days consisting of mother-daughter outings that stretched into the distant future.
But then that changed. One day Maya began pulling away, at first barely perceptibly, then gradually more obviously. Her friends became her “mostly companions,” leaving Morrow always on the outside, trying to find a way back in. Oh, she’s read the books; she understands the psychology behind it all, how teenagers have to pull away so they can leave the nest, how it is the order of things. But that doesn’t make it feel better.
Now she wonders what would’ve happened if she’d chosen to see Maya’s tattoo offer as a sort of olive branch, the beginning of a way back to each other instead of just another one of her schemes. What would it have hurt if she’d just responded, “Yes, I will get a matching tattoo with you. Let’s talk about it when you get home this afternoon”?
Instead, she’d said, “You don’t put a bumper sticker on a BMW,” which is something Morrow wholeheartedly believes but was, in hindsight, the wrong thing to say at that moment. She does not understand the obsession with tattoos that has become all the rage for the younger generation. She can’t think of a single thing she’d want inked on her skin forever. She would never do it, and she feels that it’s her job to keep her daughter from doing so, even if it’s only long enough for her frontal lobe to develop a little more.
But her quip had been enough to incense Maya. If she couldhave a sense of humor about it—and maybe she will one day—Maya would laugh at her own senseless dramatics. The crying, the shrieking, the accusations: Morrow didn’t love her enough to get a matching tattoo; she was the meanest mother in the world; and then the final one, the one that stung the most. The one Morrow doesn’t like thinking about. But since this morning, she has thought of nothing else.
With that Maya had stormed out of the house, gunning the engine of her car as she drove off to one of her last days of high school. Morrow had waited till she was gone, then slowly, resignedly climbed the stairs to her daughter’s room. Though the test had since been tossed in the trash, it was there nonetheless.
If not for Maya, if not for the blowup this morning, Morrow would not be here now. But she does not blame Maya. This is Morrow’s own fault, her own harebrained idea that got her here. She has brought this on herself with her need to fix things, her compulsion to set things right. “Let it go,” her husband, Kevin, is always saying to her. “Just let it go.” But Morrow cannot. So here she is.
The women stay clustered together, casting serious glances back and forth, unsure where to stand or what to do. When Tommy goes to the bank of windows that line the front wall to peer out at the parking lot, Morrow steps away from the group and sidles back over to her tote bag, which she’d left behind when they tried to escape.
She picks it up and peeks inside, taking inventory of the contents once more: umbrella (there was rain in the forecast, but so far not a drop has fallen), wallet, phone, makeup, pain reliever, lip balm, the little deck of cards that looks like playing cards but isn’t, a notebook and pen, and then the package, right there in the mix of her normal, everyday things. If things had gone as Morrow intended and Nadine had gotten the chanceto take it from her, it would be gone already. But it is still nestled right there where she tucked it, looking benign when it is anything but.
Maya, she thinks again. She wonders what her daughter is doing at this very moment, if she senses that her mother is in danger. Is she in danger? Morrow looks over at Tommy, who is pacing in front of the windows, talking to no one in particular.
“I bet they’re on their way right now,” he is saying to himself over and over. He doesn’t say who “they” are, but he doesn’t have to. He means the cops, and the women all hope he’s right.
With Tommy’s attention diverted, Morrow reaches inside her tote and feels for her phone, extracting it in one smooth motion. She could try to call the police, but she probably only has enough time to do one thing before Tommy catches her with it. As Tommy already pointed out, there’s a high probability that the woman with the basket called the police as soon as she ran out. Or the one who was on the phone has already used that very same phone to dial 911, probably while she was still running from the building. So Morrow makes her choice.
Holding the phone just inside the bag so Tommy won’t see, she glances down long enough to find her daughter’s last text. She has, she knows, a mere moment before he turns around again and sees what she’s doing. She can’t risk him seeing her with it and taking it from her. Her phone is her link to her family, the only link she has now, thanks to him.
If this situation goes badly, if something were to happen to her, she cannot leave things with Maya the way she left them this morning. She can still hear the slamming of the door as Maya left. She can see herself rinsing her coffee mug in the sink, keeping her back turned until Maya was really and fully gone. In the silent house, residual anger still crackled in the air around her head, as charged as electricity.
I did let it go, she tells Kevin in her head.And look what happened.She’d let Maya leave without another word, thinking she’d have a chance later to fix things between them. But what if she doesn’t get that chance? She cannot leave her daughter thinking that she does not care, that the rift they left between them is not a rift to her core.
Keeping her eyes on Tommy, she holds the phone down and texts eight letters and two spaces without looking at the screen, trusting her fingers to find the right buttons. Then she looks away from him long enough to check her spelling, to make sure her daughter can read the three words she has written:
I love you
