His squeezes had become painful pinches. She pushed his grasping hands away and pulled her robe together. “You had better leave. Gabe wouldn’t like knowing that—”
“That I was fucking you on the night he called me in a panic over killing his wife?”
“He never has to know about us.”
“Maybe he should.”
“No! Anyway, that phase of my life is over. I got what I wanted.”
“A well-to-do husband with a lovely home.”
“Yes.”
“Respectability.”
“Yes.”
“Gabe hasn’t married you yet.”
“Soon, though.”
“But the blushing bride-to-be welcomes me, naked except for that cheap, tacky robe and red lipstick.”
“Before I knew you were going to be so horrid.”
“You thought we would end our affair on a sweeter note.”
“Yes.”
“I hate to disappoint.”
He pulled back his fist and slammed it into her face.
The pain was so excruciating she didn’t even feel the center mirror of her vanity shattering against her back when she fell into it. He hit her in the face again, this time hard enough to knock her to the floor. She groped for the vanity stool to try and pull herself up and attempt some kind of defense, but he kicked the stool out of her reach.
She crawled on all fours in an effort to escape his hammering fists and the vile things he was saying to her and about her. Worse, he didn’t shout the insults in outrage. He spoke them in a soft but repugnant parody of sweet nothings.
He kicked her in the ribs. Then he stopped and stood over her, breathing heavily. She thought that perhaps that was the end of it. He’d vented his rage. He was through.
But then he stamped on her, and the pain was unimaginable. She screamed.
He pulled her up by her hair and pushed her face-first onto the bed. He held her head down with one hand and used the other to shove her robe up above her waist.
He clamped the tops of her thighs and forced them apart. She tried to scream again, but the mattress beneath her battered face muffled the sound. She couldn’t draw in sufficient air through either her nose or her split and bleeding lips. She feared suffocating.
But in a black and distant part of her mind, she wished she would.
His thrusts were brutal. His hands held her with bruising strength. His language was obscene, vicious, abasing. It seemed to go on forever.
Then, heaving and hot, he collapsed on top of her, leaden, compressing her lungs, making spears of the ribs he’d broken. But he lifted his hand from her head, allowing her to turn it aside and try to suck in air through her mouth, but nothing was functioning right. His sweat had combined with the cloying scent of his cologne, making her gag. She choked on blood.
Finally he pushed off of her. Standing beside the bed, he righted himself. She heard the rustle of his clothing, the jingle of his belt buckle, the clink of his watch fob. The floorboards creaked under his weight as he crossed the room toward the door. It whooshed open, the clothes hanging on the back of it swishing.
In a voice that was eerily detached, he said, “If you have the misfortune of surviving, and if you breathe a word of this, I’ll tie that brat of yours in a sack and throw him in the Brazos.”
He walked out of the bedroom. He left the house.
Norma was too benumbed to move.
Forty-Five
Laurel baked all day. Recollections of what had happened between Thatcher and her last night were persistent distractions, and her feelings about them ranged from delirium to despair. Work helped to keep those troubling thoughts from swamping her, but they lurked at the fringes of her mind, teasing and tormenting.
While her last batch of pies was cooling, she delivered Clyde Martin’s order to the café. By dusk when the O’Connors showed up, she had pies boxed and ready for them.
“Where’s the whiskey?” Davy asked.
“We’re fresh out. There’s been some trouble. Our distiller had to shut down and relocate in a hurry. I’m hopeful he’ll do a run tonight, but at this point, I just don’t know. In the meantime, we’re in the pie business exclusively.”
The twins took the news with a surprising lack of despondency. “Don’t worry yourself, lovely Laurel,” Davy said. “In view of our recent shortfall, we’ve been courting another supplier to keep us in moonshine should another shortage occur. Which it has. Once we’re up and