Page 50 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
“Oh, no.” Tiny pointed toward the ceiling. “He’s got a handgun in our bedroom. There’s one at the depot where his office is, and he keeps one in his truck, for when he’s driving.” They stepped outside into the falling snow and waited while Tiny relocked the door.
Yíxin paused. “And are the guns all legal?”
“I don’t know,” Tiny said. “You’d have to ask Cal.” And just like that, as if cued by a malevolent stage director, her husband’s truck drove into sight from the lane.
13.
“Oh, shit.” Yíxin stared as the pickup rolled into its parking spot. “What do we do?”
Tiny turned around and moaned. Clare felt like all the breath had left her body, replaced by icy water.
Cal got out of the pickup. He stood there for a moment, as if trying to process what he was seeing. Finally, he said, “What the hell? Tiny?”
He walked toward them, and Clare could see the point where he spotted their footsteps leading to the back door and put the pieces together. “What. The.Hell!” He lunged forward and grabbed Tiny’s arm, hauling her toward him. “You been in thedownstairs? You brought strangers intomy house?” She shuddered, sobbing. He shook her, hard, jerking her back and forth.
“Let her go.” Clare stepped forward. “We’re only here because she’s worried about you. She wants to keep you safe.”
“Safe?” He hauled Tiny closer to him. “Bitch, I’m the one who decides what’s safe or not! Who the hell do you think you are, getting between a man and his wife?”
Yíxin held her phone up. “Let her go or I’m calling the cops rightnow. And we can have a conversation with them when they get here about your previous arrests for domestic violence and your assault and battery conviction.”
“Who the hell are you?” He still had Tiny’s arm in a viselike grip.
“I’m a lawyer.”
“A lawyer!” Cal spun his wife away from him violently. Tiny slipped in the snow and fell to her knees, still sobbing. “You hired a bitch whore chink gook…” His rage and vitriol seemed to choke his words.
“You forgot slant-eyes,” Yíxin said. She pressed a button on her phone, and a voice erupted from its speaker. “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
Cal lunged at the smaller woman. Clare launched herself into his path, arms crossed over her face, and slammed into him like one of her brothers in their glory days playing football at UVA. Cal’s momentum tumbled him sideways across the slippery ground, and he clawed and lurched, trying to right himself. “Bitch,” he wheezed. She rolled over her shoulder and came back up onto her feet.
Clare had forsworn violence after her last tour of duty in Iraq, but right now, she really wished she hadn’t, because it would take two hard kicks to put him back on the ground and to break one of his knees. Instead, she helped Tiny up and began walking her toward the stairs, arm around her shoulder.
Behind them, Yíxin was giving details of their location. “No,” Tiny wailed. “No, don’t call the cops. Please!”
“Yes, we’ll wait with her until help arrives,” the lawyer said into the phone. She hung up and ran to catch up with them. “It’s already done.”
Tiny shifted out of Clare’s embrace and stumbled toward her husband, who was standing like an angry bull, his shoulders hunched, his head swinging. “Cal, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I’ll tell them to go! I don’t need any help!”
He pushed her away. “Get out of my house.”
She staggered back. “You don’t mean that. Honey…”
“You think these whores can take better care of you than your ownhusband can? Fine. Get the hell out of my house.” He stormed past her, heading for the stairs.
Oh God, the baby.Clare sprinted for the stairs and thudded across the ramp. She scooped Rose from the playpen and grabbed Yíxin’s backpack.
Cal burst through the door, trailed by Tiny, weeping and begging. Clare clutched Rose to her chest. She could feel the weight of the gun on the shelf in their bedroom and kept her eyes on Cal. If he headed in that direction—what? Break for the door and hope she could make it to her car carrying an eight-month-old? Or drop the infant on the sofa and try to take him out before he reached the weapon?
“What about Rose?” Tiny cried.
Cal picked up the diaper bag sitting beneath the hanging coats and kicked it out the door. “You think she doesn’t need her daddy. Fine. Take her. I can have another woman in here tomorrow if I want. A grateful woman, who knows how good she’s got it!”
Tiny wrapped her arms around the bag and hunched over.
“Go on! Go on!” Cal lunged forward, stomping his boot on the wooden floor. “Get out of here!”
Tiny could scarcely talk. “I need… she needs her clothes! Her diapers!”
