By Minim Calibre
Notes: Thanks, as always, to the Squad.
Five years. That’s how long it takes Mary to undo a lifetime of training, to stop spreading the sills of her windows with thin lines of salt after John’s fallen asleep, to believe the lie she’s been telling herself.
***
They leave Lawrence Tuesday morning. It’s routine by now: on the second day of May, they wake up, pack their overnight bag, get in the car and head out to Kansas City to stay in a hotel as far from home as they can afford. That first year, they didn’t have enough money even for that: they drove out to Garnett and slept in the car. That was then, and now Mary reads her paperback while John listens to the game on the radio. The Yankees beat the Royals 4-2. They go out to dinner. They don’t talk about her family. They don’t talk about much at all. She’s grateful for that. Grateful for John.
***
Mary is small and pretty and blonde. For a hunter, armor and a weapon rolled into one.
Mary doesn’t remember the first time she saw a dead body. The first time she lied to the police about one, she was 12, stammering and crying and scared to death she was going to be caught out. Afterward, Dad congratulated her on doing the job well and asked her to pass the potatoes. When she ran from the table, it was Mom who followed her, who held her while she sobbed and shook and who told her gently that her father was right; she’d done well.
Mom’s neck was snapped, just like John’s.
***
Mary orders wine with dinner, maybe has a glass or two more than she should. Enough for her to get a little tipsy, a little forward. Enough for her to take her chances when she remembers a little too late that she’d left her diaphragm in her dresser back home.
***
Most hunters don’t have children.
“We didn’t plan on it,” her mother says. Mary’s supposed to be asleep in Fred Laughton’s study, not listening to the adults talk from behind the door. “But thank goodness, it’s all worked out.”
“The kid is a born hunter, Fred. You should see her handle a gun. Hey, speaking of, let’s take a look at that ammo you were talking about.”
When she’s older, she asks her mother if she was an accident.
Mom smiles slightly and passes her the whetstone. “A happy one.”
***
The doctor has to tell her twice before she believes him. It still hasn’t managed to sink in when she calls John.
“A baby?” he echos back what she’s just blurted out, sounding just as stunned as she thinks she must.
“That’s what Dr Lewis said. Near the end of January.”
“A baby.” Mary can see his slow grin in her mind. He’s wanted this for so long.
“A baby, John. You don’t have to sound so smug.”
He takes her out for ice cream when his shift at the garage is done, the grin never leaving his face as he talks about the future, about all the things he’s going to do with their son. “I’ll teach him to play baseball, teach him everything he ever needs to know about cars.”
“He could just as well be a she. What will you do then?”
“Teach her to play softball. What about you?”
She’ll give her child everything she missed out on. “I’ll show her how to wrap her daddy around her finger.”
John goes to sleep with his hand curled protectively around her stomach. Mary thinks of the salt hidden in the powder box on her vanity, thinks of everything she doesn’t want, and for the first time in half a decade, doesn’t get up.
***
Mary’s certain she’s having a girl, John’s convinced he’s going to have a son.
John is right, but she names her firstborn after her mother anyhow, and smiles bemusedly at how much he takes after her dad. In looks at first, but as he grows, she sees her dad in Dean’s toddler bluntness. Slowly, surely, she finds herself forgiving her father for something she knows was never really his fault.
When her second son is born, she names him Samuel. And when the night nurse’s eyes flash yellow, Mary tells herself it’s just a trick of the light.