“Earl had that gun against her teeth, which she kept clenched, and he started screaming crazy stuff about giant worms that he thought were coming out of the walls. He accused Emma of letting the worms out of the walls, and he wanted her to stop them. I tried to talk to him, but he wasn’t listening. And then the worms kept coming out of the walls and started slithering around his feet; he got furious with Emma, and he pulled the trigger.”
“Jesus.”
“I saw her face blown away.”
“Hilary–”
“I need to talk about it.”
“All right.”
“I’ve never talked about it before.”
“I’m listening.”
“I ran out of the kitchen when he shot her,” Hilary said.
“I knew I couldn’t make it out of the apartment and down the hall before he shot me in the back, so I ducked the other way, into my room. I closed and locked the door, but he shot the lock off. By then, he was convinced that I was the one causing the worms to come out of the walls. He shot me. It wasn’t anywhere close to being a fatal wound, but it hurt like hell, like a white-hot poker in my side, and it bled a lot.”
“Why didn’t he shoot you again? What saved you?”
“I stabbed him,” she said.
“Stabbed? Where’d you get the knife?”
“I kept one in my room. I’d had it since I was eight. I’d never used it until then. But I’d always thought that if one of their beatings got out of hand and it looked like they were going to finish me, I’d cut them to save myself. So I cut Earl about the same instant he pulled the trigger. I didn’t hurt him any worse than he hurt me, but he was shocked, terrified at the sight of his own blood. He ran out of the room, back to the kitchen. He started shouting at Emma again, telling her to make the worms go away before they smelled his blood and came after him. Then he emptied his gun into her because she wouldn’t send the worms away. I was hurting something terrible from the wound in my side, and I was scared, but I tried to count the shots. When I thought he’d used up his ammunition, I hobbled out of my room and tried to make it to the front door. But he had several boxes of bullets. He had reloaded. He saw me and shot at me from the kitchen, and I ran back to my room. I barricaded the door with a dresser and hoped help would come before I bled to death. Out in the kitchen, Earl kept screaming about the worms, and then about giant crabs at the windows, and he kept emptying the gun into Emma. He put almost a hundred and fifty rounds into her before it was all over. She was torn to pieces. The kitchen was a charnel house.”
Tony cleared his throat. “What happened to him?”
“He killed himself when the SWAT team finally broke in.”
“And you?”
“A week in the hospital. A scar to remind me.”
They were silent for a while.
Beyond the drapes, beyond the leaded windows, the night wind coughed.
“I don’t know what to say,” Tony said.
“Tell me you love me.”
“I do.”
“Tell me.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Tony.”
He kissed her.
“I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone,” she said. “In just a week, you’ve changed me forever.”
“You’re damned strong,” he said admiringly.
“You give me strength.”
“You had plenty of that before I came along.”
“Not enough. You give me more, Usually … just thinking about that day he shot me … I get upset, scared all over again, as if it just happened yesterday. But I didn’t get scared this time. I told you all about it, and I was hardly affected. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because all the terrible things that happened in Chicago, the shooting and everything that came before it, all of that is ancient history now. None of it matters any more. I have you, and you make up for all the bad times. You balance the scales. In fact, you tip the scales in my favor.”