Eight Months Pregnant, My Husband Locked Me in a Freezing Cabin for His Ex on Christmas Eve novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Christmas Morning

Eli gets June breathing; at dawn Neil arrives early with a deputy and calls Hallie unwell, but the cut phone cord undoes him, and he says his mother already has a paper.

"Come on," Eli said again. "Come on, little one."

He tipped her face down along his forearm and rubbed hard between her shoulder blades.

Then he cleared her mouth with one finger and gave her two tiny breaths.

She coughed.

She coughed again, and then a thin, furious cry filled the cabin.

I started to sob so hard that my whole body shook.

"There she is," Eli said. "There's your girl."

He laid her on my chest and pulled the blanket over both of us.

She was small and slippery and warm, and her fist closed around my finger.

"June," I said. I hadn't known I was going to say it. "Her name is June."

"Good name."

He wrapped a knit hat from his duffel over her head, the orange one with the squad patch.

"Thirty-four weeks is early," he said. "She's breathing on her own, which is good. But she needs a hospital with an incubator, and so do you."

"The road."

"The crew will clear the tree at first light. I'll drive you down myself."

I looked at the window I'd broken.

The sky behind it had gone from black to grey.

"I don't have my phone," I said. "Neil took it. My sister doesn't know where I am."

"We'll call her from the hospital."

He knelt by the stove and fed it another log.

I held June against my chest and listened to her breaths.

I thought, Neil is going to come back at noon and see this.

I wanted him to see it.

It was a few minutes before seven when I heard an engine.

Eli stood up. He went to the window and looked out, and I saw his shoulders go still.

"Black SUV," he said. "And a county cruiser behind it."

"That's Neil's car."

"It's not noon."

A key turned in the front door.

The deadbolt slid back, and the door swung open on a gust of snow.

Neil stood in the doorway in his dark wool coat.

A deputy stood behind him, one hand resting on his belt.

Neil's face was white. His eyes went to the broken window, then to the blood on the blanket, then to the bundle on my chest.

"Oh my God," he said. "Hallie. Is that, did you, is that the baby?"

"You locked me in."

"She's early," he said. "She's tiny. Is she okay? Hallie, I didn't think, I swear I didn't think you'd go into labor."

"You locked me in a freezing cabin with the heat off and you took my phone."

The deputy cleared his throat. He was a heavy man in his fifties, and he looked at the floor.

"Mrs. Garver, your husband called us this morning. He said you'd had a breakdown. He said you'd barricaded yourself in here and broken the windows."

"I broke the window to get out!"

"She's confused," Neil said to him, in a low voice. "She's been like this for weeks. My mother has a letter from her doctor."

"What doctor?" I said. "I haven't seen a doctor but my OB since June."

"Hallie, please. Just let me hold her."

He took a step toward me and held out his arms.

Eli moved.

He didn't hurry. He took one step and stood between Neil and the stove, with his arms at his sides.

"You'll need to stay where you are," he said.

Neil looked up at him. "Who are you?"

"Eli Cardwell. I plow your mother's road."

"You work for my mother."

"I work for the county," Eli said. "I delivered this baby at ten past four, and she's thirty-four weeks and I'm taking her to Alder Pass General. Deputy, I'd like you to look at that door."

The deputy blinked. "Which door?"

"The deadbolt takes a key on both sides. Mrs. Garver says her husband turned it from the outside, and then she stood in a house with no heat, no phone and a cut landline cord. The cord's in the kitchen. Take a look."

The deputy walked into the kitchen. He came back with the cut end of the cord in his hand.

He looked at Neil.

"Mr. Garver, did you cut this?"

"No. It's an old cabin. It was probably, I don't know, mice."

"Cut clean," the deputy said slowly.

"Deputy," Neil said, "she's not well. She's postpartum, and she's been telling people for weeks that I'm trying to hurt her."

"I never told anyone that."

"My mother has been so worried."

"Your mother," I said, and it came out hoarse. "Your mother asked me which hospital I was using. Twice. She asked me my due date."

Neil didn't answer that. He looked at the floor, then at his boots, and then up at me.

For one second I thought I saw him wanting to say something true.

Then he said, quietly, "Mom already has the paper that says you can't take her anywhere."

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