Chapter 5: The Drive
They left the clinic under a pale afternoon sky.
Beate sat in the passenger seat of her father’s old Audi, still wearing the oversized cardigan, the paper gown replaced by clean clothes Julia had brought. Her sister had arrived white-faced and silent, hugged her without questions, and taken the first shift of practical tasks: packing a small bag from the house under police escort, collecting medication, notifying their mother.
Thomas drove without the radio. Every few minutes he glanced at her, measuring breath and color the way he had once measured soldiers after hard landings. When they stopped at a light he said, quietly, “You counted to fifty.”
“Yes.”
“You sent the video to three places before you called anyone.”
“Yes.”
He was silent for another kilometer.
“That was good thinking,” he said. “Under those conditions, that was very good thinking.”
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Beate turned her face toward the window so he would not see the tears that came from being praised for surviving instead of blamed for staying. The baby shifted, a slow roll rather than the panicked kicks of the night before. She placed both hands on the curve of her belly and kept them there until the car reached the small house on the edge of town that Thomas had kept after the divorce—spare, orderly, and empty of anyone who had ever raised a belt.
Julia was already there with groceries and clean sheets. Their mother arrived an hour later, eyes red, voice steady only because Thomas had spoken to her first. No one asked Beate to retell the story. The video had already done that work.
