The Husband

hairless hands.
    The thought of him emptying her bedpan creeps her out. Just asking him to do it would create an intolerable intimacy.
    As she fingers the medal in her left hand, her right hand drops to her belly. Her waist is narrow, her stomach flat. The child grows in her, a secret, as private as a dream.
    They say that if you listen to classical music while pregnant, your child will have a higher IQ. As an infant, he or she will cry less and be more content.
    This may be true. Life is complex and mysterious. Cause and effect are not always clear. Quantum physicists say that sometimes effect comes before cause. She had watched a one-hour
    program about that on the Discovery Channel. She hadn't made much sense of it; and the scientists describing the various phenomena admitted they could not explain them, only observe them.
    She moves her hand in slow circles over her belly, thinking how fine it would be, how sweet, if the baby gave a twitch that she could feel. Of course, it is only a ball of cells at this stage, not yet capable of giving a Hi, Mom kick.
    Even now, however, its full potential is there, a tiny person in the shell of her body, like a pearl steadily accreting in an oyster, and everything she does will affect her little passenger. No more wine with dinner. Cut way back on the coffee. Perform faithful but sensible exercise. Avoid another kidnapping.
    Saint Christopher, being the protector of children, has brought her to a reconsideration of the nail as she blindly traces his image with her fingertips.
    She's probably being irrational, taking this babies-learn-in-the-womb business too far. Yet it seems that if, while pregnant, she thrusts a nail into some guy's carotid artery or through his eye into his brain, the incident will surely have an effect on the baby.
    Extremely strong emotion—again, according to the Discovery Channel—causes the brain to order the release into the blood of veritable floods of hormones or other chemicals. A homicidal frenzy would seem to qualify as a strong emotion.
    If too much caffeine in the blood can put the unborn child at risk, torrents of killer-mommy enzyme can't be desirable. She intends to use the nail on a bad guy, of course, a really bad guy, but the baby has no way of knowing the victim isn't a good guy.
    The baby won't be born with homicidal tendencies because of a single incident of violent self-defense. Nevertheless, Holly broods about the nail.
    Maybe this irrational worrying is a symptom of pregnancy, like morning sickness, which she hasn't experienced yet, or like a craving for chocolate ice cream with pickles.
    Prudence also plays a role in her rethinking of the nail scheme. When you deal with people like those who had kidnapped her, you better not strike out against them unless you are certain that you can carry through with the assault successfully.
    If you try to thrust a nail through someone's eye but instead stab him in the nose, you are going to have an angry nose-stabbed criminal psychopath on your case. Not good.
    She is still fingering the Saint Christopher medal, pondering the pros and cons of fighting vicious gunmen with only a three-inch nail, when the representative of the New Mexico Tourist Board returns.
    He comes behind a flashlight with a half-taped lens, as before, and still has the hands of a pianist from Hell. He kneels in front of her and puts the flashlight on the floor.
    "You like the medallion," he says, sounding pleased to see her smoothing it between her fingers as if it is a worry bead.
    Instinct encourages her to play to his weirdness. "It has an interesting...feel."
    "The girl in the coffin wore a simple white dress with cheap lace tacked to the collar and cuffs. She looked so peaceful."
    He has chewed all the shreds of loose skin from his chapped lips. They are mottled red and appear to be tender, swollen.
    "She wore white gardenias in her hair. When we opened the lid, the pent-up perfume of the gardenias was intense."
    Holly closes her eyes to avoid his.
    "We took the medallion and the figurine of Cinderella to a place near Angel Fire, New Mexico, where there's a vortex."
    Evidently he thought she knew what he meant by vortex.
    His gentle voice becomes gentler, and almost sad, when he adds, "I killed them both in their sleep."
    For a moment, she thinks this statement relates to the vortex in Angel Fire, New Mexico, and she tries to make sense of it in that context. When she realizes what he means, she opens her