Chapter 2 - The Call That Almost Failed
He did not lock me inside.
He did not have to.
He took the only car.
The emergency kit was in the trunk. The spare phone was in the glove compartment. The charger was in the console. The road down the ridge was already turning black with smoke, and I was barefoot in house slippers with ash sticking to my cardigan.
For a few seconds, I stood in the driveway listening to his tires disappear over gravel.
Then the baby kicked.
She was not June yet. I did not know she was a girl then. But that small sharp movement inside me cut through the smoke and panic with one command.
Move.
I ran back into the cabin and grabbed a dish towel from the sink. The air inside was warmer now, heavier, bitter against my throat. I soaked the towel, pressed it over my mouth, and crawled low toward the kitchen where my phone had fallen near the counter.
The first call failed.
The second connected with static so loud I could barely hear the dispatcher.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“My name is Natalie Keene,” I said, coughing. “I’m at the Keene cabin off Pine Ridge Road. My husband took the only car. I’m six months pregnant, and the smoke is already inside.”
The line cracked.
The dispatcher asked me to repeat the address.
I tried.
I remember saying Brett’s name.
I remember saying Tessa’s.
I remember saying Eleanor was in the car too.
I remember pressing my palm against my stomach and whispering, “Stay with me.”
Then the call went dead.
The next minutes came in broken pieces.
The wet towel against my mouth.
The porch boards under my knees.
Orange light through the trees.
A neighbor’s dog barking somewhere far away.
The sound of my own breathing, too fast, too thin.
I made it to the edge of the road before my legs failed.
When I woke up, I was in a hospital room with a plastic oxygen tube under my nose and a monitor strapped around my belly.
A nurse leaned over me and said, “Your baby still has a heartbeat.”
I cried so hard my chest hurt.
Then she asked gently, “Do you want us to call your husband?”
I looked at the smoke stains still under my fingernails.
I heard Brett’s voice again.
You always make everything worse than it is.
“No,” I whispered. “Do not call my husband.”
That was the first decision I made as June’s mother.
May you like
Not to beg Brett Keene to choose us.
Not anymore.
