Chapter 9: Collapse
"So you have grief now, but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you." (John 16:22)
Kevin Lau eyed the black vans in the driveway uneasily. Commander Blaine worked with the Eyes, so maybe they were just here to talk to him, but something felt off. Kevin had gone out to inform them that the commander wasn't yet home, that he should be returning soon and that they could wait inside the house. They weren't having it. And they weren't the unit that normally worked alongside Nick. Kevin would have recognized those men.
So he stood behind the living room curtains, nervously watching the Eyes and trying to calm himself. Were they after him? He was the driver in the Blaine household, but was doing plenty of sabotage work for Mayday on the side. He'd studied chemistry before the Revolution, and the commander had handpicked him as a driver for his ability to make bombs and poisons: not exactly what his MIT professors had been trying to teach him, but useful skills nowadays.
When Commander Blaine's car finally pulled up in the driveway, Kevin sighed with relief…until the Eyes threw Nick into the back of the black van and roared off. "Shit shit shit," he muttered rhythmically. Time to set the emergency contingency plans into motion; his boss would certainly approve. He hurried to the kitchen, where Sarah was preparing dinner. He scanned the room critically, then switched off the forbidden boom box, silencing Christina Aguilera.
"Hey," the Martha protested. "I was listening to that."
"I know, Sarah, I'm sorry. The commander has just been arrested and we've got to go. The radio is contraband, so I'm taking it with us. I can trade it on the black market." As he spoke, he collected the music CDs from their kitchen cabinet hiding place, putting them in the cloth shopping bag which was hanging neatly from the oven handle. "Is there anything in your bedroom that you can't leave behind?"
"Like what?" Like everybody in Gilead, Sarah Hillard had been uprooted and ripped away from her home. It's not like she carried her photo albums around.
"Anything personal, or anything illegal that you don't want them to find?"
"I wish. But no, I got nothing." She turned the oven off, regretfully leaving the chicken half-baked. What a waste. "Where do you think we're going?"
Kevin looked around, making sure they were still alone. "I know a safe house. But we've got to go soon, before the Eyes come back for us. You know what happens to the rest of the household when a commander is disgraced."
She shuddered. Being lynched was not how she planned to end her days. She'd been through too much. Nor was she going to let anything bad happen to that sweet little thirteen year-old upstairs. She had her whole life ahead of her. "I'll go get Miss Kathryn."
A few days after June's rendezvous with Nick, Mark Tuello moved Holly and her to a new house, half an hour away from Toronto. She didn't want to move. The comfy little cabin close to the border gave her easy access to Gilead, either for possible acts of terrorism or other meet-ups with Nick. Their last little weekend together had been idyllic. Tuello, though, insisted on moving her north, further away from Gilead's agents. His safe-houses, his rules. Just a temporary move, June consoled herself. Once she was out of the cross-hairs and Gilead hopefully abandoned its plans to kill her, she'd be able to research towns and find a better location.
In the meantime, she and Holly had a new home, new town, and new names. Luke wasn't sure he'd be staying—he had too many friendships in Toronto, not to mention his job—but he was with her for a few days at least, to help her unpack and get settled.
The husband hadn't said too much about his visit with Nick, except that the commander had an appetite for junk food and that he'd "learned a lot." Whatever that meant. June didn't tell him about her subsequent weekend with Nick; it was none of Luke's business, and would only break his heart. She had certainly hurt him enough. So the pair was cordial, friendly, and pleasant with each other, talking mostly about Holly and where to put the boxes of stuff from her last safe house.
They got along for two days, until Luke overheard her tell Tuello the pseudonym she's chosen for herself: Julia Nichols. She wanted to keep something resembling June; she loved how Nick pronounced her name, pillow-soft. Nichols, of course, was a nod to him. Nichole was reverting back to Holly, so she'd lost her linguistic link to her father, but June wanted her to keep some connection. Luke had blown up when he heard the new last name. The 'family name.' He had assumed he was still part of the family. "The head of the family," as he'd called himself, a phrase which made June's fur bristle. Too Gilead-sounding. The day had gone downhill from there, and Luke had eventually returned to Toronto.
June didn't miss him much. Their relationship had become awkward when it wasn't contentious. She did miss the companionship of adults—Luke and Moira, but also Emily and Rita. After years in the near-silence of Gilead, June relished long conversations and crowds of people. Conversing with nobody except a toddler was difficult. Still, June intended to throw herself into motherhood and focus on nothing except her relationship with Holly, at least for now. Insurrection could wait a few weeks. Friendships could wait, too.
When Holly napped, June wrote. She began with a private journal, then decided to do something more substantial. She began writing a book about her experiences as a handmaid. Maybe it could get published. Another sort of rebellion, at least to raise awareness about Gilead in the free world, if not foment war.
One humid day, June got a text from Luke, asking if he might come over that evening with Mark Tuello. "Just for an hour," he assured her.
"Good evening, Mark," she said, biting back the impulse to wish him blessed evening.
"Ms. Nichols," he greeted, using her pseudonym. Tuello always maintained formality with her, rarely calling her by her first name—at least, he hadn't since she'd screamed that she would 'kill him' for making a deal with Fred Waterford. "Where's your little one?"
"Already asleep." She waved Tuello in, then gave Luke a hug. "Hi."
He embraced her tightly, for longer than she expected. Odd, since they'd seen each other a week ago and had ended that visit on a sour note. "Hey, Junebug," Luke murmured at her. "So good to see you."
"Yeah, you too." Looking over Luke's shoulder, June inspected the American spy, noticing more grey hairs than previously. "Everything okay, Mark?"
"Not really. I need to talk to the two of you."
Tuello declined the proffered cup of coffee, and sat with the erstwhile couple in the living room. He took a deep breath before beginning, and addressed June. "I need your advice on a case. You told me that after Lillie Fuller blew up the Rachel and Leah Center, her commander and the rest of the household were all executed."
"Right. Commander Cushing ordered that; the whole household was held responsible for harboring a terrorist."
"Can you think of any other reason an entire house might disappear suddenly? Commander, wife, driver, Martha?"
June scrunched her eyebrows. "Well, if the commander died or got arrested, they might reassign the wife to another man, and split up the rest." She thought a bit more. "When Fred Waterford was injured—in that bombing—Serena, Nick, and I spent a lot of time at the hospital. So an injury might be another reason for a household to disappear, at least temporarily."
"I have an asset, a commander who is very reliable at checking in. I lost touch with him ten days ago, and the spy I sent by his house reports that the home is abandoned. The furniture is all there, but nobody's home. There was a loaf of uncooked bread left on the counter, proofing, and food in the oven."
"So they were taken. They didn't plan a trip," June surmised. "Well, if they were executed, they'd probably be hanging in the front yard. As an example to the neighbors."
"They're not."
June shrugged. "Maybe they were all arrested, but the Guardians wanted to keep it secret for some reason. Whatever, but they're probably dead." June narrowed her eyes and looked carefully at Tuello. "You came all the way out here to ask me about this?"
"Yeah, well," he hedged. "Not exactly. I just hoped you could give me a more optimistic explanation."
"Oh, you want optimism? Okay. Maybe the whole household fled to Canada or Mexico."
"That's what I was hoping for. Except…they're not here. They would've checked in." He shifted on the sofa. "So I finally had my contacts look at prison records, and I found my commander. He was in a maximum security prison on June third and fifth; they write down the manifest every other day. By June 7, he'd disappeared. No more mention of him."
"Well, maybe he was released from jail. Or more likely, they tortured him to death and threw him in a ditch." Tuello winced at her casual brutality. "Sorry to tell you that," June added in a softer tone. She hated thinking about Gilead right before bed: it gave her nightmares if not insomnia. "Mark, why are you really here?"
He leaned back against the couch cushions, and looked at June. "The missing asset is Nick Blaine."
"What," she breathed, motionless. She was dimly aware of Luke staring at her, concern etched in his face.
"Nick was imprisoned for three or four days, then disappeared. I've had agents looking for him; there's no trace. So far. I was hoping he'd contacted you."
"I just saw him. June first. It was my birthday, so he came…he was fine. You must be wrong. He was just with me. He was…." She trailed off.
"Have you heard from him since the first?"
"He left on the second."
"It's possible he was arrested on his way home. Was there any contraband in his car?"
She thought of the small black backpack. "A hundred morning-after pills. And a few hundred birth control pills."
"That's a felony," Mark noted.
She shook her head slowly. "Worse. It's a capital crime to possess contraception."
"How the hell did he get it?"
Guilt hit her like an ocean wave. She spoke as if under water. "I gave the pills to him," she whispered. "To give to women, to barter. But Nick never gets searched. They wouldn't dare search his car; he's their boss. Their boss's boss. The head of the Eyes. They wouldn't search him."
"Well, he was arrested for some reason."
"Maybe," Luke ventured, "they transferred him to another prison? Or else he escaped. They probably wouldn't document a prison break."
Tuello grimaced. "My asset saw the list of transfers; Blaine wasn't mentioned. June," he used her given name for once, "you were held in that same prison. How easy would it be to escape?"
She stared blankly past him, remembering. Her hands were trembling. "You can't." After several painful seconds of silence, she asked, "Does your contact in the prison know if he…what happened…because there were different parts to that jail, different sections for people." She stumbled to a halt.
"The records just indicate held, interrogated, released, or salvaged next to each name."
"What does salvaged mean?" Luke asked.
"Murdered," Mark said quietly. "But for Blaine, they marked 'interrogated.' Both days."
"So he was tor…was he tor…?" She couldn't finish the word. Tuello understood anyway.
"I don't know if he was tortured."
"I was in that place for one night, and I broke. I almost lost my mind. Four days? He's…there's no way he…." June had a sudden, very vivid rush of images. Nick's bicep, his bare back, his fingers brushing hers, a flash of a smile, his beautiful neck. Dancing with Holly in his arms. Kneeling on the carpet, sheepishly looking up at June to offer her wildflowers. Kneeling on the Waterfords' kitchen floor to place his hand on her belly after she told him she was pregnant. Bringing her an ice pack after she'd been hurt by Aunt Lydia, and wrapping his hand around hers. And then images straight from her nightmares: Nick's body hanging from a noose, neck snapped, or maybe face down and bloody in a forest grave, riddled with bullet holes. Fingernails pulled out. Water boarded. Electrocuted. Beaten. Of course he had been tortured. And of course he was gone by now.
She swallowed her despair, her grief, before it rose up to engulf her. She channeled her feelings into a plan of action. "Well then, let's go get him. Get me into Gilead, Mark, and I'll bring him out myself."
"I have no idea where he is."
"How long have you known he was missing? It's June twelfth; he's been missing for ten days now."
"I only found out he was imprisoned four days ago. I was trying to confirm-"
Her voice rose in pitch and in volume. "So why didn't you fucking tell me four days ago? We could've gone into that prison then."
Nick Blaine's voice echoed in Tuello's head: let her rant, let her have her anger. She'll calm down in a few minutes. "By the time I figured out what had happened," Tuello explained calmly, "he wasn't there anymore. I'm sorry, June. I don't know where the hell he is now, and I'm not sending anyone into Gilead blind. I know how hard this must be."
"You have no goddamned clue how hard this is," she countered sharply, even though she knew, in some corner of her mind, that Mark Tuello had also lost his family during the Revolution. Wife, children, all dead. He did understand her pain.
"Hey," Luke interjected, "Nichole's asleep. Keep your voice down."
"Don't fucking tell me what to do," she shrieked, turning her wrath on her ex-husband. "Don't! You don't know anything, you don't understand anything."
She rose from the couch abruptly, went into the backyard. She sat on the swing that Luke had hung from the maple tree just last week. He had bought his house in Toronto simply because it had a tree swing which his daughter loved. Last fall, according to Moira, they'd gone house shopping with a very bored Nichole, but as soon as the baby saw that swing, she perked up and clapped her hands. That was the right house for Nichole. Sold, for a tree swing. Holly, she reminded herself dully. She's Holly now, not Nichole.
She really liked getting to know her father. And he adored her.
How am I going to tell her what happened?
June eventually noticed the tears coating her face. She absently wiped them away. "Then I defy you, stars," she said aloud, quoting Romeo. Fuck fate. Fuck death. And fuck everyone who played some part in murdering her love. She was coming for them.
She continued to swing gently in the warm summer night, planning her revenge on Gilead.