"Exactly. If Mr. Farley hadn't been kind enough to take you in, you wouldn't even be fit to carry Ivy's shoes!"
Bernard listened to them humiliate me, a faint smile on his lips. He didn't say a word in my defense.
He pulled Ivy close by her slender waist, strolled to the small window, and rapped his knuckles casually against the glass in front of my face.
"Sharon. Hot in there? Figured out what you did wrong yet?"
The red thermometer mounted on the iron wall read 122 degrees. They had cranked the roasting chamber to its limit.
The air inside was suffocating, hellish. My skin had already turned an angry, scalded red.
I gasped for air, mouth wide open, but every breath drove needles through my chest. I was smothering.
Sweat poured off me in sheets. My voice came out raw and shredded. "Bernard, what's my crime? Not wanting to roast alive? Wanting to get into an air-conditioned room? If I hadn't forced my way inside, your child would already be dead!"
I opened my mouth to say more, but a violent, twisting cramp ripped through my lower abdomen under the blistering heat.
The baby kicked frantically. I doubled over, crouching, curling around my stomach, and screamed.