Because You Love to Hate Me(92)

This was a thing that Kareena liked to do—watch her child without her knowing she was being watched. Other parents liked to do it, too, she noted. What did they hope to learn? Maybe that their kid was generous. That she said please and thank you. That she shared and took turns. That their kid did these things even when not under parental supervision.

Maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe in those anonymous minutes before they were once again known to their children, the parents hoped they could tell what kind of person their child would become. Good. Or evil.

Kareena needed this covert watching. She lingered longer on the periphery than the other parents. Just one more moment out of sight, she thought. One more moment and she’d gain some insight into the psyche of her strange—or was it unusual ?—or was it different ?—second child.

Now, standing with this other mom, Kareena tested the waters. Were other kids like Sera?

“Second children are so different from the first, aren’t they?” she finally said out loud.

“Yes!” The other mom nodded, hand punctuating the air. “Yes, they really are.”

Kareena felt a moment of hope. Maybe she wasn’t all alone. Maybe all second children were—what word to use, what word?

But no. She would ask this question again and again over the next few months to different moms. She asked at preschool drop-off in the mornings, the other mom rocking back and forth, second child perched on her hips. She asked on the playground, the other mom diligently pushing the second child in the baby swing—the one that looked more like a harness. The differences were always harmless—about eating or sleeping. “Well, little Maximilian was always such a good sleeper, but this little one? She never sleeps!” Or: “Sophia is a very picky eater, but Madeline eats absolutely everything.”

The differences were superficial, nothing to worry about, not really. Not like with Callie and Sera.

Once, someone came close to expressing what Kareena herself was feeling. This was one of the poorer moms, one who could no longer afford their preschool—the rates had gone up again.

“Compared to my first, my second kid has a nasty temperament,” she’d said. Had that mom used the word “nasty”? That might be Kareena’s word. Probably the other mom had said something more innocuous and forgiving. Something more loving. Probably she’d laughed affectionately as she said it.

No one ever said what Kareena suspected. Not only was her second child different. She was somehow wrong.

SERA, AT FOUR YEARS

For her birthday, Sera wanted guns and soldiers and swords. She preferred the ones that looked real. Patrick wanted to indulge her, but Kareena did not. Instead, she bought her bright plush dolls with too-big eyes. Sera built forts with pillows, used her Barbie car as a tank, called in air strikes with her walkie-talkie, sent those dolls to war.

SERA, AT FOUR YEARS, TWO MONTHS

Her eyes never did turn brown. She never had any baby fat. She was always all angles and sharp places. So many differences. Hard where Callie had been soft. Fair—pale hair, pale eyes, pale skin—where Callie had been darker, richer, warmer.

Sera was fearless, but not in a good way.

There were things in this world to be afraid of, and Sera was afraid of none of them.

And then came the day that changed everything. The three of them—Kareena, Callie, and Sera—were walking home from the park. Winter was on the horizon. The days got dark earlier, and the mile-walk home longer and lonelier than in the summer.

Patrick was at work. He was always at work. To get to the park, they had to leave a very nice neighborhood and cross through a less nice one. Not that it was bad, but it had dead zones. Dead zones like the one they were approaching now.

The street ended in an abandoned parking lot on one side and a narrow, dark alley on the other. A few blocks beyond this dead space, the neighborhood once again became safe, inviolable. But for now there was the parking lot and the alley and two little girls who were too slow and a man who Kareena could swear she’d seen watching them at the park. Now he was half a block behind them and there was something about him, and that something was not good.

Kareena picked Sera up and told Callie to pedal faster on her bicycle. Callie frowned her little worry frown and, instead of pedaling, got off the bike. She held tight to Kareena with one small hand and pulled the bike along with the other.

“Get back on the bike, honey,” Kareena urged, trying not to look back at the man, but looking back all the same. He was closer.

Callie refused, but not because she was being bad, but because she was worried. Her little Callie understood danger, but not what to do about it, and Sera—well, who knew exactly what Sera understood?

Should they run? Was she just being paranoid? Kareena looked back again, and the man met her eyes and he was closer, and they both knew that he would catch her and her girls and do to them what he would.

Kareena adjusted Sera’s position on her hip so she only needed one hand to hold her. With her other hand, she grabbed Callie and pulled her away from the bike. They could always buy another one.

“Run with Mommy,” she said, and Callie obeyed.

They ran. They just had to make it to the other side. Had it always been this dark on this street at this time of year?

Sera wiggled in her arms. “Put me down,” she cried. “Put me down.”

Kareena was the kind of mother who tried not to yell. She was careful to explain her reasoning when denying something or the other. She never told her girls that they were bad, just that they had bad behavior. She almost never yelled. But she wanted to yell now. She wanted to slap their faces so they understood that she was serious.