My Darling Husband(38)

Juanita: So again, like father, like son.

Cam: Well, Juanita, I guess it’s true what they say. In the end we all become our parents.



J A D E


4:47 p.m.


It happens so fast, if I blinked I would have missed it.

Beatrix in exaggerated tiptoe, slipping out the open doorway of the playroom into the hall. Back hunched, arms stretched out for balance, legs spread wide so the frilly cuffs of her shorts don’t brush together when she walks. It’s a Looney Tunes version of a tiptoe, skillful in its absolute silence, a careful and precise movement she’s clearly practiced. It makes me wonder how many times she’s done this while Cam and I were reading or watching TV downstairs, oblivious to our daughter sneaking about above our heads. Dozens, probably.

She swings her head to the right, peering down the long hallway that leads to the kids’ bedrooms. It’s the direction Baxter and the masked man just disappeared down, only a few seconds earlier. Baxter was moving fast, his face strained with hurry, one hand gripping his bottom in a way that typically means he’s going to need a change of pants. He was in too much of a panic to notice me sitting across the hall, strapped to a chair, and the man didn’t look over, either, though I didn’t miss his grimace.

I can hear them now, the low murmur of voices muffled by a door and two walls. Baxter’s bathroom, which is good news since it’s the farthest away. The last door at the end of the hallway, tucked around not one but two corners. Assuming the man is waiting just outside the bathroom door, there’s still a wall between him and Beatrix.

Beatrix turns for the stairs, and almost by accident, her gaze lands on mine.

She flinches so hard, her sneakers squeak on the hardwood floor. I wince at the sound, and my heart seizes, then trips into high gear. I hold my breath and listen for signs of someone coming.

Beatrix must be thinking the same thing, because she looks in the direction of the voices, and I watch her face for a reaction. My daughter is like me, an open book. Everything she ever thinks is telegraphed straight to her face, as easy to read as blinking neon letters. If the masked man is bearing down the hallway, coming for her, I’ll see it on Beatrix’s expression.

But her face doesn’t change. Her back slumps in a silent sigh of relief, and she looks back.

Heart pounding, I study my daughter from top to toe. I take in her dry eyes, count her fingers, search her skin for blood or bruises. The bow on the hem of her pink polka-dot shirt has come untied, and her shorts are rumpled at the crotch from sitting, but there’s no rips or bloodstains. Her hair is pillow-mussed, that cowlick I’m always trying to wrangle into submission pushing the hair high on the left side of her crown, but otherwise she looks fine. Frightened, but fine.

And then I notice the marks on her socks, and I wonder if she was tied to a chair, too. No, taped to the chair, one of the reclining theater seats in the playroom. That was the sound I heard before, the harsh creak of the duct tape ripping off leather so Baxter could race to the bathroom.

But it doesn’t explain how Beatrix managed to wriggle free.

Especially if her bindings were anything like mine, double and triple wrapped around my skin, as unforgiving as steel cuffs. Other than a slimy arm and a dull throbbing behind my front teeth, I’ve gotten nowhere with the knot at my wrist. Clearly, I am not one of those mothers who could lift a car to save her children, or bust out of chains like the female version of the Hulk. I strain against my bindings, but my arms and legs don’t budge.

I’m stuck.

Helpless.

But not Beatrix. She stands there and stares at me, her eyes big and wide and round.

Go, I mouth, but I don’t dare call out to her, not even a whisper. And honestly, go where? Not back to the playroom, certainly. The man will be back in what—thirty seconds? A minute? Not enough time for Beatrix to get very far. And as soon as she opens any of the doors downstairs, she’ll trip the alarm.

At the sound of the first siren I start shooting, and the first two bullets are for the kids.

If Beatrix is lucky, she might escape, but Baxter and I surely won’t. There are no good answers here.

Go.

Beatrix nods, but her feet don’t come unglued from the floor.

I hold my breath and listen to the noise coming from farther down the hall. Baxter is still chattering away, the occasional word piercing the low hum of water running through the pipes. Washing his hands at the sink, I’m guessing, which means he’s close to finishing up. The man is still silent, nearby but unaccounted for, which terrifies me. He could be waiting by the door. He could be halfway to the hall by now. What if he comes back to check on Beatrix?

I shake my head at her, but I don’t know what I mean by it. Don’t get caught? Don’t leave me here? Both, probably. My hands ball into tight, frustrated fists.

On the other end of the hall, a toilet flushes. A door creaks, followed by footsteps.

Go! I mouth the word again, stretching my lips around it so she understands, leaning forward and adding another: Run!

And this time—finally, thankfully—she does.

I first tried my hand at acting in middle school, mostly to escape from the dark cloud of misery hanging over our house—a silent father who spent his evenings dozing in front of a TV, a surly older sister eating her feelings and everything else in sight, rooms that without my mother’s touches had grown faded and dusty. I coped by cloaking myself in someone else’s skin—a lighthearted mermaid falling in love for the first time, or the dancing, singing, footloose daughter of a strict preacher father. Anyone but a sad and lonely eighth-grader longing for her mother.