My Darling Husband(39)

It’s those old, sucky acting skills I call upon now when I hear noises at the end of the hall. I sit up straight as my body goes rock-hard, my fingers digging into the velvet armrests of the chair. I wipe my expression clean and force my muscles to relax, my face to look normal—or as normal as a mother’s face can be, tied to a forty-pound chair.

An animated Baxter comes first, his stuffed gorilla Gibson pinned under an arm, skipping like he’s headed for a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. He blathers on about the shows he wants to watch, the popcorn his mommy would let him have. I stare at him, gritting my teeth and trying to appear fearless, courageous. My son doesn’t so much as glance over.

The man follows behind. He comes into view, and my heart clenches.

Showtime.

I can’t quite see him from this angle, but I know the second he spots Beatrix’s empty chair. I hear his grunt of surprise, the stumble in his footsteps when he comes up on an empty room. He curses, a long string of expletives followed by Baxter’s high-pitched giggle.

“Beatrix! You get your butt back in here, missy. Right now.”

There’s a long stretch of silence while he waits for an answer. I hear the low volume on the TV, fast and heavy footsteps, breaths huffing with emotion, but nothing from Beatrix. Of course there’s not. By now she’s had a good thirty, maybe forty-five seconds to get wherever she’s going, and I already know her tiptoe skills are stealth. I picture her downstairs, sneaking from room to room, trying out all her normal hiding spots until she finds the best one.

The man stomps into the hall. “You better believe I’m going to find your scrawny little butt, so you might as well come out now. Come out and take your punishment like a girl.” He looks at me, eyes flashing. “Where is she? Where’d she go?”

I frown, blink my eyes in stage-managed confusion. “I thought she was with you.”

Jesus, that was bad. Overacted, leaned way too hard into the enunciation and my voice cracked on the last word.

“Bullshit. If she’d come this way, she would have run right past you. No way you didn’t see her, not unless she—” He lurches backward, one long leap from the hallway into the playroom. I clock his movements by sound, footsteps moving deeper into the playroom, solid furniture scraping across the floor, a door creaking open. The hidden hallway to the guest room bath. He knows about it, too.

“Beatrix, now’s the time to get out here, hon.” The man’s voice is muffled now, and it’s coming at me in stereo—from the playroom across the hall, louder from behind me, somewhere deep in the bathroom. Heavy footsteps come from that direction, too, elephant stomps moving closer. “Beatrix!”

Baxter steps into the hall in a fresh shirt and Batman pajama pants, and I choke on a sob. I hate that he’s seeing me like this. I hate that I can’t protect him.

He sees me and waves. “Hi, Mommy.”

It rolls over me like a hurricane—how helpless I am to help him, strapped to this chair. If I told Bax to run, he’d never make it far. If I told him to hide, his giggling would give him away. I can’t do anything to protect him because I am tied to a chair.

I suck down my tears. Push a smile up my cheeks so as not to frighten him. “Hey, big guy. How’re you doing?”

“Good.” He bounces his shoulders. “I had an accident, though.”

“That’s okay, baby. It hap—”

“Jade.”

He’s here now, coming in long, angry strides out of the bathroom. He pulls the gun from his cargo paints and aims at my head, not stopping until the metal makes contact with my forehead. I squeal and rear back until my head is flush against the wall.

“Did she come through here? Because if she did and you lie about it, you and I are going to have a big problem.”

“I already told you, I don’t know. I don’t know where Beatrix is.”

I say it with conviction because it is not a lie. Also, if he shoots me now, Bax will see. He will watch his mother be murdered. Pretty much number one on the list of how to mess up a six-year-old for life.

“Beatrix didn’t come through here, I swear.”

I say the words while in my head, I’m listening for the beeping of the alarm pad. If she’d left, out the window or one of the doors, the alarm would be wailing. There’s nothing but silence from downstairs. Wherever she is, Beatrix is still inside.

The man stares at me through slitted eyes, his mouth going thin with realization. He’s done the same math. He knows Beatrix is still in the house, too.

“Where, Jade?”

“I don’t know. You were supposed to be watching her.”

“I was dealing with your son’s shit.”

At the last word, Baxter giggles, a high and teetering delight. For him there’s nothing merrier than when his father has to drop a dollar in the curse jar, because it’s money that belongs to the kids, split evenly down the middle. Every couple of months, we empty the jar at the bookstore—and they come home with armloads of books. A cook line is an animated place, where tempers flare hotter than the grill flames. Cam’s language has always been colorful.

I can’t help but feel some sort of grim satisfaction. Dealing with someone else’s shit is never fun, even worse when it comes from a child who is not your own. I know it’s a tiny win, but I’m taking it.