Never Have I Ever(102)

Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “Is he okay? Detective Morris is calling for help. Keep your eyes on them. Don’t let them go. The police will be there very soon.”

For the first time since I’d seen the pictures of Ezra and his mother, I wondered what this meant for me. Nothing good. My life as I knew it was over. My truths were all going to come out. Once I had Roux arrested, revenge would be all that was left to her. She would take it, and I had no way to shield Charlotte.

It didn’t matter. This boy—I felt so sick down in the pit of me. I could not stop seeing him, this child, kneeling before her. His fingers clutched tight on her hips, indenting her flesh. I had to get this boy away from her. He must be safely sent back home.

I wanted to peek up over the sill, make sure they hadn’t heard me, but I could not make myself look. I could not bear to see that child—I realized I could hear faint music in the room, her janky, discordant jazz, and I had to hope that it had masked my movements.

“How long?” I whispered. “How long until they get here?”

“I don’t know. Soon? I hope soon. Oh, God, is he okay?”

“Yes,” I lied.

He wasn’t. He was being raped. I understood that. The boy in that room was only fourteen years old. I was witnessing a rape. Maybe his fiftieth rape by this time, maybe his hundredth. It didn’t matter. It was happening to him now. As I waited for the cops, this woman, who had twice put her hands on my own infant son, was using up a child. If some man had Maddy, if he were using her this way, would I wait here? Would I let it happen one more time, even knowing the police were coming, even knowing how many times it must already have happened?

I was moving, my body answering the question before my mind could.

“I have to hang up,” I whispered into the phone.

“Wait—” Faith Wheeler began, but I disconnected. I flicked the button on the side, making sure the ringer was off. Within three seconds the phone was buzzing in my hands. I shoved it into my back pocket.

Then I was at the front door, banging on it. I had no plan beyond getting her hands off that boy. No thought past stopping this final violation.

I banged and banged, and when nobody answered, I reared back and kicked the door with the flat of my foot.

“I know you’re home!” I yelled into the door. I kicked it again and then again, making loud, reverberating booms.

Finally Roux snatched it open. I was rearing back to kick again, and it threw me off balance. Her seamless face was furious, and she was wrapped in that spectacular raw silk dressing gown I’d seen before. Alone. Luca, I assumed, was still in her bedroom. Waiting.

“What?” she said, cold and sharp.

“Char’s finally asleep,” I said. I had no idea what I would say next. “We need to talk.”

I pulled a move from her playbook, barging in, pushing past her, letting my fury and my horror carry me. She melted out of my way as I stomped across her den.

She closed the door but stayed beside it, watching me, hands in her pockets, all her weight on one hip, as if perfectly relaxed. The Botox helped her hide her expression, but I could see a little wariness seeping through the lines of her body. Her eyes glistened, wide and bright and glossy.

“Come to bargain?” she asked. “No use. I won’t go under two hundred.”

I stopped at the fireplace, beside the wrought-iron stand that held a poker and a miniature broom for sweeping ashes, in front of all the game boxes. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I wanted to be between her and Yahtzee. Between her and the gun.

“A hundred fifty,” I said, to be saying something.

She was looking at my face, trying to get a read on me.

In my pocket my phone began vibrating again. We could both hear it, buzzing in my jeans. I should have taken the extra ten seconds and gone into the menu to turn vibrations off.

Roux said, “Better get that. Might be Char.”

“A hundred fifty,” I said, dogged, ignoring the sound.

She stared me down until the phone went silent. A few seconds, and then it began buzzing again.

The wariness was all over her body now, in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head.

“Why are you really here?” she asked.

“To bargain. Like you said,” I told her, but I was panting. I couldn’t seem get my breath, and my phone would not stop.

She took her hands out of her pockets then, and I’d been stupid. She already had the gun. It gleamed, black and sleek, in her pale hand. She’d gotten it before she ever opened the door. I was standing between her and an empty box.

“Set that phone down. Kick it over here,” she said.

The gun had grown since I’d seen it last. It had looked so small and snub-nosed before. Now, pointed at me, it was a huge thing, almost blotting out the woman who held it. I fished my phone out and knelt carefully to set it down, kicked it across the carpet. Roux bent at the knees to pick it up.

She straightened, then glanced down to check the number lighting up my screen.

“Shit,” she said, and dropped it like it was burning her hand.

Either she knew that number by heart or the 206 area code was enough for her to guess. Her eyes came back to mine, the pupils blown wide, as round and black and unfathomable as the eye of the gun itself.

“Luca!” she called, her voice gone harsh. No answer. He must be hiding in her bedroom, wondering why Maddy’s nice Monster, his diving teacher, was beating down his front door in the middle of the night. If he hadn’t known I was Roux’s client before, he did now. Or maybe he was too busy worrying about how much I knew. She called again. “Luca! Get in here.”