The Overnight Guest(51)

“What are you doing?” the girl asked, but her mother hushed her and continued to poke at the doorknob. This went on for what felt like an eternity, but suddenly there was a soft click and the door swung open. It happened that quickly, that easily.

Her mother told her to stay put, but the girl didn’t listen. Together they both stepped right into the Out There.

The girl marveled at the sight. The kitchen had a large refrigerator, a stove, a microwave, and there was a dishwasher like she had seen on television. There was a round wooden table with four chairs to match and a long row of cupboards above a shiny countertop.

The girl looked to her mother for an explanation. Why did they have to stay in the basement where they ate from a small plastic table and there was no stove and only a small refrigerator that was smaller than she was?

Her mother wasn’t looking around the kitchen, though. She started walking, trancelike, through the kitchen and the dining room where there was another table and more chairs. She moved to yet another room. This one had not just one, but two sofas and a chair to match, a television and a tall, slender clock that nearly went to the ceiling. All the windows in this room were covered with heavy shades.

Her mother wasn’t looking at all these wonders either. Her focus was on a large door with three square windows near the top. Bright sunshine streamed through the glass, and the two stood in the sunbeam for a moment, feeling the warmth seep into their skin.

Her mother reached for the knob, but the door refused to open. She fingered the brass lock below the knob, then twisted it to the right. She tried the knob again, the door squeaked open.

It was like looking into a picture book. There were so many colors and scents and sights that the little girl had never seen before that she was momentarily stunned. Without thinking, she moved from the house onto the concrete front steps. The air was cool but warmer than the basement. The sky was blue, and the sun was warm and the color of honey. The trees were covered in jewel-colored leaves and all around them were golden fields for as far as she could see. And there was a lane that led from the front of the house all the way up to the road that went somewhere. To the mountains, to the ocean, to the desert—somewhere far from here.

The world outside was quieter than she imagined. There was the soft rustle of the corn stalks as a breeze swept across the fields, the muffled buzz of green grasshoppers, and the whir and warble song from barn swallows. She bent down to pick a pretty yellow flower when she was jerked back by her arm.

She was pulled back into the house and her mother shut the door and twisted the lock. “We can’t go out there,” her mother said. She looked scared and her breath was fast and shallow.

Holding hands, they moved back through the living room and the dining room and into the kitchen. “I’m really hungry,” the girl said, itching to snatch a banana from the countertop. Her mother opened a cupboard filled with cans of soup and beans and corn. She opened another that held boxes of cereal and crackers and cookies.

“We can’t take too much,” her mother said, scanning the choices. “If he notices anything missing, he’ll know that we were up here.” She hesitated but settled on two cans of soup and an orange and an apple from the refrigerator.

“Let’s go,” her mother said. “He could come home at any time.” The girl reached for the knob on the basement door but her mother didn’t follow. She stopped at the telephone affixed to the kitchen wall. The girl watched as, with trembling hands, her mother lifted the receiver, placed it to her ear, and began to press numbers.

The girl wanted to ask who she was calling. They didn’t have a phone downstairs, she had seen one only on television, but her mother seemed to know what she was doing. A soft trill came from the phone and then a woman’s voice. “Hello?” she said. “Hello?”

A deep sadness settled onto her mother’s face and she quietly hung up the phone. Carrying their small stash of food, they moved through the basement door, her mother pausing to engage the lock. They walked downward, and at the bottom, her mother sat on the bottom step and began to cry. The girl sat at her feet.

When her mother finally stopped weeping, she wiped at her eyes and said, “Don’t tell your dad about this, okay? It will be our little secret.”

The girl liked the idea of having a secret with her mother, so she nodded, and they pinky promised. But two questions remained on her tongue, unasked. Why hadn’t they ever gone outside before? And what was stopping them from doing it again?



27


Present Day

So the woman and the boy were running from an abusive man. It made sense. Fleeing in the middle of a blizzard, her desperation to stay hidden, her paranoia. “The police can help you,” Wylie said sitting down across from them. “Once the storm stops, we’ll go to the sheriff.”

“No,” the woman said, shifting in her seat painfully. “You don’t understand. He’s going to come for us. You don’t know what he’s like.”

Wylie couldn’t disagree. She didn’t know what this woman had gone through, what kind of man she was married to. Her ex, for all his faults, wasn’t an abusive man. Just a stubborn, self-absorbed jerk.

Wylie, in the course of researching her books, had come across some of the most possessive, abusive spouses and partners out there. No, Wylie didn’t know what this woman had endured in her relationship, but she could empathize.