Authors: Sophie Littlefield
Chapter Four
In the hours before dawn on Wednesday, Jen dreamed the red bird again. It was bright as blood, coiled in a circle, its beak open and angry. In the dream, the bird slowly unfurled its wings, expanding until it filled her mind, its screams growing hungrier and its beak widening until it seemed that it meant to consume her from the inside out.
She’d first had this nightmare years ago, when she was fresh out of college and just starting to date Ted. The bird didn’t do anything but scream, its beak open wide, spinning and getting larger and larger until she woke up. It had been years since she had the dream, but now it had come twice in one week.
When it first happened, Jen had researched the meaning of birds in dreams and decided the bird was nothing more than a symbol of her struggle—to put herself through school, to get her first job, to pay back her loans, to survive the stress of trying to fit into the society she had worked so hard to join. She struggled to erase her past, to project the ease and confidence that her colleagues and friends seemed to come by naturally, to be the mother she hadn’t had, the wife her own mother hadn’t had a chance to be.
But none of that had been a problem for years. So why was the dream returning now?
Jen was tired and irritable as she got Teddy fed and ready for preschool. Livvy refused to eat breakfast and dashed out the door so she didn’t miss the bus. Ted took his car to the dealership to have the oil changed and a dent fixed. He’d been complaining about the dent for weeks—someone had dinged him at the Target Center parking lot during a Timberwolves game.
After preschool, Cricket Stern brought the boys over for their standing playdate. “Listen, Jen, something happened today,” she said as Mark and Teddy shot past her into the house. “I thought you’d want to know.”
Instantly Jen was on alert. She had worked so hard to get the speech pathologist and Teddy’s teacher on the same page. A year ago, when he was three, Teddy stopped talking to strangers; when he stopped speaking to his babysitters and then to his friends and teachers, Jen and Ted became concerned enough to have him evaluated, and Teddy had been diagnosed with selective mutism.
For the past year, he hadn’t spoken to anyone outside his immediate family, but the speech pathologist said that Teddy was responding well to the self-modeling and desensitization exercises. She thought Teddy was very close to verbalizing one-on-one with a trusted adult.
“It’s nothing,” Cricket said hastily. “Just, the kids are starting to pick on him. Well, not all the kids. Mack and Jordan. Of course, right?”
“Oh.
Shit.
”
“I know.” Cricket grimaced. “Sometimes I just want to smack Tessa. It’s like she
wants
to raise a couple of delinquents, the way she lets them run wild.”
The twins had been a problem since the beginning of the year. Recently they pushed a kid out of the castle in the play yard and knocked out two of his teeth.
“What did they do?” Jen asked, steeling herself.
“They had him in the corner by the dress-up box, and they were trying to make him talk. Mack was making fun of him and calling him retarded. Or maybe it was Jordan—I can’t tell them apart.”
Jen’s anger was tempered with dismay. “What did Teddy do?”
“He managed to get past them. They’re big, but he’s fast, you know?”
“Well, it could have been worse. Did he look upset?”
“Not too bad. More like aggravated. I said something to Mrs. Bray, and she talked to the boys. I thought you could decide whether you want to have her talk to Tessa.”
“No, I feel like that’ll make it worse. You know, like he’s a tattletale. Damn it. He’s so close. He’s been talking to the speech therapist over Skype. She says any day now...” She felt her eyes tearing up.
“Oh, honey, it’s okay. I didn’t mean to upset you,” Cricket said, pulling a packet of tissues from her purse.
“No, it’s not even that,” Jen said, taking a tissue and dabbing at her eyes. “It’s...just, things are kind of a mess right now.”
“Is it Ted’s job search?” Cricket asked sympathetically.
Jen hesitated. She hadn’t told Cricket about Sid’s death, or about Sarah’s note. She didn’t like to make her problems public, even to her best friends. “Yes, I guess,” she said, settling for a partial truth.
Cricket nodded sympathetically. “When Brad was laid off a few years ago he was unbearable. I finally made him rent office space to get out of the house. We pretended he was ‘consulting.’” She smiled as she made air quotes. “Luckily it was only for a few months or we’d be divorced.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad.” Jen had heard rumors that Brad was seeing a woman he’d met on one of his accounts while he was supposed to be at that rented office. “Just a blip, that’s all.”
As Jen watched Cricket drive away, she had the strange sensation that she could be watching herself. Sometimes it felt like she and her friends were all the same, well-preserved Calumet housewives in expensive sunglasses and recent-model SUVs.
Jen closed the door and wondered how many other secrets they kept from each other.
* * *
Thursday afternoon, Jen decided to bundle Teddy into the car and pick Livvy up from school so she wouldn’t have to take the bus. Livvy had been hostile and distant all week, and the gesture was meant to be conciliatory, to let her daughter know she was trying.
As she inched forward in the car-pool line, she caught sight of Livvy with her cluster of friends. Standing a few feet away was a gangly boy with shaggy black hair and a threadbare backpack repaired with duct tape. Sean—Livvy’s first boyfriend, the one who had broken her heart over the Christmas holidays. He was talking to a girl in pink UGG boots and a pink knit cap, his hands jammed in his pockets, and Jen had a momentary urge to get out of the car and shake him, to demand to know who he thought he was to hurt her daughter’s feelings, an unspectacular boy with a dusting of acne on his forehead and gauge earrings he was surely going to regret in a few years.
Livvy got into the car without sparing Sean a glance. She said hi to Teddy and lapsed into sullen silence.
“How was your day?” Jen tried. “Anything interesting happen?”
“My day was like every other day of my life,” Livvy muttered. “So no, I would say that nothing interesting happened.”
“Well, mine was fascinating. After I worked at your school, I did your laundry and made you a dentist appointment and picked up your sweaters from the cleaners.”
“Good for you.”
Jen tightened her grip on the steering wheel and pressed her lips together. They rode the rest of the way in silence. When she turned onto Crabapple Court, she realized she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled with relief as the garage door glided up, and she saw Ted’s BMW parked in his side of the garage. So he’d come home from wherever he’d been all day.
Jen had barely turned off the car when Livvy opened her door and bolted into the house. Teddy started whimpering to get out of his car seat, shoving at the restraints, and Jen hurried out of the car to help him. But even as she worked at the tangled strap, his protestations turned to frustrated tears.
Even though Jen could swear she was doing everything right—even though she was trying just as hard as she knew how—the more she strove to connect with her family, the further she seemed to drive them away.
* * *
Jen set her purse on the hall table and headed for the kitchen. She could hear Livvy’s footsteps racing up the stairs, and she winced, waiting for the slam of her daughter’s bedroom door.
Jen filled a plastic cup with snack crackers and got Teddy settled in front of the TV, his tears forgotten. She felt guilty using
Dinosaur Train
as a babysitter, but she just needed a few minutes to change into yoga pants and put her hair in a ponytail before she started dinner.
Jen went upstairs to her bedroom, steeling herself for whatever Ted had done to the room now. There he was, on his knees by the wall under the windows. It wasn’t really all that bad. He had put a drop cloth on the bed and the nightstand, and the lengths of baseboard that he’d pried away from the wall were stacked neatly. But there were several gouges and scrapes in the plaster. And there was a long, thin scratch in the finish on the walnut-stained floor.
Jen pushed her hair behind her ears as she looked around the room.
It’s fine, it’s fine.
Ted set down his pry bar and got to his feet. “Hey, hon,” he said, a note of guilt in his voice. “I had to go to the lumber store to order a few trim pieces. Thought I’d get these baseboards taken care of.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, I was wondering, maybe you could watch Teddy while I get changed and start dinner.”
“Jen...” Ted ran his hand through his hair. “All I’m doing is trying to get this thing finished. I know you’re tired of the mess. I got that message, loud and clear, and I’m just trying to get it put back together.”
Frustration mixed with fatigue in his voice, and Jen tried not to rise to the bait. “I appreciate that you’re trying to get some work done up here. I just wonder if you could have done it while Teddy was at preschool instead of going...wherever you went.”
“I just told you, I was at the lumberyard. And a couple of errands.” Ted’s face darkened with anger. “Look, I don’t think it’s the end of the world if our kid watches half an hour of PBS. I guess that makes me a crappy parent on top of everything else, but I wish you’d stop and think once in a while that maybe your way isn’t the only way to raise a kid.”
“Could you keep your voice down?”
“Why? A little disagreement’s normal, Jen. It’s not going to break us. It’s good for the kids to hear it once in a while, instead of growing up thinking everything has to be perfect all the time.”
Jen flinched. “If you really want to go there, I’m not going to have our daughter listening,” she said, hurrying to shut the bedroom door.
“Look,” Ted said carefully, waiting until she came back. “I’m sorry if that came out wrong. But there’s no need to get hysterical about every little thing.”
Hysterical,
Jen repeated in her mind. Was that how her husband saw her? She was trying to think of how to respond without sounding defensive when there was a knock at the bedroom door.
She and Ted both froze. Ted wiped his hand across his forehead, muttering softly.
“I’ll get it,” Jen said.
As she crossed the room, she thought about how the smallest reminder of one’s children could make a person feel guilty even when there was no rational reason. The air, charged with tension seconds earlier, was now weighted with wistful failure.
Jen put her hand on the brass knob. Later, she would remember this detail, the warmth of the old brass to her touch, the way she had to tug to clear the slight jam.
Standing in the hall was her beautiful daughter, her face exquisitely frozen, her lips parted and her long-lashed eyes wide with terror.
On her left, a man Jen had never seen before held Teddy in his arms, her little boy flailing ineffectively against his grip.
On her right, a man who looked unnervingly like Orlando Bloom pressed a gun to Livvy’s head.
Chapter Five
“This is where you stay real quiet,” the younger man snapped, jabbing Livvy’s skin with the barrel of his gun, making her head jerk. He was wearing gloves, his hands pale and dead-looking through the thin latex.
“Mom,” she whimpered, and Jen didn’t think, she threw herself at her daughter, her fingertips brushing Livvy’s arm before she was struck from the side and went crashing to the floor. The other one had kicked her in the knees, still holding her son in his arms, and as Jen pushed herself up on her hands, she saw the rough work boots he was wearing and wondered if he had broken something in her leg.
Ted was yelling:
no, stop,
but he stayed rooted to the spot. Which was what she should have done, because she had endangered her daughter. The young one had Livvy’s hair in his fist, dragging her backward, out of the range of Jen’s flailing feet.
“That was stupid,” he snarled, and gave Livvy’s hair a hard yank, forcing her head back and exposing the long pale expanse of her throat. Her whimpering escalated to shrieking until he put his hand around her throat and squeezed. “Shut the fuck up
now,
” he yelled, and she did.
Jen scrambled backward on her hands and knees. Ted grabbed her arm and pulled her up, holding her around the waist against him. “What do you want?” he demanded.
The older one held Teddy tightly, absorbing the impact of Teddy’s silent kicking and flailing. He looked like he was in his fifties, but he was powerfully built, his forearms roped with muscle. He, too, was wearing latex gloves. “Tell this kid to calm the fuck down.”
“It’s all right, honey,” Jen gasped, thinking
please please don’t hurt him.
“Mommy’s here. It’s all right.”
But Teddy only struggled harder, trying to twist around in the older man’s arms so he could see her. Jen knew how strong a four-year-old could be—Teddy could grab your hand so hard you felt the bones squeeze together; he could hug you so tight it was hard to breathe.
“Goddamn it,” Ted said, pushing her roughly behind him, putting his body between her and the intruders. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Take him,” the man said, holding Teddy out like a sack of cement. The minute Ted grabbed Teddy, the man reached for a gun he’d jammed in the waistband of his pants. It seemed to take less than a second, the movement of his arm and the way he held it still and sure, pointed right at Jen’s face. She gave an involuntary gasp and felt her body slacken with fear, her bladder almost releasing. She imagined the bullet striking her full in the face, shattering the bones, liquefying her brains.
Teddy wrapped his arms tightly around his father’s neck and immediately calmed. Livvy was gurgling, her neck craned awkwardly backward, the young man not seeming to care that he was hurting her. A half grin on his face—as though this all amused him, as though he was deriving pleasure from their fear.
“Let me have her, let my daughter go,” she pleaded. “Please. We won’t do anything. We won’t go anywhere.”
The young man held Livvy in place for another moment and then shoved her toward Jen. Livvy’s neck snapped forward; she stumbled and went down on one knee. Her hair flew across her face, obscuring her terror for a fraction of a second. Jen rushed to help her, wrapping Livvy in her arms, tensed for the bullet, waiting for the gunshot, but it didn’t come.
“Mom, Mom,” Livvy wailed, holding her so tightly the air was crushed from her lungs. But Jen held on, dragging Livvy backward until they were standing next to Ted. Teddy’s shoe was wedged against her shoulder and they were all touching, jammed together in a family scrum, facing the strangers outside the bedroom door.
“What do you want?” Ted demanded for the second time. The question echoed through the room, which Ted had stripped of its carpets and drapes in preparation for painting.
“Downstairs. Now.” The older man motioned with the gun. There was a faint sheen of perspiration along his hairline, and broken capillaries marred his sallow, broad cheeks. A few flakes of dandruff rested on the shoulders of his shirt.
For a moment they didn’t move. Jen felt the warmth of Ted’s body through their clothes, his shoulder pressed against hers.
“Now!” the man bellowed, and she took a step forward, still holding Livvy tightly.
“The girl first,” the younger man said. He reached toward her with the gun, caressing Livvy’s arm with the barrel while she trembled. His eyes roved up and down her body, lingering on her small breasts. “Don’t be scared.”
He seemed relaxed, grinning faintly. He wore his hair buzzed short, and he had skipped a shave or two, but his beard grew in fine and strawberry blond—the beard of a boy rather than a man. There were tattooed spikes on his neck; the rest of the design was hidden under his collar and Jen couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. As they passed, his gaze stayed fixed on Livvy, watching her walk.
Livvy reached the stairs first and went down with her hand on the rail, barely pausing on the landing. Jen followed close behind. At the bottom of the staircase was the front door, heavy and solid. Jen could slip past Livvy and yank the door open. She could push her daughter out into the night, to safety. It would only take a second. One of the men might shoot her, but unless he got lucky the wound probably wouldn’t kill her. As long as she made it out the door, someone was bound to see her and Livvy on the front porch. It was dinnertime on Crabapple Court, and fathers were arriving home from work and kids from sports and clubs and music lessons. Moms were returning from grocery runs and yoga classes. Jen would scream and help would come.
Except she couldn’t leave her little boy behind, not even for a second, unprotected and vulnerable. She couldn’t leave Ted. So she walked past the front door and into the family room, the others close behind her.
“Sit.” The older man’s voice was terse and impatient.
Jen pulled Livvy down with her in the corner of the sectional. On the television, Dora the Explorer hid behind a cartoon tree.
“You don’t have to do this,” Ted said. “Come on.”
“Oh, yeah?” The man turned on Ted. The two men glared at each other, something passing between them. Jen looked from one to the other, trying to figure it out. “Turn that shit off.”
“Have you seen him before?” she whispered as Ted reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned off the set.
“No, never,” he muttered, sitting down on the other side of Livvy with Teddy on his lap.
The two men stood in front of them, one on either side of the television armoire. The younger one slouched against it, his gun practically dangling from his hand. The older man stood ramrod straight.
“We’re here to do a job,” he said angrily as though the Glasses had inconvenienced him in some way. “You make it easy, cooperate, you’ll be okay. You get in our way, we hurt you.”
Next to him the other man coughed, only Jen was pretty sure the cough covered up a laugh.
“What do you want?” she asked. “Because you can have it, I don’t care—”
“You don’t talk,” the man snapped. “
I
talk. I’m Dan. This is Ryan. You only talk when we tell you. You got something to say?”
Was she supposed to talk now? Jen tried to ignore the pounding of her heart, “I’m sorry. I’m just scared. Please don’t hurt my family. How can we help you get what you want so you can go?”
“Hah,” Ryan said. “She wants to
help
us. You like that, Dan?”
Jen realized something deeply terrifying: they had made no effort to disguise themselves. No knitted caps or Nixon masks, which meant they didn’t care if the Glasses knew what they looked like.
They’re going to kill us,
Jen thought, terror slicing through her.
Dan ignored the younger man. “All you need to know right now is don’t talk until I tell you to. Keep your hands to yourself. Do what you’re told and don’t make me ask twice.”
“Just tell us what you want,” Ted demanded. “Whatever it is, we can help you get it.”
“That right...Ted?” Dan drawled.
“How do you know his name?” Jen asked. Ryan swung the gun in her direction, instantly tense.
“Aren’t you paying attention? Shut up!”
“Please,” Jen whispered. “I’m sorry. Can I ask, just one question—”
“Go. Fast.” Dan watched her impatiently.
“Let the kids go,” Jen said quickly, pleadingly. “Please, just let the kids go. They can walk over to my sister’s. It’s less than a mile.”
Ryan laughed, lips pulling back from slightly crooked teeth. “Right! Great idea. Livvy here’s gonna take her bratty little brother over to her aunt’s house and forget to mention that her parents are being held hostage.”
Jen felt her daughter stiffen in her arms. They knew Livvy’s name. Ted’s name. Ryan spun his gun so the barrel was pointing down, reached out and caressed Livvy’s cheek with the grip. Livvy flinched and pulled away with a whimper, and Ryan laughed.
“Get up,” Dan said. “Time to go downstairs.”