“That’s right.” She sighed, squeezing the skin between her eyes as she remembered how ill he’d appeared after dinner. She’d been concerned and had encouraged him to go to bed early. “Okay. I’ll look for her, but you have to go back to bed.”
“I want to come, too.”
“No. It’s late.”
“But—”
“I’ll tuck you in,” Jackie insisted, turning Selena around and following her up the twisting narrow staircase that led from the kitchen to their rooms. It was a dark space, light filtering down from the second-floor hallway in long rectangles, Bill’s snoring echoing softly from his room down the hall as they walked quietly to their rooms.
Selena’s was larger than her own, with a purple chenille rug and secondhand furniture Jackie had painstakingly painted white. She was feeling better now, calmness seeping through her in this space. The girl scampered into bed, still so young, so little.
My baby.
“What if the storm blows a tree onto our house?” asked Selena.
“It’s not that strong a storm, honey.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“What if you can’t find Mimi?” Selena’s arms came around her mother’s middle and squeezed tightly. “Please find her.”
She’d stay out there for hours searching if it meant making her daughter happy, but Jackie knew better than to make promises she might not be able to keep. “I’ll do my best.” She kissed Selena and unwound the girl’s arms from her waist, knitting their fingers together a moment before letting go.
She headed back downstairs, the eerie feeling she’d shed moments before sliding over her shoulders like an unwanted coat. The room was dark. Had she turned off the light on her way upstairs? She flipped the switch.
Click.
Nothing happened. She flicked it on and off. A shudder went through her, but she rationalized the outage. The weather might be worse to their north, the power lines already down from the wind. With a sigh, she assumed a zombie-like posture and headed down a hallway, then through a field of tables toward the narrow commercial kitchen.
The smallest noise behind her had her whipping around. She froze. Her pulse beat in her ears as she strained to hear, terrified to move. A wood chair scraped across the floor several feet in front of her—a sound so familiar she could pick it out among a cacophony of others.
Someone was in her house—standing right in front of her.
3
Fear doused her bloodstream like kerosene on a fire. She opened her mouth to speak, her jaw trembling instead. She had no weapon, nothing to defend herself. She thought of the gun upstairs in its old cigar box. There was a baseball bat in the garage, some hundred yards away. Knives in a drawer well out of reach.
She forced one word past the tightness in her throat. “Selena?” Every neuron in her brain was telling her to run, but her legs were full of concrete, her body plastered to the floor.
No one answered.
It wasn’t her daughter, but someone was there. Her fingers reached out, finding the back of a dining chair and curling around its worn spindles. She lifted it to her chest. When she spoke again, her voice was nearly unrecognizable, the register deep, the cadence slow and commanding. “Get out of my house!”
Her words had the trespasser moving, chairs banging into tables in an invisible line across the room. He was heading right for her. She hurled the chair into the air, a startled grunt as it connected with its target, something metal and heavy hitting the floor. She grabbed another chair, holding it as she had the first like a lion tamer at an old-time circus.
A loud crash erupted behind her and she jumped, reflexively spinning toward it, but strong arms locked around her waist from behind. She wrestled against the fierce hold as her attacker ripped the wooden legs from her hands and threw the chair aside. He smelled musky, with a thick overlay of spicy deodorant. Before she could even think, she was slammed facedown against a table with such force, the wind emptied from her lungs in a rush.
This is how it ends.
Memories mixed with the present. The ocean waves were pulling at her, the weight of the car dragging her down.
“Mommy?”
Her daughter’s voice pulled her out of her own head. Selena must have followed her downstairs. “Run!” she choked out, desperate for her little girl to get to safety. “Get Bill!” Half lifting her body and pulling her arm back, she landed a punch on flesh-covered bone. She didn’t know where she’d hit him and quickly realized she needn’t have bothered. He grabbed her shirt and lifted her off the ground like a rag doll.
The first blow came out of nowhere, hitting her jaw and slamming her teeth together with brutal force. She tasted blood. After that, they landed in quick succession, her face battered between bare knuckles like a walnut being shaken in a jar.
