Lucas is much longer than twenty minutes. When he finally comes down, I have two plates of salmon and scalloped potatoes on the table, and Avery is on a blanket on the floor next to my chair, playing with her shapes toy, cramming triangles and circles into the wrong holes.
I ask him about his day, even though he seems distracted. His cases are always interesting to me. Murder and armed-robbery stories are always an escape for anyone, I suppose. He doesn’t tell me about his case, though, and I know something is wrong. When he finishes his food, he pushes his plate away and leans back, smiling at me. My heart drops into the hollow of my stomach. He pulls a tiny bag of weed out of his pocket and tosses it on the table.
“Where’d that come from?” he asks. I feel all the blood drain from my face. I reach down and stroke Avery’s hair and play dumb.
“No idea,” I say.
“It was in the shed. Poorly hidden, I might add.”
“What were you doing in the shed?” I ask, confused. I thought it would be the perfect place because he never goes in there.
“Don’t ask me why I went in my own fucking shed!” he yells, slamming his fist on the table, spit spraying from the sides of his mouth.
“Why would you think it’s mine? Where would I get that?”
“That’s a great question. Druggy park you’re always bringing Avery to, maybe,” he growls.
“That’s—Why would I buy pot? Where would I have even gotten the money? That’s—No. That’s...”
“Good question.Greatquestion!” he yells. I can see Avery is getting ready to cry, but I know I can’t ask him to lower his voice.
“Lucas, I swear. Look, all the teenagers around here—they, maybe they... Donna Nichols said she caught two kids having sex in her guesthouse once. Maybe some kids were out—”
He stops me. “Why would you be talking to Donna Nichols? She lives two streets over,” he says.
“She jogs by, says hello.” I can hear the desperation in my own voice, and I hate it.
“Here’s what I think,” he says, more quietly now. “I don’t know what you did to get it, but I bet you planned to sell it and pull the shit you pulled last time.” He waits for a response. “You think I’m stupid?” he screams, and now Avery is crying. He stands and grabs the back of my hair, forcing me up, pushing me toward the stairs to the basement.
“Maybe you need some time alone to think about it,” he says, and I howl, pushing my hands against the doorjamb, resisting, screaming for him not to put me in that room. Those basement smells come back—the mop water, my hours locked down there—and I can’t control my shaking or the panic.
“Please!” I beg. “Please, I promise it’s not mine. I wasn’t gonna... Please!” I sob, trying to look back at Avery, who is wailing. I need to comfort her. I can’t spend the night in that room.
“I’m sorry! Please. Okay, a kid gave it to me. I didn’t know what to do with it. I should have thrown it out. I...”
He lets go of the back of my head, and I drop to the ground. I crawl over to my baby and pick her up. I stroke her hair and rock her while Lucas goes to the sink and dumps the contents of the small bag down the drain, turning on the faucet to wash it away.
“You’re not going to that park anymore. You don’t think I saw your little act yesterday talking to that kid? I see everything. This is what happens when I trust you. I thought you could handle leaving the house. I gave you a little freedom because I thought you could behave yourself. I did that foryou.” He lowers his voice and looks down at us, a shift from rage to disappointment. “Goddamn it, Georgia. Things could be so good if you’d just stop. Stop fucking everything up all the time,” he says, shaking his head, and then he takes a beer from the fridge, pops the cap, and goes into the living room to watch TV.
My knees shake uncontrollably as I try to get to my feet with Avery in my arms. I sit with her on a kitchen chair and just shush her gently and rock her for what seems like close to an hour before she is calm and finally falls asleep. I heard Lucas behind me getting himself another beer a while ago. When his footsteps paused, I thought he’d hit me maybe, but not with Avery in my arms, thank God. Now, the laugh track from an old sitcom is the only sound in the house, so I quietly take Avery upstairs to her room, lay her in her crib, and sit in the darkness on her SpongeBob beanbag chair and try to think.To think.
This plan, like many before, has been stopped in its tracks. I thought maybe if I could sell that stupid dime bag to some kid at the park for ten bucks, it would be enough for bus fare to town. Three months ago, I found an old ring that looked vintage—maybe his grandmother’s—in the bottom of a box in the garage, which was a lucky find, because everything valuable is stored somewhere else. He knows I look. He’s thought of everything. Absolutely everything. I thought I could get to a pawn shop to sell the ring. Even though the house is outfitted with cameras in every room and motion sensors so he can keep tabs on me all day and alarm the police if I try to leave, telling them I plan to harm myself or the baby, I have figured out how to trick one of the cameras. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity.
There is only one security camera in the community, and that’s at the front gate. It works about half the time, from what I’m told. He, of course, doesn’t have access to that footage. Some neighbors have Ring cameras on their front doors, but all those will show is a limited area in front of their house and, again, he wouldn’t have access to those. There is little surveillance in this neighborhood. These rich people probably want to feel like they live in a safe area and aren’t being watched all the time. The only house outfitted with intense surveillance is ours.
So I was elated when I realized that I can freeze the image on the porch camera. It only points inward, toward the porch, not out to the street. I would think the neighbors would find that odd, but I guess nobody looks at stuff like that. But it’s there to make sure I don’t get farther than the front step without him knowing.
One day I noticed a tiny remote, taped with clear packing tape, to the side of the camera. I stared at it for weeks before I got up the nerve to just grab it, to just trust that he is not watching all the time and the odds were good he wouldn’t see me do it. He didn’t. As far as I know, he forgot it was even there and has no idea I have it. So now, if I take a nap on the front porch daybed with Avery in her playpen, I can freeze the image on both of us asleep. It would only give me an hour or so—a believable length of time for a nap—but we could slip out while he thinks we’re there, asleep. If he studies that camera closely and notices the images of us were suspicious, I’d be totally fucked, but it’s a risk that I’d have to take. The weather is only going to get colder, and porch naps can’t last much longer, so I need to plan my move.
I don’t know how an hour would be enough time, with bus transfers and a baby in tow, but it’s the first glimmer of hope I’ve had in months. And it might not be much, but if I could get a few hundred dollars, it would be a start...of something, maybe. But there’s no chance of that now. I know he sees Cora visit, and he hears everything. I keep it as light as possible when she’s here, but I can only pray he doesn’t have it out for her. He hasn’t mentioned her visits, which I’ve learned is worse than a confrontation in the long run.
Moonlight shines through the window of her bedroom and casts farm animal–shaped shadows across her floor from theCharlotte’s Webmobile hanging above her crib. I blink back tears. It’s not a time to cry. It’s a time to rethink my escape.
I think about how he was too good to be true when we met. Even the night everything changed and his eyes went dark and empty, I’d never have believed that he planned all those months in France to sweep me off my feet so when he got me here, he could destroy my passport with no way for me to get a new one. It’s so outrageous, absurd. Runaway teenagers get trafficked, I’d always thought. Not a world traveler, an educated adult.
I tried once. To order a replacement passport. In the early days, before I knew how trapped I really was. Before I knew that he had put a bug in the ear of his colleagues and friends that I was depressed and unstable, so if I ever went to anyone for help, I’d be the crazy, antidepressant-popping wife and he’d be the judge with decades of established relationships and good standing in the community. I can’t imagine what it must have taken for him to put it all together.
I had money at first, money I’d saved from my jobs—a lot. When I began to realize what was happening, I ordered a replacement passport online. This was my very first mistake. Of course he checked the search history on his computer that I’d used after he’d fallen asleep. Of course he intercepted the mail and then subsequently had all mail go to a PO box after that so he could control it. These were things I can’t believe I was naive enough to do back then.Back then.It feels like years, but it’s been barely a year now.
