“Help me, Jesus,” she muttered, and began dragging it all the way to the back of the basement. She threw a drop cloth over it and shoved a bunch of empty boxes and crates in front of it, then ran back out, shut the trunk, and locked her car.
Her legs were trembling by the time she got back inside the house, but she didn’t have time to waste. She put up all the groceries, then ran to the bathroom to wash up, and puked her guts out instead.
When she finally pulled herself together and realized it was almost time for school to be out, she frantically splashed some water on her face, grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry for the boys, and a cold pop from the fridge for herself, and headed back to the car.
She was shaking from the inside out as she drove to the school and got in the pickup line, then took the lid off her bottle of pop and took a big drink. The Coke brought tears to her eyes and burned her throat all the way down. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t focus, and leaned back against the headrest, choking back the urge to scream.
What have I done? What have I done?
A short while later, the bell rang, and the students began filing out, staying with their classes as the teachers on bus duty began sorting out the kids who were picked up from the ones who were walkers.
Her eyes welled as she saw Asher, her oldest, looking forher nine-year-old, Dylan, and Gunner, her baby. He lived the role of big brother as if he’d been born to lead.
She watched as he found them and began gently herding them to her car. She’d carried them within her body, and brought them into the world with great pain, but they were the spitting image of Jacob. Black-haired, blue-eyed, and already growing so tall for their ages.
All of a sudden, Gunner, her youngest, stumbled and fell, then let out a wail. She was about to get out and go to his rescue when she saw Asher pick him up, dust him off, and carry him the rest of the way.
By the time they were loaded up, the bag of chips she’d brought for them to snack on had cured the crocodile tears on Gunner’s cheeks, and Asher was doling them out one at a time.
She took one last drink of her pop and gave it to Asher. “Share with your brothers,” she said, and headed home in a daze. For that moment, it felt like every other day of her life, except it wasn’t.
The evening went by in a flash. It was Gunner’s seventh birthday. She had cake and ice cream for them, and a present for Gunner. Jacob left the bar long enough to watch his youngest son open his presents and eat birthday cake with the family, before he went back to the bar. She oversaw homework while doing the dishes, and with an eye on the clock, gave them a couple of hours to watch TV or play games before bedtime.
The noise from the bar was a constant in their lives, but they were used to it. Finally, she reached the moment of tucking the last of her sons into bed and kissing them good night. Even Asher expected the pat on his shoulder and his mother’s fingers combing the hair from his forehead as she kissed him good night.
But on this night, Brenda didn’t go to bed. As soon asshe knew the boys were sound asleep, and Jacob was knee-deep in customers and serving drinks at the bar, she headed down into the basement on the run. She grabbed a shovel from the rack of tools hanging on the wall, then hurried to the southeast corner of the back wall, moved everything away except the strongbox, and started digging.
It wasn’t easy, but she didn’t have time to waste. When she hit rock, she got down on her knees with a small pickax and chunked at the dirt around it until it came loose and then dug some more. When it was wide enough and deep enough, she got down on her knees and pushed the box into the hole, then frantically began covering it up, one scoop at a time from the pile of displaced dirt.
She was almost done when she heard footsteps in the house above her, and then Asher calling her name.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” she mumbled, and threw the last shovel full of dirt in, tamped it all down with the back of the shovel, then began stacking boxes and crates on top of it, finishing it off with a wooden crate of empty canning jars.
Asher was still calling when she took off running. She hung the shovel back in place and went up the stairs two at a time, coming out into the kitchen just as Asher came back into the kitchen. She could hear Gunner crying down the hall and the murmur of voices.
“What’s going on?” she asked as she hurried to the sink to wash the dirt off her arms and hands.
“Gunner just woke up. He and his bed are all bloody. He lost a tooth in his sleep, and we guess he swallowed it. He’s crying because he won’t have a tooth for the tooth fairy.”
“Then we better get him cleaned up,” she said, and headed to the big bedroom where the two younger boys slept.
Brenda calmed Gunner down with a promise to write a note to the tooth fairy and sent Dylan and Asher to bathethe blood off her baby boy, while she stripped the bed and put on clean sheets.
Finally, she had Gunner in clean pajamas and fresh sheets on his bed, and a handwritten note to slip under his pillow for the tooth fairy. He smiled at her, and the little gap where his tooth had been broke her heart. Innocence. She was going to destroy their innocence.
When Dylan and Asher saw her slide the note under the pillow, then lean over and whisper in Gunner’s ear, they grinned. Their little brother still believed in Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy, and they kept up the pretense for him, and for her.
She did the tucking in bed business all over, but this time pausing in the doorway between their adjoining rooms. The rooms were dark but for the little Pokémon nightlight by Dylan’s bed.
“I love you guys…so much. Thank you for being my best boys,” she said, and then walked away.
Later, she slipped back in, took away the note to the tooth fairy that she’d written, and replaced it with a dollar bill, then took herself to bed. She was pretending to sleep when Jacob finally came to bed. She was too emotionally wrought, and terrified of what yet may come. When Jacob slipped into bed beside her, she heard his weary sigh as he pulled up the covers and turned out the bedside lamp. He was such a good man.
Oh God, oh God… What have I done to this family?
* * *
In the bright light of a new day, things didn’t seem so awful.
