“It’s not as bad as how your daughter died,” Alice says.
The man looks between us, curious.
“She was hit by a car. She ran into the street,” she says.
I feel violated but I try not to react. I try not to let my emotions run wild. She is just a child.
She is just a child.
Alice now strikes at my heart. “You were driving that car,” she says. “That means you weren’t a very good mommy.”
My eyes stare at her as she stares at me and I can’t look away. Suddenly I see Annie’s face. Annie’s blond hair and blue eyes. Annie’s feet swinging beneath the table. And Annie saying those words, the ones she must have been thinking when she felt the impact of the car, hurling metal crushing her bones, sending her into the air, her head smashing against the pavement.
That car.
My car.
I hear her voice. My sweet, sweet girl.
You were not a good mommy.
No, my darling. I wasn’t. I let you die. I killed you.
I feel tears streak my face. Alice and the man watch me with curiosity and wonder, and I no longer care what happened here. I don’t know what loss they’ve suffered and how they know these things about me.
I never told her that I was driving the car.
It is inhuman the way they watch me cry for my dead child.
“Should we clean up and go to town,” I say with a shaky voice. The hope that this will happen is fading but I don’t know what to put in its place.
The man stares at me. Then he says, cheerfully, “Sure.”
I stand. I gather plates. My hand are full when a distinct sound stuns us all.
From the kitchen counter comes a ringing. The man’s cell phone. A call is coming in. A call reaching this house that he said has no reception.
I look at him now with disbelief as the weight of this information bears down against my chest. I can’t breathe.
“Looks like there’s service today,” I say. I wait for a reaction. He is still. There is no expression. The plates are in my hands. I stand between the man and his phone. I shift my weight toward the counter, toward the phone. My feet are still, but he senses something. My intentions. My desperation. My doubt.
If there is service in this house, then everything he’s told me could also be a lie. My car. My purse. The calls to my family. I slide one foot closer to the counter, and it’s now that he finally moves.
Slowly, he shakes his head back and forth. The shotgun rests,propped against a wall, within his reach. Alice holds a hand over her mouth, containing her fear. Or is it excitement?
I don’t think anymore. I drop the dishes and they crash to the floor. Alice gasps. The man jumps up.
I lunge for the phone and take it in my hand. I should run but I feel desperate to press that little green circle. Before I do, I am on the floor, the broken plates beneath me, scraping against my back. The man is on top of me, the weight of his body pressing me into the floor. Into the broken shards.
“Go to your room,” he says to Alice, and she scurries away.
His voice is stern but otherwise calm. He does not yell. He never yells. Even in the heat of this violent moment.
He takes the phone from my clenched hand. He takes it with no effort at all, peeling my fingers away with his fingers, as though all of my strength is not even a bother to him. My body fights now, arms and legs and torso and head, all writhing and flailing like a captured animal in the mouth of its predator.
Helpless.
His legs are outside my legs, pinning them together. His left hand holds both of my wrists as he props himself up and looks at the phone. I try to lift my head, teeth ready to clamp down on his flesh, but he is just out of reach. And he knows this. I can see on his face the satisfaction that he has secured his prey.
