When she is not doing schoolwork, she watches television shows on an iPad. Mick downloads new shows for her when he leaves the house and she watches them many times. She does not like the days when he takes her iPad with him. It makes her anxious.
The shows are familiar to me, like Mickey Mouse. She also has movies, some of which are too mature for her, but I say nothing. It is not my job to be her mother.
It is only my job to be her second mommy.
“You’re a good second mommy,” she tells me. And when she tells me this, I feel a heat inside my body. Because on other days, she tells me different things that make my blood cold.
“If you can’t be a good second mommy, we will have to get a new one.”
It is in these moments that I question what I might be capable of doing.
I have learned that the phone was never dead.
There is no phone line connected. I asked Alice about this and she said she uses it all the time. I asked her how. She said she plays pretend with it. I asked her what kind of sound it makes.
“There’s no sound on a phone unless someone calls you, silly. Didn’t you ever have a phone?”
“I have a cell phone. And you’re right. If you just hold it to your ear it doesn’t make any sound. But a phone like the one in the kitchen is not a cell phone. It’s an older kind of phone and when you pick it up, it usually makes a sound.”
This made her angry too. “There’s no sound! I told you that. Phones don’t make sounds.”
That’s when I knew there was no landline.
No internet. No phone line.
Mick and Alice live off the grid. Except for the electricity and the gas. I wonder about this. I wonder who pays those bills and what name holds the accounts. I wonder who owns this property. And why no one came here to search it after I disappeared. The article he showed me said they went door to door.
When Alice calmed down, she considered things.
“You might be right about the phone,” she said, shaking her head. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper even though we were alone in the house.
“But it’s only because he works in a secret job. No one can know where we are.”
I also asked her then, and every chance I’ve had before, how they knew things about me and my family. How they knew I would be passing through, and that I had lost a child, that I had two other children. That I was so lost in my grief I might actually agree to live with them and be Alice’s new mommy.
Or maybe that was just a belief held by this little girl who plays with her dolls.
She never answers. Sometimes she shrugs. Sometimes she says things about how it’s important to know secrets about people to be prepared. I wonder now if she doesn’t know what he does or how he found out about me.
I hear the knock on the inside wooden door. I know to open it without hesitation, even though there is no working lock on my side. She knocks as a courtesy. Alice stands before me on the other side of the metal grate. She is still in her pajamas, hair not brushed and tangled from the restless sleep of a child who still dreams.
“I want to play a game. Pick one,” she demands.
“Hannah and Suzannah,” I say. When we play with the dolls, I get to ask questions. The questions bring answers, which are giving me insight into her mind.
“I’ll go get them,” she says.
Mick is here now. He studies me longer than yesterday. Which was longer than the day before, which was longer than the day before that. In the mornings, I wear the first mommy’s pajamas and they cling to my breasts and the curves of my hips. He has been coming earlier so I don’t have time to change.
I can’t decide if I should sleep in the other clothes he’s givenme. Her baggy sweatshirts and pants. I can’t decide if I want him to look longer. He seems ambivalent about me, as though he is trying to see something in me that he needs, but he can’t find it yet. Maybe I’m too old and my body repulses him. Maybe I’m being too good and he wants me to fight so he can exert his strength over me. Maybe he needs me to be more of a victim. I study his face and try to understand. I need him to want me here, with him and with Alice, so he will stop looking beyond these walls.
Pulling Alice close, even having her in my bed, will give me power over her. Of that, I am certain.
But with Mick, I don’t know. And that terrifies me.
“Step back,” he says. And I do.
He unlocks the bottom panel of the grate and slides me some breakfast. Coffee, eggs, toast. It’s the same every morning.
