I can still see her face as she told me, “No!”
It was Coy Face, speaking with defiance.
Then she said, “I threw it away.”
“What? Why?” I asked, because it was all I could think to do. The hatred surged. Pulsated. Took over every inch of me and crawled over my skin, making me shudder.
“Because he didn’t come home so he doesn’t deserve Jell-O,” she said.
“Alice—that’s not nice!” I was so close to reaching through those bars and shaking her, violently. “Go and get it right now—out of the garbage and bring it to me!”
It was a ridiculous request. The Jell-O would be scattered among the remnants of the chicken and coffee grinds from the morning and who knew what else. Still, I needed it. I needed her to bring it to me.
But then she said, “It’s not in there. I can’t even stand the smell of it.”
“What did you do with it?” I asked, my mouth bone dry.
Coy Face answered, and my only plan for escape disappeared before my eyes.
“I put it down the drain.”
Alice has killed my chance to escape. She has done it over her frivolous hatred of lime-flavored things and she has done it in a way that demonstrates the extent of her hatred.
It does not matter that in any other set of circumstances I would not care about her actions. It does not matter that she did it without knowing what her actions would cost me.
I find this all ironic. How her hatred of lime-flavored things has caused me to feel hatred for her. Truly feel it for the first time, in depths that are beyond the reach of my ability to pull them back. The hatred is deep inside my bones. Inside my mind. Inside my heart.
I am too tired to reach for it. Too tired to fight it. I hate a child.
It is hard to think straight. I had a plan which is now gone. New plans swim and swirl, but there are too many unknowns.
I do not know where we are, and what is beyond that fence. I do not know how far away he is, and whether he could get to me while I run there, back to the hole and the tools I left beneath the dead leaves.
I don’t even know if the tools are still there. And yet, I couldget another knife from the kitchen. Maybe there are more scissors as well.
I think through the steps. I would have to convince Alice to open the grate. I would have to find the boots, maybe a coat. The air is still cold at night. I could run through the woods this time, in the direction of the fence to the right side of the driveway, not down the driveway. But then—what if I overshoot the place where I cut the fence and hid the tools? I could just make a new hole.
No, no, no.
This plan will not work unless I can be sure he’s far enough away. He will see me leave. He will know.
I can’t go back to that dark room. I can’t go wherever Daisy Alice Hollander has gone.
I have to stay and be a good second mommy to one child to protect another—my daughter. To protect Nicole.
I fight to keep my face calm, though the tears fall down my cheeks and into the pillow around my ear.
Stillness brings chaos inside my mind.
Nicole.
You used to be a glorious warrior. That was how I saw you, though I never said it. I didn’t want you to become something simply because I put the image in your head. My mother did that to me.
You’re a smart girl, Molly. Not the prettiest girl, but smart. You need to use that to get ahead of the other girls who have their looks.
Maybe it served me well to hear those words. I studied hard and made a career for myself. And John always told me that’s what he loved most.
I remember now how my husband once loved me. I don’t know how, but it just happened and it was glorious. And now that glory is agony.
