If he came into the nursery, I knew how to defend myself. But it was Collette I feared for. She was a vulnerability I wore on my sleeve.
I tiptoed to the closet and I unscrewed the doorknob very slowly. I clutched the teddy bear handle in my palm so that the long screw stuck out between my fingers like a little knife. It was blunted, but it could take out an eye. I pressed myself to the wall, beside the door, and I waited for him. If he entered that room, I would kill him.
But his footsteps moved farther away. Down the steps and out the door. I felt it when his presence left. Collette felt it, too, because she started to cry. A keening scream that turned her all red like I’d never seen her. And in the bedroom, Waylen was calling me for what felt like the hundredth time.
“That’s it, that’s fucking it. We’re getting out of this hellhole,”Waylen had said. It was one of four break-ins on our street that day, and after a while, police gave up trying to find whoever had done it.
We moved out of our rental house and into a gated apartment we could barely afford, which was enough for Waylen. There was round-the-clock security, he told me. Nothing bad was going to happen.
But I was restless. The police never found the intruder; he was still out there, and he had seen our pictures all over the house. Some crystal-clear portrait of our family lived in his head, but to us, he was just a shadow. A nightmare. I didn’t sleep. I stalked neighborhood watch websites. Iread about every break-in that had happened in my town, which led me to break-ins happening in other towns, which led me to murders, rapes, arson, shootings. Things that had always existed, that I had always known existed. But suddenly I couldn’t bear it.
I don’t have to say any of this now, because Waylen remembers. The very next day, I called Mr. X and told him I was back in. Waylen doesn’t say anything more now, because he knows that if he pushes me too hard, I’ll leave. I’ve done it before. For a few hours, or to spend a night alone at a hotel. He worries that one of these days, I won’t come back.
—
“Mom?” Collette squeaks as I breeze past her. She’s standing in her pink nightgown, her golden hair rumpled on one side. She will never know what it feels like to be unsafe, not if I have any say about it. She’ll never know what it’s like to watch her whole life burn away to nothing, to be thrown out into the world where everyone is suddenly a stranger.
I kiss her forehead and tell her I’ll meet her in the kitchen in a few minutes. Then I take a hot shower, scouring the peach blossom body wash into my skin.
“Come on,” I tell Collette, who’s scrolling through her iPad at the breakfast table, neglecting the eggs Benedict Waylen has made her. “I’m taking you to school.”
“Now?” she asks. “It’s super early.”
“I’ve got a design consultation with a client,” I tell her. The way her jaw clenches tells me that she knows this isn’t the truth, but she hasn’t figured out the rest of it yet. Butshe takes a bite of her breakfast to appease Waylen, then she slides out of her chair and grabs her backpack.
I back out of the driveway without giving the car a chance to warm up in the cold November air, and we’re halfway down the street when Collette asks me if her father and I have had a fight, if it’s something she did wrong.
“No,” I tell her, and give her my best smile in the rearview mirror. “Everything is fine. I’m just in a hurry today.”
We’re almost to the school when I notice the car that’s following us. It isn’t exactly subtle—a black BMW with tinted windows. It maintains a distance but trails along with every turn through the suburban back roads that lead to the school, even when I don’t signal.
I glance at Collette, who is staring at her iPad. She knows she can’t bring it to school, and it isn’t allowed until her homework is completed in the evening, so she absorbs all the screen time she can get without a lecture in the mornings. For once, I’m glad she’s distracted, because she doesn’t pick up on my nervousness.
Not with my kid in the car, is all I’m thinking.Any other time.
It could be anyone. In my line of work, I don’t always make friends wherever I go. The relative of someone I put away years ago, or a supposedly reformed criminal who has changed his mind and decided to pay me back for the ordeal I put him through.
When we come up to the school, I hit the gas and speed past it. Collette raises her head. “Mom?” she says. “You missed the turn.”
“Did I?” I laugh, and it sounds a little too manic. “I musthave been distracted. I’ll go around. Don’t worry, we’re still early.”
“But you said you had to be at work.” She sets her tablet down now, her brow knitted in concern. God, she’s so much like me that it frightens me sometimes. A budding little investigator. Why can’t she be like the other kids in her class who turn into zombies when you put a glowing screen a few inches from their faces?
“Collette,” I say, more sternly. “It’s fine.”
I zip around a corner that leads to a narrow one-way street and turn down the first alleyway I see. But it’s a dead end, and I slam the brakes so I don’t crash into the dumpster ahead of us.
I glance again in the mirror and watch as the car with the tinted windows speeds past the alley, the driver thinking I’m still on the loose. I wait a few more seconds, but they don’t return, and I let out a breath.
“Mom?” Collette’s voice is trembling. “What’s going on?” I open my mouth to speak, but she says, “Don’t lie to me!” Tears fill her eyes. “Whose car was that? Are we going to get murdered?”
“Nobody is going to murder us,” I say. “Why would you think that?”
“Because when someone wants to murder you, they follow you home. There was this case on a podcast Finnegan told the class about.”
Great. Thanks for that, Finnegan.I can hardly judge Elodie for letting her daughter have access to true-crime podcasts when I’m taking Collette to courtrooms.
I back out of the alley at full speed and turn the wrongway down the one-way street, running the stop and ignoring the horn that blares at me in protest. Within seconds, I’m on the highway, and I realize that I must have run several lights to have accomplished this, but my adrenaline won’t let me stop. Collette is whimpering, but she says nothing now.
