Laura
I took a deep breath and forced myself to repeat the phrase “everything is fine” again. I’d been so insistent with Dave, and now I was getting nervous again. Why? No reason, of course. Why would I get nervous? There’s nothing to be afraid of, not really. And yet, here I am. I take another deep breath and forced myself to repeat. I said it out loud and let the words hang in the air.
Then I pushed the door out and stood up. East down the street there was nothing. To the west there was one car, parked on the street. In the middle of the workday, I guess that’s what I expected. The red Corvette next to me was close enough that I had to squeeze out the door.
I closed my door, looked at the side of the car, and once I was satisfied that I hadn’t touched it, I started walking up the driveway to the door. There was a feeling in my gut that something was going wrong, but I wasn’t about to tell anyone else that. After all, I’ve already made enough mistakes, haven’t I?
Someone appeared on the other side of the screen door, and waved. I sized him up as I walked up. I would have guessed seventeen, but I could have been low. I couldn’t have been high, that much I was sure of. He wore his hair cropped short, and had a narrow face and dusty-colored skin.
“Hey, are you the guy I spoke to on the phone?”
He called back through the screen without opening it.
“Yeah, come on. They’re in Terry’s room.”
I sucked in a breath. He was taller than me, that was sure. And bigger. My gut told me to get the fuck out of there, but I was being crazy. If I wasn’t being crazy, then my son was in danger, and that meant that I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn’t.
“You sure it’s alright?’
“My old man won’t mind,” the kid said. He looked me in the eye. More than that, though, he focused on it. Stared at my eyes. Like he was trying to memorize my face. Or like he was trying not to look somewhere else.
I rubbed the palms of my hands on my pant legs and took a breath. I was imagining things. There’s no reason to assume that it’s anything other than what it appears to be. I repeat that back to myself two or three times until I feel like it sticks.
I look at him and try to make another decision. One last time. It’s going to be fine, I tell myself. It’s got to be. Okay. Then there’s nothing to worry about.
“Sure.” He opens the door and I step inside. Breathe in. The place smells like alcohol. I look over at the far wall, and I don’t have to wonder why it smells that way. I’ve known plenty of people like this. The bad side of town is full of houses just like this one.
I sucked down a breath of that sour, alcoholic air. “This way,” he says, and disappears around the corner into a short hallway. I saw it, sort of, on the way through the front door. Two doors on either side. I guess that means three bedrooms and a bath, probably. Maybe one of them is a utility room.
I listen hard. I can hear a voice, but it’s not Charlie’s. There’s a pause. Charlie’s voice answers it. He hasn’t ever sounded worried at home, but today he sounded upset before. And then he sounded just as upset. Whatever was going on, it was making him upset.
“Charlie?” I called from the front room. This was all making me nervous. The more that happened, the more nervous I got.
“Mom?”
A door opened. It wasn’t the door I heard his voice from. It was a different one. There was a man there. Not the boys’ father, that much was clear. He was in his early twenties, and looked at me hard.
“You’re a pretty woman,” he said. The other boy turned back, and neither one bothered to hide their expressions, now. They were wolves, and I was the sheep. Even Charlie had told me: be careful.
Well, I hadn’t been careful. I’d been an idiot, and I made a big mistake. I just had to hope that I’d make it out of the situation alive.
So I did what I had to do: I turned towards the door and ran. They would follow. At least, I hoped they would follow. In the chaos, maybe Charlie got away. Or maybe I could loop back, and get my son, and get the both of us away. I could identify both the boys.
Which is what made me suspect that they wouldn’t let me walk away from this.
I pushed on the handle and the door snapped open. Caught by the wind. I ran, looking over my shoulder to make sure that I was followed. There was a moment where I worried that I wasn’t going to be, and then a big guy came charging out after.
“Where are you going,” he cried after me. “You left your son.”
But I didn’t slow down, and he didn’t slow down either, and after a hundred paces I realized something that chilled me to my core. He was catching up with me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Behind me, there was the sound of a grunt, low and loud. ‘Oof.’
I turned. There was a tangle of limbs on the ground. I didn’t stop running to see what was happening, but I could make a guess. Dave was on the track team in high school, and had a mean streak in him a mile wide. I could only imagine what was going to happen next, because I wasn’t going to stop until I’d turned back and gotten my son.