24
AUDRA FIRST GOT to know her children in the weeks after she left the hospital. She slept a lot those first few days at home, hours of black punctuated by screaming nightmares. By the third day she had lost count of how many times she had woken gasping for breath, bed sheets knotted around her. She ate hardly anything. On the fourth morning, while Sean was at school and Louise was having a nap, Jacinta knocked on the bedroom door.
‘Come in,’ Audra said, blinking sleep from her eyes.
Jacinta entered carrying a tray laden with buttered toast, a candy bar, an apple, and two large mugs full of coffee. Without speaking, she set the tray down on the bed beside Audra. She lifted one mug and put it in Audra’s hand, lifted the other, and sat in the chair under the window.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked.
‘Like I’ve got the worst hangover in the history of hangovers,’ Audra said, laying her palm on her forehead.
‘I heard you screaming,’ Jacinta said. ‘Mr Kinney wouldn’t let me come into you. But I snuck in when he went to work.’
‘You did? I don’t remember.’
‘I’ve seen it before.’ Jacinta looked down at her coffee. ‘My father was an alcoholic. He had it worse than you when he tried to quit. Hallucinations. He said the devil came to him. Chickens were running around the floor, and the devil grabbed them and snapped their necks. If bad dreams is all you have, then it’s not so bad. It’s been a week since the overdose. You should be over the worst of it now.’
‘At the hospital, they said you found me. You saved my life.’
Jacinta shrugged. ‘I just called for the ambulance.’
‘Even so, thank you.’
‘You should eat something.’
Audra shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You should eat anyway. You’ll feel better. Even just the candy bar.’
Audra reached for it, a Milky Way, and peeled back the wrapping. Chocolate and caramel mixed on her tongue, and dear Lord, it was good. The rest of the bar was gone in less than a minute.
Jacinta smiled and said, ‘Told you.’
Audra took a sip of the coffee, rich and warm, felt it in her throat and stomach, heating her from the inside. Jacinta indicated the bottle of pills on the nightstand, half empty.
‘Are you taking those again?’ she asked.
‘My husband got them for me,’ Audra said, avoiding the question.
‘I don’t think you should.’ Jacinta dropped her gaze. ‘If you don’t mind me saying.’
An empty wine bottle stood next to the pills and a glass with a mouthful left at the bottom. Jacinta looked from one to the other, her expression clouded.
‘What?’ Audra asked.
‘There was a phone call yesterday,’ Jacinta said. ‘You were asleep. Mr Kinney was at work. It was a lady from the hospital.’
‘Sister Hannah,’ Audra said.
‘That’s right.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She asked how you were doing. If you were taking any pills. Drinking anything.’
‘And what did you tell her?’
‘I said I wouldn’t know anything about that.’
‘I haven’t,’ Audra said.
‘Haven’t what?’
‘I haven’t taken any pills. I haven’t been drinking.’
Jacinta pointed to the items on the nightstand. ‘But …’
‘Down the toilet,’ Audra said. ‘Don’t tell Mr Kinney.’
Jacinta smiled and said, ‘I won’t. And I’m glad. He shouldn’t give you those things.’
‘He’s an enabler,’ Audra said. ‘An abuser. He uses them to control me. But not anymore.’
‘Can I tell you something?’ Jacinta said.
Audra nodded. Her stomach growled, and she took a slice of toast from the tray, savored the salted butter on her tongue.
‘I don’t like Mr Kinney. I would have left this job a long time ago, except that I love your children. I really do. With you the way you were, and Mr Kinney never being around, I couldn’t go. They’d have no one if I left.’
Audra swallowed the toast. ‘Thank you. I’m not going to be like that anymore.’
‘Good,’ Jacinta said. Her face brightened. ‘Louise is going to wake up from her nap soon. Do you want to go get her with me?’
‘I’d like that,’ Audra said.
‘In fact I’ve got to collect Sean from school in about thirty minutes. Usually I’d take Louise with me, but maybe she could stay here with you?’
‘Okay,’ Audra said.
So Audra sat on the living-room floor, wearing her dressing gown, playing with a little girl she barely knew. Louise had protested a little when it was Audra who lifted her from bed instead of Jacinta, but she soon came round. Now she lifted toys from a large basket in the corner, one at a time, and brought them to her mother, told her their names. Showed her how to play with them.
Gogo was her favorite, mostly intact then, still with both his eyes.
Louise was sitting in Audra’s lap, a storybook open in front of them, when the living-room door opened forty-five minutes later. Sean stood in the doorway, schoolbag in his hand, staring at her, his eyes cold and wary.
‘Hey,’ Audra said.
Jacinta nudged his shoulder. ‘Go say hello to your mother.’
Sean entered the room, put his bag on the floor next to the toy basket. He pulled his coat off, dropped it beside the bag.
‘Sean,’ Jacinta said from the doorway. ‘We don’t leave our things on the floor. Do we?’
‘No,’ Sean said.
‘Okay. Just this once, bring them to me and I’ll put them away properly.’
Sean gathered the bag and coat and took them to her. Jacinta closed the door, leaving him staring at the wood floor. A few moments passed before he turned to stare at Audra once more.
‘Good day at school?’ Audra asked.
Sean shrugged and kept staring.
‘You want to come sit next to me and hear a story?’
‘Those are baby stories,’ he said.
‘What kind of stories do you like?’
‘Comic books,’ he said. ‘Superheroes.’
‘You want to show me some?’
Sean went to the sideboard, opened a door, and pulled out a plastic box. From that he took out a half dozen comic books and spread them out on the floor. ‘X-Men,’ he said, pointing. ‘That’s Wolverine, and that’s Professor X. And these two are Star Wars, they do comic books as well as movies. And this one, this one’s my favorite.’
‘Spider-Man,’ Audra said.
‘You know about him?’
‘Sure I do. I used to read those comic books when I was a little girl. I stole them off my brother. He got mad when he couldn’t find them, but he never knew they were under my bed.’
Sean smiled, and they stayed there on the living-room floor for three hours. Then Jacinta came back and said Patrick would be home soon. Audra kissed her children and went back to bed.
Things went on that way for six months. Patrick brought bottle after bottle of alcohol, bottle after bottle of pills, and every day Audra would flush them away. Before dinner, she would rinse her mouth with vodka or wine, just enough to get the smell on her. Every evening the cook served them dinner, and they ate in silence. Somehow Sean sensed it would be best not to mention their play sessions to his father, and it simply never came up with Louise.
Until one night in September.
That night, Louise – now four and a half – asked, ‘Can we have ice cream?’
Patrick didn’t look up from whatever article he was reading on his phone, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his tie loosened. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No ice cream on week nights. You can have some fruit.’
Louise looked to the other end of the table. ‘Mommy, can we have ice cream?’
Audra went to answer too quickly, her tongue too sharp. She corrected herself, blinked, let her eyelids droop. ‘Ask your father,’ she said.
Too late. Patrick had noticed. He didn’t take his eyes off her as he said to Louise, ‘You don’t need to ask your mother. You already asked me, and I said no.’
Audra reached for the glass of wine on the table, brought it to her mouth, let it clink on her teeth, before taking a small mouthful. She put it down too hard, let it slop over the rim.
‘Listen to your father,’ she said, softening the sibilants.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Patrick asked.
‘Never better,’ Audra said, forcing a sneer into her words. ‘I’m going to bed.’
She stood and left the table without looking back. In bed, the sheets pulled up to her chin, she listened to the voices of her children as Jacinta helped them brush their teeth, read them their stories. All quiet for a time, and Audra might have slept, she couldn’t be sure, but the next thing she was aware of was Patrick standing by the nightstand. She could feel him staring at her back.
Audra listened as he lifted the bottle, the remains of the vodka sloshing in it. Then the bottle of antidepressants, a rattle as he examined it and its contents. And then quiet as he stood there, watching. Audra kept her breathing steady and deep, waiting for him to go.
Eventually he said, ‘I know you’re awake.’
Audra remained still, breathing in and out, in and out.
‘Just think of the things I could do to you,’ he said, a terrible calm to his voice. ‘I could open that window and throw you out. You think anyone wouldn’t believe it was suicide? Or you could open the safe in the closet, find the pistol there, blow your brains out. Or maybe run a bath and open your wrists.’
He leaned on the bed, his weight rolling Audra over to look straight up at him, no pretending now.
‘My point is,’ he said, ‘you’re an addict, an alcoholic, a pill-popper. Everyone knows. Who’s going to believe you didn’t kill yourself? Now, tomorrow, I’m going to ask Dr Steinberger for a new prescription for you. After that, I’m going to stop by the liquor store. Then we’re going to get things back to normal around here.’
Patrick stood and left the room.
The next morning, after he’d left for work, Audra asked Jacinta to change Sean out of his school clothes while she made a phone call. Sister Hannah answered, gave Audra the address of a shelter in Queens, said they’d be expecting her and the kids.
Jacinta helped them down the stairs with everything they could carry. She embraced the children on the sidewalk, tears in her eyes. As a cab driver loaded their bags into the trunk, Audra took Jacinta in her arms.
‘Be careful,’ Audra said. ‘He’ll be angry.’
‘I know,’ Jacinta said. ‘I will.’
Sean and Louise waved at her from the cab’s rear window. Louise cried, knowing she’d never see Jacinta again. She clung tight to Gogo, and Audra wiped the tears from her cheeks. As the three of them huddled together in the back of the cab, she felt a joyful terror at what lay ahead.
Eighteen months ago, two years since she’d quit the booze and the pills. Audra swore that she would never be separated from her children again. No matter that Patrick had come after her with everything he had, his mother goading him along. Audra would cling to them until she could cling no more.
And yet they had been taken from her anyway.
Audra took a long shower; the guesthouse water was hot and plentiful. She turned the temperature up as high as she could stand it and scrubbed her body pink. The grime seemed embedded in every crease and hollow, and even after thirty minutes there was no clearing it.
But her mind cleared. Fatigued though it was, Audra began to reassemble the previous forty-eight hours into some sort of order. For a few moments she questioned herself again. What if they were right? What if she had done something terrible and couldn’t admit it to herself? And then she remembered Sean’s face as he told Sheriff Whiteside not to hurt her. Sean, her little man, standing up for her. She almost smiled at the thought, before she remembered Louise’s terrified sobs from the back of her car.
The time since then had compressed so that two days seemed like two hours. But her children had been out there, somewhere, all the while. Terrified, wondering why she hadn’t come and gotten them yet.
No, Audra knew Special Agent Mitchell was wrong. She had not harmed her children. And Mitchell was wrong about something else: Sean and Louise were alive. Audra felt it in her bones. Not some mother’s intuition nonsense; all logic pointed that way. Whiteside and Collins wouldn’t have taken her children just to kill them. There was something in it for them; the children were worth something. And they were only worth something if they were alive.
Who would pay someone to take her children? Only one answer made any kind of sense. She imagined her husband handing over a wad of his mother’s money, slipping an envelope into Whiteside’s hand.
A terrifying idea, but it meant Sean and Louise were alive. If her children were alive, then she could get them back. It was simply a question of how.
Audra shut the water off, stepped out of the shower, pulled a towel from the rack. A few minutes later her body was dry, her hair damp. She pulled on the clothes, the same shabby jeans and top she’d been given the day before. They still smelled of her sweat, but at least her body was clean.
She sat down on the bed, next to the nightstand and the old telephone on it. I must do something, she thought. Anything. The smallest thing would be better than sitting here knowing her children were out in the desert somewhere.
A knock on the door startled her. Audra got to her feet, crossed the room, put the chain lock in place. She unlocked the door and opened it a crack, no more than two inches. The landlady, Mrs Gerber, waited there, her face flushed.
‘There’s a man here insists on talking to you,’ she said, breathless. ‘I told him no, but he wouldn’t accept it. Says he needs to talk to you right away. He damn near kicked his way—’
‘A man?’ Audra said. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Wouldn’t say. I told him, tell me who you are and what you want, but he just pushed right past me. I’ve a good mind to call one of those police officers over here to put him out.’
‘What does he look like?’
Mrs Gerber seemed to gather herself as she thought. Eventually she shrugged and said, ‘Like he doesn’t belong around here. He’s waiting down in the dining room.’
Audra closed her door and followed the landlady down the stairs to the entrance hall.
‘I don’t like this,’ Mrs Gerber said over her shoulder. ‘Strange men showing up and pushing their way in. I don’t need the trouble at my age. He’s in there.’
Audra followed the direction of Mrs Gerber’s finger to a set of double doors across from the foot of the stairs. One of them stood open, but she could see no one inside. She approached the door, wondering if she should knock. A stupid idea, she pushed the door open and stepped inside.
He stood up from the bare table, his face barely visible in the dimness of the room. But she knew him well enough.
‘Hello, Audra,’ Patrick Kinney said.