But I take another drink. This time, a larger one.
“Things are never what they seem.” I’m starting to lose patience when he says, “You want to know why that girl is in our basement?” He takes a deep breath and swirls his drink, staring at the amber liquid but not sipping from it. The ice cubes clink against the sides of the glass and I take another drink of mine as he continues. “She was breaking into our house when I got home. She was getting ready to destroy our things and then steal from us. Maybe I went overboard, but I panicked.”
Oh. That wasn’t true. I thought about myself that I didn’t panic, but that isn’t me. That’s my husband. He never panicked. Never. I guess I’ve started believing the same about myself.
I know now that anything else he’s going to say is a lie.
“She had a gun that I managed to take from her.”
“A gun? Where is it?” Now I was definitely feeling skeptical.
“Let me find it. I made sure I put it out of her reach. I just had it.”
Don leaves the room then, but I don’t hear him opening the door to the basement. Soon, I don’t even know how much time has passed, and I’m starting to feel sleepy.
I hadn’t had that much to drink.
As my muscles feel heavier and my mind seems to float, Don comes back in the room. “I couldn’t find it,” he says.
“Find what?”
His face is beginning to look blurry…
And, just like that, the memory stops. It feels almost like a movie interrupted by a commercial break. Just when things are getting good, you have to wait.
But I know now something was wrong. I hadn’t had nearly enough to drink to make me begin to lose consciousness—and yet that was what was happening to me. No wonder I didn’t want to drink the coffee Don offered. My subconscious knew and was afraid he was doing something like that again.
Sitting on the cool basement floor, I could have almost believed I was back home again as though nothing had happened—but I hear shattering glass upstairs along with general shuffling. Maybe I need to see what’s going on.
Before I stand, though, something catches my eye. Underneath the table, there is a little something about the size of my thumbnail. I reach under and it feels like it bites me, so I push it out with the side of my hand.
It’s a piece of green glass from the base and side of a wine bottle, and I have no doubt it was somehow missed when he was cleaning up that mess a couple of years ago. Again, I know a cop would laugh at that as evidence, and I don’t intend to ever tell anyone.
But it’s more confirmation for me, something I needed. It confirms that my memories are real.
That my husband is a monster.
At this point, though, I don’t exactly know just how much.
I need to head upstairs. I have no idea what to expect, but the commotion is hard to ignore. There might be more information in this burner phone, so I’ll hang onto it, but I need to get out of the basement. Whether I’ll escape on my own or go with Joe, I don’t know yet.
When I get to the top, I open the door, standing back a little just in case someone is on the other side. But there’s no one there. As I push it open more, I can see in the kitchen. Whatever commotion I heard from the basement is over. Cautiously, I approach as it comes more into view to find Joe standing over Don who is lying sprawled on the floor.
“Careful,” Joe says, pointing to the floor. The coffee carafe, along with some of the liquid, is in shatters on the floor. And I’m still barefoot.
So is Joe.
“I need something to tie him up with.”
By now, I’m running on autopilot. “Okay. Give me a sec.” I run to the living room, knowing exactly what I plan to get. There are beautiful ceiling-to-floor window coverings with braided ties on either side. While they might be too thick, they are rope like and longish, so I hope they’ll do the trick.
Fortunately, Don hasn’t changed a lot of the house’s décor, and the ties are still there. I pull one of them out of the loop holding it and start heading toward the kitchen. When I see movement out of the corner of my eye, I turn. A lovely woman, probably in her mid-twenties, with long brown hair and full lips pauses halfway down the stairs coming from the second floor. I can hear the fear constricting her throat when she says, “Who are you?”
This woman is not the nanny I remember.
“I might ask you the same thing.”
Before she can answer, I hear a little girl’s voice. “Mommy, what’s happening?”
My heart seizes in my chest. I know without seeing her face that that is Emma, my little girl. I am aching to see her, to hold her, but I suspect looking at me might scare her. My hair is lots shorter than it ever was before and I’m thinner as well.
I probably look crazy.
But she said mommy. Has she already seen me?
The nanny is looking up the stairs and it dawns on me that my baby girl, the child I pushed out of my womb, is calling this other woman mommy. I swallow hard, shoving down all kinds of nasty, negative thoughts. As much as I’d like to pull this woman’s hair and claw at her face, it wouldn’t solve a thing—and if I thought my little girl would be scared of what I look like, something like that might traumatize her for life.
And I would die to protect her.
I imagine both she and Ollie are standing in the hallway upstairs, awakened by the ruckus between Joe and Don—and I don’t want them seeing that, either.
I say to the woman, “Get upstairs. Keep the children safe. Don’t you dare come down here again.”
Her eyes grow wide. Even in the semi-darkness of the house, I can see that much. Taking the steps two at a time, I can hear her saying something to the children and I stay still until I hear a door closing.
Joe, of course, has heard it all but has kept his eyes on Don the whole time. When I get there, he takes the tie from my left hand. My right is still clutching the other phone and the letter opener. “Stay back, Anna. There’s fucking glass everywhere.” He pulls the tie apart but the ends are knotted, so he carefully glides across the floor, taking a knife out of the block on the counter to saw the knots off one at a time.
While he’s busy, I say, “I should clean it up.” I don’t want the kids stepping on it later. I begin carefully moving toward the tiny closet that I know has all kinds of cleaning supplies.
“Nope. We gotta go.” Already he’s binding Don’s hands behind his back.
“Then what can I do to help?”
“Start tying his feet together.”
Again, I move slowly to avoid glass, hoping I don’t step on a sliver I can’t see, and then pick up the half of the tie Joe has draped on Don’s leg. I slide the rope underneath his foot and, after wrapping it around, begin to make a knot. But when Joe moves down to where I am, I gladly let him take over. The fabric in the rope has a silky feel, and I hope that doesn’t mean it will be easy for Don to slip out of.
I stand, waiting for Joe to finish, and he picks Don up, hoisting him over his shoulder. It’s amazing how Joe seems to know what I’m thinking. I know we need to bring Don with us until we’ve sorted out this whole mess, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to get him to talk.
I don’t want to broadcast the phone in my hand to Joe, but I know we need Don’s real one as well. There might be information on it, too, things he wasn’t careful about.