Читать книгу House of Glass - Sophie Littlefield - Страница 13

Chapter Six

“Oh, God,” Livvy said, a split second after they heard the lock at the top of the stairs. She was standing apart from her parents, her arms hugging her body. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. “It smells so bad down here!”

Ted reached for Livvy, and she fell against him. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, and she sobbed against his chest. Jen picked Teddy up and rocked him gently, whispering that he shouldn’t worry about Livvy, that his sister would be just fine.

After a few moments Livvy’s sobs subsided and she pulled away from Ted. She went to stand near the shelf where all her trophies were lined up—Mini Marlins swim, eight years of soccer, a few for softball, one from the American Legion speech contest back in middle school. Jen could see her shoulders trembling.

“Honey, it’s going to be okay,” Jen said, handing Teddy to her husband and approaching Livvy cautiously. She had to keep her calm, had to make her believe she and Ted had things under control. “Once they get what they want, they’ll go.”

“But what do they even want?”

Jen put her hand on Livvy’s shoulder and gently turned her so she could look into her eyes. “Anything they can sell, I would guess. There’s the silver, my jewelry, the computers—any number of things. They’ll take it and they’ll go.”

She could see Livvy trying, wanting, to believe her. She tried to make herself believe it, so her face would convince Livvy.

“I need to talk to Daddy,” she said as calmly as she could. “Can you play with Teddy and keep him busy for a few minutes?”

Livvy nodded. She looked a little better, some of the panic gone from her eyes.

“His old toys are in here,” Jen said, getting a cardboard box down off the shelf. “I haven’t had a chance to get them over to St. Vincent De Paul’s yet. Go ahead and get them out. Whatever he wants.”

Livvy talked softly to her brother, kneeling down on the cold concrete floor next to him and peeling the tape off the box. Jen and Ted went to the far side of the basement where the old living room furniture was stored, the pieces that Ted kept meaning to put on Craigslist. Ted lifted the old lamp shades off the couch and brushed off the cushions. When they sat down, he took her hands in his.

“I don’t understand why they picked us,” Jen said in a low voice. “It’s not like we have the biggest house in the neighborhood. And we were home. Why wouldn’t they pick a place where nobody was home? I mean, all they had to do was keep knocking on doors until they found one that nobody answered. Then they could just go around the back and break in.”

“I don’t know, maybe they were worried about alarms. Everybody’s got those signs in their yard, those ADT warnings.”

“Not everyone,” Jen said. “Lots of people don’t.” They didn’t, for instance. They’d talked about a home alarm system, but they’d felt that Livvy was too young to be depended on to arm and disarm the system.

“I think we have to assume it’s just random,” Ted said. “Just bad luck.”

“But you’d think they’d at least watch the house for a few days. I mean, that’s what you always read in the papers—they watch the house to figure out when the owners come and go, right? But these guys came at exactly the wrong time. This is the time of day there’s most likely to be someone home. It doesn’t make any sense.”

I’m scared, she wanted to say. She wanted Ted to put his arms around her and tell her everything was fine. She wanted him to do for her what he had done for Livvy, to hide his own fear and promise her they would be safe. But she wasn’t Livvy. She and Ted were the adults, and they had to face the truth.

“I don’t know, Jen,” Ted said. His voice was oddly detached, and he was looking past her shoulder at the shelves behind her. “I’m guessing they’ll have one of us go up there and show them where everything is. Where your jewelry is, the safe, stuff like that.”

“Oh, God.” Jen felt a wave of nausea, and she doubled over her knees, letting go of Ted’s hands. “There’s nothing in the safe but papers. What if they’re expecting more? Like cash or something—what if they’re angry that there isn’t more to take?”

“Well, there’s the electronics, the silver—there’s lots of stuff,” Ted said, putting his hand on her back and rubbing absently. His offhand touch was the opposite of comfort; it made her flinch and shrink away.

If the men upstairs were disappointed with what they could take from the house, they might take it out on her family. She pictured them opening the safe, and—once they had seen that there was nothing but insurance policies, passports, copies of the will—becoming enraged. In her imagination, Dan swung his gun around, his eyes accusing, and pointed it at her face.

She whimpered.

“Oh, hon,” Ted said. He gathered her into his arms and held her tightly. “You can’t let yourself think the worst. Do you hear me? We’re just going to take this one step at a time. We have to stay calm and trust that—believe that things will be all right. These aren’t some hopped-up drug addicts up there—they’re professionals. Professional thieves. Believe me, they want things to go smoothly just as badly as we do.”

“How do you know that?” Jen drew back and looked deeply into his eyes, trying to find the source of his certainty. “How can you be sure?”

“I’m not sure—how could I be?” His gaze skittered away, avoiding hers. “But what choice do we have but to believe it?”

“I just feel like there’s some connection, that if we thought about it we could figure it out. You’re sure you’ve never seen these guys anywhere?” Jen’s mind raced through her routines, the small world she inhabited: the kids’ schools and the grocery store and the yoga studio and the restaurants and coffee shops downtown. She was sure she’d never seen these men anywhere she went on a regular basis.

She thought of something. “Remember when your wallet was stolen from the locker room?”

“That was almost a year ago. Even if someone had kept it all this time, why would they wait so long to come here?”

“But they knew your name.” She remembered the faint smirk on Dan’s face, as he looked down on her in her own family room.

“Jen, they could have found out our names on a two-second Google search of the address. Hell, they could have gotten our names on their way up the sidewalk by just looking on their phones. That doesn’t mean anything.”

Jen was silent a minute, thinking through her family’s routines. Teddy was always with her unless he was at school or the Sterns’ house. Livvy went to school and soccer and out with her friends, less often since she’d been grounded last fall—

“What about Sean?” she said. “He had trouble with the police. Remember?”

“Sean’s sixteen years old, Jen,” Ted said incredulously. “He’s a child.”

“But he was arrested.”

“You mean that vandalism thing? That was just a stupid prank. He wasn’t even the instigator.”

It had happened after a football game, shortly after Livvy had started dating him. One of Sean’s friends had a key to the equipment shed, and they’d broken in and dragged the lacrosse goals into the parking lot and shot smashed beer cans into them. When the police came, Sean and one of the others were drunk enough that they fought ineffectively back and got assault charges tagged on, which were later dropped. The school got involved and suspended the boys for a week.

“I’m just saying he might know the young one. Ryan.” Jen tried to sort it out. “He could be friends with him. He could have told him to come here. Sean was in our house half a dozen times. He could have a grudge against Livvy from the breakup...or maybe all he did was tell them about the house, our stuff....”

“He broke up with her, Jen. Why would Sean have a grudge against her? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Jen’s mind raced with possibilities. “Or what about Renaldo?”

Ted stared at her, his eyebrows knit together. “Seriously? Our yard guy?”

“He has access. I mean, I know anyone could come through the gate, but he’s been in our yard so many times.” She felt ashamed of the betrayal even before she stopped speaking. Renaldo was a nice guy, respectful and dependable, and he never forgot to blow the bits of grass off the patio after the first time she had to remind him.

“Jen. How would Renaldo know those guys? And even if he did, why would he send them here—why wouldn’t he just come when he knew we were out of town? You always call to let him know when we’ll be away.”

Jen tried to corral the swirling thoughts in her head. She looked at her children, sitting on the carpet remnant Ted had laid out in the middle of the concrete floor. Livvy was talking softly, moving a plastic car along an imaginary track, a row of Playmobil people looking on. Teddy’s bubbling laughter was punctuated by growling engine noises and honking horns. Livvy was so good with him; she’d managed to banish the fear from his mind, somehow tamping down her own terror for his sake.

Because that’s what you do, Jen thought. When you love someone, you make yourself stronger for their sake. As strong as you can, as strong as you must—stronger than you ever believed you could be. Your love makes the other person all that matters, and how can you let your fear rule you when you have something so much more important to protect? Livvy had been shaking with fear when they came down the stairs, but now she was sitting cross-legged with a smile on her face, a smile she had conjured from nothing for her little brother.

And now she had to do the same for Livvy. For both of her children, and for Ted, too, because she was the center of their family. She was the axis on which the rest of them turned, and if she’d occasionally resented it, if sometimes it seemed thankless and even pointless, she had also spent the past fifteen years of her life building a core of strength that could support all of them even now. She would take over for Livvy and let her daughter be a child, and she would do her job.

“I’m sorry,” she said, running her hands through her hair. “You’re right. About Renaldo, and Sean—I was just trying to figure it out, but like you say, it’s probably just random. Just bad luck. Listen, can you see if you can talk to Livvy? Who knows what’s going through her head right now—just tell her what you told me, that everything’s going to be all right. And I’ll take over with Teddy.”

Jen knelt on the floor with her children. “Wow, I haven’t seen these old toys in a long time,” she said.

“Shepherd,” Teddy said, holding up an androgynous plastic figure with a yellow bowl haircut and a crook in its hand.

“That’s right, shepherd! Where are the sheep, do you think? I wonder if they’re in the box?”

While she upended the box of toys on the carpet, Ted took Livvy by the arm and led her to the couch. He sat with his arm around her and Livvy pressed her face to his shirt, shaking with silent sobs. She was trying to stay quiet for Teddy’s sake—and Ted enfolded her in his strong arms, comforting her like he always did after the worst disappointments. When her soccer team lost in the semifinals. When Sean had broken up with her. Ted was the one Livvy wanted when her world was falling apart.

Teddy’s eyes went wide at the pile of toys on the carpet. A few round pieces from the K’Nex set rolled across the floor. The poor kid was never allowed to make a mess like this; Jen was forever cleaning up around him, sorting his toys into their various bins and baskets. Well. If—when—they got out of this, she would try to loosen up a little.

She plowed her hand through the center of the pile, the figurines and building toys and vehicles clattering against each other. She dug out a Star Wars figurine. She didn’t know its name—it was from the new movie, some sort of soldier with a head scarf obscuring his face.

Teddy took it from her solemnly. “Bad mans,” he whispered. He stared at the inscrutable painted eyes, the plastic rifle nearly as tall as the figurine itself.

Jen took a deep breath. “You mean the men upstairs? They were a little scary, weren’t they?”

Teddy nodded, his lips quivering. He gripped the toy tightly. “He didn’t put me down. I wanted him to put me down but he didn’t.”

“Oh, I see. I can understand why that was upsetting.”

“They had guns.”

What the hell was she supposed to say now? In all the women’s magazines Jen had read over the years, the ones that promised solutions to everything from dry skin to marital disharmony to kids’ behavioral issues, there had never been a single piece of advice for what to do when your child is threatened at gunpoint. Jen flashed through the possibilities and decided to lie. If it was the wrong decision, she’d do her penance later.

“Oh, those were just pretend. Those guns? Toys, like these, only bigger.”

Jen took the toy back from Teddy and bent the rifle’s stock. She waggled it back and forth.

“Don’t break it, Mommy!”

“Oh, sorry. Here you go.” She handed the little soldier back to Teddy. “They were playing a game, kind of like when you and Rand and Mark play in the backyard. Remember? With the Super Soakers? Those were pretend guns.”

“I shot Rand,” Teddy said. “Rand shot me and Mark.”

“That’s right!” Jen said, warming to her lie. “And remember when Mark was crying because he didn’t understand that it was just a game? And I had to take the Super Soakers away and you guys all had quiet time? Well, upstairs it was kind of like that. Daddy and I didn’t understand it was just a game at first and so we were kind of upset. And now we’re having some quiet time down here so everyone can calm down.”

Teddy regarded her skeptically. Jen’s smile felt frozen in place. “They have to leave now,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

“Oh, yes, it is almost dinnertime, isn’t it?” Jen said, faking surprise. “But I’m just having a nice time down here with you guys. Let’s play for a while longer, okay?”

“Tell Livvy,” Teddy said.

“Tell her what?”

“That it’s a game because she was scared.” Before Jen could react, he reached into the pile of toys and pulled out a chubby little sheep. “I found him!”

Jen helped him find the other sheep, the lambs, the pieces of fence and the plastic bushes. Livvy joined them on the rug, helping Teddy assemble the imaginary pen. Jen looked at the windows and saw that it had grown pitch-dark outside. What did that make it, seven? The lights worked down here, thank God, even if it was just a few naked bulbs in the ceiling.

Ted was sorting through the shelves, pulling bottles of water from the emergency supplies. Jen went to help him.

“You got Teddy calmed down,” Ted said quietly.

“How’s Livvy?”

“Okay, I think. I think I convinced her that they weren’t here to hurt anyone.”

“I just wish I knew if they were coming back. I mean, maybe they just took what they wanted and left already.”

“No, they would have had to bring a car to load it all, and gone through the garage, unless they were really stupid. We would have heard the garage door. Besides, I hear them moving around up there.”

“Oh.” Jen tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. Why were they still in her home? “Maybe they’re just waiting until everyone’s in for the night, so they don’t call attention to themselves.”

“Maybe. Though pulling up a car late at night has its own risks, if someone sees them. They’d be more likely to notice a strange car at three in the morning.”

“Who’s up at three in the morning?” Jen demanded, and then wished she hadn’t, because the look Ted gave her conveyed what they both knew: that she was up at that hour as often as not. Lately, sleeping through the night had been nearly impossible for her; her doctor said it might be from perimenopause.

“I think we need to prepare for the possibility that we might be stuck here overnight,” Ted said.

“Oh, my God—there’s no way. They can’t just leave us down here—”

Ted reached for her, gently pushing the hair from her eyes, tilting up her face to look at him. “I know, sweetheart, I know.” His voice was heavy with emotion. “But maybe the kids can get some rest, if we just try to make it seem as normal as possible.”

“There’s nothing normal about this!” Jen felt the panic nipping at her. She wasn’t sure she could keep acting like nothing was wrong—pretending even for a few minutes with Teddy had exhausted her.

“We can do this,” Ted said as though sensing what she was feeling. “Together. We’ll stay busy and keep our minds off it, okay? And you’re right—they could leave at any time. And meanwhile we can move stuff around to make it comfortable down here for the kids. We can set it up kind of like it used to be upstairs.”

Jen looked around her at the crowded shelves, the furniture stacked up near the wall. When they’d bought the new living room furniture a couple years ago, Ted decided to sell the old stuff on Craigslist and dragged it all down to the basement, where it sat gathering dust. It had been one of their first arguments after he was laid off: Jen asked if he couldn’t finally get rid of all that junk now that he had time on his hands.

“Okay,” she whispered, because she couldn’t think of anything better to do, especially since Livvy and Teddy were occupied with the play set, and she didn’t want to interrupt and risk upsetting them.

First they took down the old dining room chairs, fussy dark walnut things with uncomfortable thin red damask cushions, and lined them up along the basement wall. The love seat was heavy and narrowly missed crushing Jen’s toe as it slid to the floor. They lifted the old coffee table down and set it next to the kids on the carpet.

Ted searched the shelves for the nonperishable food he thought he’d stored during his emergency preparedness phase, and Jen dug out the old quilts her grandmother had made. She found them packed in a box on a high shelf, and laid them out on the sofa. Livvy looked up from the floor.

“We’re going to sleep down here?” she asked, and then before Jen could answer, “What’s Daddy doing?”

Jen followed her gaze. Ted was at the top of the stairs with a flashlight and a screwdriver. Little light carried up the stairs, and his face was shadowed as he poked around at the knob.

Fear constricted Jen’s throat. If Ted managed to get the door open, he could get himself shot—or even worse, he might enrage the men upstairs, and invite their wrath on all of them. Before she could react, the door crashed open, sending Ted scrambling. The flashlight and screwdriver clattered down the wooden steps, and Ted cursed, falling a few steps until he was able to right himself by grabbing the handrail.

The door banged against the wall and swung back. A man stood in the door frame, but Jen couldn’t tell if it was Dan or Ryan. Something glinted dully, but Jen didn’t realize it was a gun until it had gone off, the report echoing dully. The man disappeared back into the hall, slamming the door shut behind him.

Jen raced up the steps. She heard Livvy screaming and the sound of the key turning on the other side of the door. Ted was holding his shin, muttering. Blood trickled down his forearm.

“What happened? Are you hurt?” Jen heard the panic in her own voice and knew the kids could hear it, too. She forced herself to stay calm.

“I’m fine.”

“But the gun—he shot—”

“Didn’t hit me. This is just from running into the handrail. I think he was just aiming for the wall.” Ted grimaced, wiping at the blood with the tail of his shirt. In the poor light Jen couldn’t see how bad it was. “Trying to make a point, I guess.”

“Daddy, come down here!” Livvy wailed frantically, and behind her, Teddy started to cry.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ted said, getting up painfully and holding on to the handrail. Jen did her best to help him down the steps, as he favored his bruised hip. In the light she could see that the gash on his forearm wasn’t bad.

Livvy seized her father’s good arm. “Daddy, you can’t go up there! They could have killed you!”

“No, that was just...laying out the rules,” Ted said, managing a tight smile. “They never meant to hurt me. They’re not killers.”

“How do you know that?” Livvy demanded as Jen went to Teddy, lifting him into her arms.

“They’re just not.” Jen knew Ted was trying to reassure Livvy, to convince her they were safe. But even if the men fired this time as a warning, how could he be sure that next time they wouldn’t shoot to kill? “I don’t know what they want, but if they were going to hurt us they would have done it already. They’re probably just trying to figure out what’s worth taking.”

Teddy whimpered against Jen’s neck, and she rocked him, trying to calm him, feeling guilty about the lie she’d told him.

“That was scary, wasn’t it?” she asked quietly. “I don’t think I like this game anymore, do you?”

Teddy shook his head against her neck. She felt the dampness of his tears against her skin. Looking around the room for something to distract him with, she had an idea.

“Let’s do the wash, okay?” she said. “Do you want to help?”

Teddy stopped snuffling and allowed her to put him down. “Laundry baseball,” he said, running for the basket of soiled towels.

Laundry baseball was a game Jen had invented to keep Teddy occupied. She tossed items from the dirty laundry pile to him, and he batted them with a hollow plastic bat, sorting them into dark and light piles. She always had to sort them again afterward, but the sound of his laughter more than made up for the extra effort.

Teddy found his bat under the folding table and swung it. Jen tossed the washcloths to him, and he batted them to the ground. She poured the detergent into the plastic cup and picked him up so he could empty it into the receptacle. They put the towels in together, and Jen held him so he could press the start button, and he watched as the water began to spray against the convex round window.

She backed away cautiously, making sure he was truly distracted. He’d often stay rapt through most of the cycle when she let him, watching the slap of the drenched towels, the sloshing of the suds and waves of water.

Ted and Livvy were picking the toys up off the floor and putting them back into the box, both looking dazed. Jen crouched next to Livvy and touched her shoulder, making her jump. “You’re doing fine, sweetheart,” she murmured. “You’re so good with Teddy. I’m so glad you’re here for him.”

Livvy picked up the toys one at a time and tossed them into the box, her lips moving slightly, as if she were talking to herself.

“Let’s let Livvy finish this up,” Jen said pointedly. Ted straightened up and they went back to the corner of the basement.

“What were you thinking?” Jen hissed, the moment she judged herself out of range of Livvy hearing. “That was a crazy chance to take, Ted. You could have—”

Ted held up his hands to stop her. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. It was...” He swallowed, looked away. “I thought maybe I could... I thought if something happened, I could at least hold them off long enough, and you and the kids—” He slammed his fist into the sleeping bags stored on the shelf, making the shelves shake.

“Ted, don’t!” But Livvy hadn’t looked up. She had slumped against the coffee table, and she was trying to untangle a length of string that was attached to a toy spacecraft. “Please. I need you to keep it together. All right. I understand, you wanted to do something—”

“To stop them. To protect my family.”

“And instead, now Livvy’s twice as scared.”

“I didn’t know they were going to shoot—”

“You didn’t know? Two guys come in our house with guns and you didn’t know it was a possibility? And then telling her that they’re not going to hurt us, practically guaranteeing it, how can she trust you? She’s not stupid, Ted, she has to know how bad this is, and lying to her isn’t going to help.”

“I wasn’t lying, Jen, I just really didn’t think—don’t think—they have any intention of hurting us. If they got caught, that would make the charges against them so much worse. They know that. They aren’t some out-of-control tweakers looking for their next fix. They’ve got to have a plan.”

“Maybe, or maybe it’s like you said—they saw the house and looked it up on the phone and came in here just to take whatever they could find. I don’t think we can assume they’ve got a plan at all.” There was something off about Ryan, a crazy burning intensity in his eyes. “They don’t seem...stable.”

Ted frowned and rubbed a hand over his face. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and the day’s growth shadowed his face, making him look older. “Look, what do you want me to say here? I’m trying to stay positive. For you, for the kids. It isn’t going to do anyone any good if we start going to worst-case scenarios.”

Jen knew he was right. Someone had to keep the kids’ spirits up; someone had to make sure Livvy didn’t get hysterical. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. It was just, the moment and the gun and then when you fell...”

Ted took her into his arms. “You’re shaking,” he murmured, his face against her hair. “Sweetheart. It’s going to be okay. Come on now.”

Jen closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the feel of his hands against her back, holding her, supporting her. She hadn’t known she was trembling until he held her, but now she felt the zigzag racing of her heart, the throbbing of her pulse in her temples, the weakness in her limbs.

But she couldn’t give in, couldn’t let herself fall apart in his arms. For one thing, she knew that Livvy saw everything, even when she pretended not to. And for another, it wasn’t fair to Ted. It wasn’t fair to expect him to be the strong one, the only one to hold them all up.

“I’m okay,” she said, gently pushing him away. She took a breath and pushed her hair away from her face. “I’m good. Really. Look, let’s try again. There’s got to be some—some sort of clue we’ve missed. About what they want. I mean, why not just take what they want and go, now that we’re stuck down here? What are they doing up there?”

“Look at it the other way—now that we’re stuck down here, why hurry? Why not take their time and make sure they get what they came for?”

“But leaving us in the basement for so long, that’s a risk, isn’t it?”

“Not really. There’s only the one door and now we know they’re keeping an eye on it. And if they’re looking for big-ticket stuff, they might just be trying to break us down, make us less likely to resist when they come looking for it.”

“But they can just take whatever they want. We can’t stop them.”

“They don’t know where we keep things...so once they take the obvious stuff, the electronics and art, they’ll come down here and want to know what we have hidden away.”

“But what are we going to tell them?”

“Whatever they want to know. It’s all insured. We tell them where the silver is, your jewelry, everything. Hell, we’ll tell them where the suitcases are and they can pack it all up. We cooperate, that is the important thing. Make it easy for them to get the job done.”

“Okay,” Jen said, nodding reluctantly. “I just, I guess I’m worried it won’t be enough.”

“Honey,” Ted said, taking her hand. “I know it’s hard, but you need to just stay calm and assume these guys are pros. Hell, for all we know they’ve done this before. There might have been a whole string of robberies around here. I mean, think about it, it’s not bad for one night’s work, right?”

“What, you think they’ve been breaking into houses all over Calumet? We would have heard about it.”

“It wouldn’t have to be just Calumet,” Ted said. “They could go all over the Twin Cities.”

“But, Ted, it would be in all the papers. The news would be all over it!”

A sound behind her caught Jen short.

“Stop it,” Livvy whispered. She was standing a few feet away, her arms hugging herself; she’d approached so quietly that they hadn’t heard her. “Please. Stop talking about it.”

Jen pulled her into her arms, shushing her, smoothing her hair. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Daddy and I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Just do what they want,” Livvy pleaded. “Don’t let Daddy try to fight with them.”

As Jen comforted her, she thought she heard voices up above and felt the vibrations of footsteps through the basement floor. It had to be her mind playing tricks on her. In the moments since she first saw the strangers standing in her bedroom door, it was as though the edges of her mind were disintegrating, like a tablet dissolving in water. The core was still there—her rational mind, her focus on her family—but how long could she sustain it?

And in a way, it hadn’t started upstairs, today, with the arrival of this threat. Sid’s death. Sarah’s note. Ted’s evasiveness. And even before that—his job loss, Livvy’s hostility...what had happened to her perfect family, the beautiful home she had created so carefully for all of them? What had she done to invite all these destructive forces in?

She was doing her best, trying to be strong, but she was beginning to imagine the walls cracking, the house bearing down on them, old sins from the past clamoring to come back.