My Darling Husband

by Kimberly Belle

  But when they do, it is magical.

  I grab two packets of Goldfish from the glove compartment, then pass them to the back seat. We’re only a few miles from home, but I have learned to always come prepared. Juice boxes, snacks, iPads with every movie known to man. I’m not above parenting by distraction.

  “Help Bax open his, will you?” I say to Beatrix, but I’m too late. They’re already playing tug-of-war with the bag.

  “Give it to me. I can open it on my own.” Baxter kicks the back of my seat in protest.

  “You can’t do it by yourself,” Beatrix says, her voice matter-of-fact. “You’re too little.”

  “I’m not little! Give it here.” Baxter swipes at the bag, but his big sister is too strong. He can’t pry the packet from Beatrix’s fingers. “Mommy, Beatrix won’t give me my Goldfish. Make her give me my Goldfish!”

  This happens hundreds of times a day, relentless bickering over anything, everything, nothing.

  I take a deep, deep breath and try not to death-grip the steering wheel. How does this happen? How can it be that I spend every second my kids are out of sight missing them terribly, picturing their adorable little faces all day long, seeing their sweet smiles, imagining the feel of their bony arms around me, then I have them for ten minutes in the car and I’m counting the seconds until bedtime.

  “Miss Juliet says you worked on a new piece.” I stuff my words with enthusiasm and smile into the rearview mirror, trying to catch Beatrix’s eye under those tousled white-blond curls, a cloud of a million tiny ringlets she wishes would lie flat like her brother’s.

  The distraction works. Beatrix sighs and lets go of the crackers. “Yeah.”

  “That’s great. Which one?”

  “Fantaisie Impromptu. But I think I want to play the piano.”

  I can’t help myself; I laugh. School starts in two weeks, and thanks to Miss Juliet’s nonnegotiable requirement for a minimum of three hours of daily practice, our schedules are already packed. With Beatrix’s ear, she could probably pick up a new instrument quickly, but still. “When on earth would you find time to practice the piano, too?”

  “Not ‘too.’ I want to play the piano instead of the violin.”

  I roll to a stop at the intersection, and my foot punches the brake a little too hard. I lurch against the seat belt and twist around on my seat. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t quit the violin.”

  Beatrix hears the horror in my voice. We all do. Even Baxter stops tugging on his Goldfish wrapper and waits for his sister’s answer.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why.” It’s something we talk about often, how this spectacular gift comes hand in hand with a spectacular responsibility. “You can’t throw away all the work you’ve done. You just can’t.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me. Says your father and Miss Juliet. You’re a violin prodigy.”

  She frowns and drags her gaze to the window. “I hate that word. I wish people would stop saying it.”

  I stare at my daughter’s profile, trying to puzzle out if there’s anything fueling this sudden change of heart, or if her announcement is for shock value only. Ever since that day in the toy aisle at Target, Beatrix’s musicality has felt equal parts exhilarating and consequential, an all-encompassing talent that means my daughter’s most important relationship is with an inanimate object. I’ve tried very hard to make sure she doesn’t miss out on friends and school and normal, nine-year-old life, fighting traffic to squeeze in playdates and birthday parties when really she should be practicing, but quit? Put down the violin and let all that talent and hard work go to waste?

  Like hell. Not going to happen.

  The car behind me honks, and I turn back to the road.

  “Mommy, what happens when a kangaroo jumps on a trampoline?” Baxter says apropos of nothing, his voice light and carefree. The pureness of him melts my heart.

  “I don’t know, baby. He jumps even higher, I guess.”

  But Beatrix is still feeling combative. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “No, he doesn’t. Mo-om.”

  I’m still debating how to handle Beatrix’s little bombshell when I slow to a stop in front of the house, an ivy-covered brick-and-stone high atop a hill, to grab the mail. I keep pestering Cam to put a lock on the mailbox, something to stop strangers from digging through our post, but he hasn’t made the time.

  Why bother? he said last I mentioned it. All the important things are digital these days.

  I flip through the stack, junk mail and flyers folded around a lone bank statement. Not that there’s much in this one; it’s for the debit account, which we run down every month. But the point is, not everything is digital. If anyone wanted to know how much money we have in any of our accounts, all they’d have to do is rifle through our mail.

  I drop the papers in my bag, steer the car up the driveway and press the button for the gate while behind me on the back seat, things are escalating. Baxter punches Beatrix. Beatrix pulls Baxter’s hair in retaliation. Both kids scream and cry.

  I pull into the detached garage on the back side of the house, slam the car into Park and hit the remote for the garage door.

  Later, this is the moment I will keep coming back to, in our windowless garage with only one flickering lightbulb on the mechanical box above my car, the darkness descending as the big door rumbled to a close. To the smell of dirt and oil and something foreign, something that didn’t quite belong but that I dismissed as carried in on the wind. To the chaos of holding my shit together while dragging two squirming children out of the car, of gathering up juice boxes and crackers and empty wrappers, of strapping backpacks and instrument cases to little shoulders because they’re big kids now and Mommy shouldn’t have to carry everything herself.

  To how I was too busy, and far too distracted to see the body in the far corner.

  How I didn’t hear his rubber soles hitting the concrete floor, or notice the dark smudge of the man stepping out of the shadows.

  How I didn’t register any of it, not until it was too late.

  J A D E

  3:18 p.m.

  I see the black figure in the shadows, and my first thought is of the kids, an immediate, full-throttle alarm that comes on like a freight train. This is parenthood in a nutshell: utter terror for your children’s welfare, always. It’s something Cam and I never thought about back when we were trying to get pregnant—the overwhelming insecurity when the doctor settled our babies into our arms, the unrelenting worry whenever they’re not near. I spot movement and I reach for them at the same time—instant and instinctual. My brain identifies a person, a male-sized form that does not belong here, and I shove their little bodies behind mine.

  A man, looming in my garage. Breathing the same air.

  I don’t move. I can’t. No fight. No flight. I just stand here, transfixed, dumbstruck, stock-still.

  I think of my phone, buried under the mail and trash in my bag. I think of the panic button on the alarm pad in the house, on the other end of a breezeway and tucked safely behind a locked door. I think of my keys, next to my phone. Even if I managed to get us out of this garage, where would we go? I’d never make it inside the house, and the backyard is fenced, the gates either electronic or secured with a complicated, child-safe latch. There’s nowhere to escape.

  “Don’t move. Stay quiet and I won’t hurt you.”

  The voice is so frighteningly close. Hoarse, rattling in air hot with my sticky fear, and I don’t believe a single word. Especially not when he steps closer, and I get a better look. The man is wearing a mask. He’s holding a gun, a stubby black thing in a fist. Head-to-toe black, every bit of him covered, even his hands. His fingertips.

  Run. I scream the word in my head, urging myself on. Grab the children and run.

  Now.
<
br />   A chill races down my spine. The hairs soldier on my skin.

  This man is here to hurt me. To hurt us.

  And still I can’t move.

  So this is it, then. This is how my body responds when faced with sudden fright, with this hot, sluggish horror—like when your fingers brush over a strange lump under your armpit and you realize your life has veered sideways. Some people run. Others scream. Me, I just stand here, paralyzed by the mounting terror.

  The kids, too. They stare at him with big, frightened eyes. A little hand grabs my pants leg.

  “Please,” I somehow manage to squeak, but I can’t finish. Please don’t touch the children. Please don’t shoot us. The words are too horrifying to say out loud.

  He moves closer, his gait smooth, but there’s something sinister in the way he’s walking across the concrete floor. He’s like an animal on the hunt, joints loose, ready to pounce. All dangerous, coiled energy lurking just below the surface.

  “Take my car.” I hold out my bag, a stupidly expensive designer thing from a couple years ago. “The keys are in here somewhere, and so’s my wallet. I—”

  “I don’t want your purse. Don’t want your car, either.” His voice is deep and scratchy, the kind that sounds filled with cigarette smoke.

  My stomach spirals, and I search his face for more, but the parts of him I can see—his lips, his eyes—are closed off. I search for something recognizable, something human I can appeal to, but there’s nothing. It’s like searching for meaning on a covered canvas.

  Still, I take in every detail I can see and commit it to memory. Just under six foot, medium build, broad shouldered. Caucasian. I know this from his eyes, olive green and flecked with amber, the pink patch of skin around his mouth. His teeth are white and straight, the kind of straight that comes from braces.

  “Do you want money? I don’t have cash, but take my card. My pin is 4-3-0-8.”

  “Jade. Shh.”

  My name on his tongue tightens a knot of panic in my gut, and I scurry—finally—backward, putting some distance between me and this man, pushing the kids behind me and toward the door.

  Stay calm.

  Don’t panic.

  Whatever happens, do not let the gunman in the house. That’s how people get killed. That’s how entire families end up in a pool of blood. As soon as you let the gunman into the house, you’re already dead.

  I hold out my left hand, offering up my wedding band and an old, battered Rolex. “I have jewelry. Some money in the safe. Loads of electronics. Go inside and take whatever—”

  “Quiet. This is how it’s going to go. The four of us are going to walk outside and move slowly and calmly to the back door, where we will stand like silent little statues while you dig your keys out of your bag and let us in. No running or trying to get away. No flailing and hollering for the neighbors. And once we’re inside, I’d think real long and hard before you tap some secret code that’s going to call in the cavalry.” His gaze flits to the kids, and one of them—Baxter, I think—squeaks. “It’d be a shame if the cops showed up, wouldn’t it, Mom?”

  The secret code! A silent alarm that lets the control room know someone has forced his way into the house. The technician who installed it entered a code straight down the middle of the keypad, but Cam and I were supposed to change it because every criminal on the planet knows the 2-5-8-0 trick. But did we change it? And if so, to what? My thoughts are too tangled up with terror to remember.

  “What do you want?”

  “I already told you. I want us all to go inside, quietly. I want you to turn off the alarm without me having to use this thing.” He lifts the gun by his head, jiggles it in the air. “I don’t want to hurt you or the kids, Jade, but I will. What happens next is up to you.”

  My mind flips through my options, at gunpoint and with two small children. Fight, one of us gets shot. Run, we get shot in the back. I consider lunging for the gun, sacrificing myself for my babies, but what will happen to Beatrix and Baxter then? I don’t know anything about guns. I have no clue how many bullets this one holds. Enough to kill all three of us multiple times, I’m guessing.

  “Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you. Just please, please let the kids go.” My voice cracks on the words. Behind me, Baxter starts to cry.

  The man puffs a breath, a put-out kind of sigh. “Already you’re making this harder than it has to be. I’ll tell you everything you need to know as soon as we’re inside.”

  Another wave of his gun urges me onward, but it’s hard to move with the kids hanging on my legs like monkeys. I shuffle backward, my heels sliding across the concrete so I don’t step on their toes. I don’t turn around. I don’t dare to. I keep my eyes on the weapon and move back, back, back until there’s nowhere left for us to go. The kids and I are pressed up against the door, no air between us.

  The man’s brow quirks. “You’re going to have to actually open it, you know.”

  And then what—scream? Our neighbors on either side work big jobs, managing big departments at Fortune 500 companies. The Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Delta. They leave before dawn and come home well after dark, but this is a family-friendly neighborhood. It’s filled with kids and nannies and stay-at-home moms. If I scream loud enough, surely, surely someone will hear.

  But first I have to get outside.

  I reach behind me with a hand, fumbling for the handle stabbing me in the hip. I have to nudge the kids out of the way first, pushing them toward the patch of wall farthest from the man, between the door and Baxter’s tricycle, its front wheel flush against a giant blue bucket filled with sports equipment. It’s a tight squeeze, and I kick the bike to move it out of the way, but it doesn’t budge. The bucket is too heavy. The space is too tight for all three of us. With my other hand, the one still holding my bag, I shuffle Beatrix to the other side. Her violin case bonks against the wall, an angry sound that makes her flinch.

  The flickering lightbulb on the door opener times out, plunging the garage into blackness. Both kids let out a frightened wail. I let go of Beatrix just long enough to feel along the wall for the light switch, and there’s movement all around. The kids flailing. The soft breeze of bodies lurching in the darkness. My bag dragging on an arm.

  My fingers find the switch, and the lights pop on, a row of ceiling mounts that fills the space with bright, white light. I blink into the sudden light and—

  My lungs fill with a scream.

  The man has Beatrix. He squeezes her to his chest with one beefy arm. Beatrix hangs there like a rag doll, her little Converse dangling two feet off the ground. She’s lost her case in the shuffle. A shoe has come untied, the laces long and dirty and frayed on one end, but all of that bleeds away because there’s a gun, the stubby black barrel shoved into a fluffy cloud of Beatrix’s hair. Pressed against her temple.

  I hold up both shaking hands, reaching for her until the man’s glare stops me. He shakes his head and my feet stick to the floor. “Please. I’ll do anything. Just...please.”

  Beatrix stares at me in shock, in horror, her silent tears quivering with reflected light.

  The man tips his head at the door. “Get us inside without screaming or making a run for it, and—” he glances down at Beatrix “—what’s your name, little lady?”

  Beatrix gives me a pleading look that pierces me straight through the heart.

  “It’s Beatrix,” I say. “Her name is Beatrix.”

  “Okay, Beatrix. It’s up to your mama now. Tell her to be good, and I’ll put you back down as soon as she lets us inside.”

  His implicit threat, my daughter in a strange man’s arms, a gun against her temple—it lights a fire under me. I dig my keys out of my bag, heave it onto a shoulder and Baxter onto a hip, and hurry out the door.

  The breezeway is short, nine or ten yards at the most, and I don’t bother with so much as a furtive glance at the
neighbors’ backyards. When we moved in a year ago, Cam overplanted for privacy. The hedges are thick and evergreen and, according to our lawn service, more fit for a forest than a backyard. Even if there were a neighbor home on the other side of all that greenery, which there’s probably not, they wouldn’t be able to see me, scampering down the concrete sidewalk to the back door with a masked man at my back, and I don’t dare call out to whoever’s within hearing distance—not with a gun pressed to my daughter’s head. There goes that plan.

  Baxter clings to me, burying his face in my shoulder. His weight and my shaking hands are making things difficult. I fumble with the key, stabbing the doorknob multiple times before the thing slides into the lock. I twist my wrist and press the knob down with a hip, and the latch releases. The door swings open.

  He rushes us into the mudroom and shuts the door.

  From the alarm pad on the wall comes a long, shrill beep. I slide Baxter down a leg, and he darts behind me while I tap in the code—the real one, the only one I know for certain will disarm the system. I’m rewarded with three short beeps, the light on the pad switches from red to green, and then...silence.

  The man flips the lock on the back door and points to the pad. “Good girl. Now arm it to Stay.”

  “What?” I hear the man’s words, I acknowledge them, but all I can think of is Beatrix, crying silent tears against his chest. I hold out a hand to her, and the man sets her on the ground. She darts around my legs to her brother, both of them using me as a human shield.

  “Set the alarm to Stay,” he says again. “That way, I’ll know if anybody tries to escape.”

  Shit. If I reset the alarm, that means only two exits, the front door and this mudroom door, that don’t immediately trip the alarm. Forget sneaking out the side door or climbing out a window. Either would result in the alarm wailing and bullets flying. Shit.