Blink

by Sasha Dawn

  “No, you didn’t.”

  It’s a pointless argument. “Back to the girls.”

  “When I couldn’t get a hold of you, it was too late. Damien showed up to get us, I figured we could just go, have a nice dinner—”

  “Because he’s changed.”

  “—and I’d confront him some other time. But he knew I knew. Just by looking at me. And your sisters . . . they weren’t on their best behavior, and it got to him. I gave them my phone so they could play games, but then they started fighting over the phone.” She hides behind her mug when she says the next part: “He sent them to the room as punishment, and that’s when it happened. That’s when I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “You confronted him.” My head is in my hands now. “You provoked him. On his turf. You went with him willingly, when you knew something like this was going to happen. Rosie, you have to . . . at some point, you have to realize you allow this to happen. I get that you’re in a tough situation. He’s their father. You loved him. But he’s incapable of loving you back. He’s dangerous and violent, no matter how good you want him to be. We have a restraining order against this guy, and you took your baby girls to his house. You have a black eye, and he’s going to get away with it because you won’t go to the hospital, and you won’t call to have him arrested.”

  “I voluntarily violated the order of protection, Josh.”

  “So lie to the cops. How about this: he came here, forced you to go with him, I came to get you when Margaret called, and long story short, here you are.” I shove her phone a few inches across the table. “You’ve lied to them every time I’ve called, so what makes tonight any different?”

  She drums her fingertips against the table, and has a hard time meeting my eyes. “You know why I threw away that letter from Miami University?”

  “Yeah.” She was perfectly clear about that this morning.

  “Do you know how far away Miami is?”

  I let the question hang there, but I don’t take the bait. I don’t want to talk about Miami, and if she isn’t going to call the police, there’s not much else to say anyway. I clear my throat and redirect. “Why did he have that picture? Who is that little girl?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s just a picture, Josh. It’s not like the child was unclothed, or anything.”

  “If you won’t call about the beating he gave you tonight, call about the picture.” I don’t want to get into specifics with her as to why, in particular, the picture is concerning. But I don’t think she’s going to make the call without it. “Chatham’s sister ran away and she had a picture of this same little girl in her journal. Something’s wrong, Rosie.” I fill her in on what she might have missed regarding Rachel Bachton’s case, the Baby A buried at the confluence of rivers in Chatham County, Georgia, the rumors about what Savannah and Chatham may or may not have seen in the floorboards of the stables.

  “What are you saying? That Damien’s involved in Rachel Bachton’s kidnapping somehow?”

  “Wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “The man who took her is described as five-ten to six-two, and nondescript. Damien stands out in a crowd. He’d be noticed.”

  “Would a little kid know how tall he is? I’ll bet if you ask the girls how tall you are, they’d say you’re six feet. And he hasn’t always been as big is he is now. He gets bigger every time I see him.”

  She considers for a second, then nods. “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe . . . maybe he didn’t take her. Maybe he scouted her out for someone else to take her. Maybe he kept her for a while at the cabin.”

  Again she shrugs and sips her tea. “One of the problems with the case is that they had too many leads in the first few months. Thousands of leads. Our police force doesn’t have the kind of manpower to work through all those leads, and if we accused Damien just because he has a picture . . . look, he’s a lot of things, but he’s not capable—”

  “Yes, he is.”

  She shuts up.

  “Do you remember that black lab we used to have? Benny? And one day, we came home, and the dog was hanging by the swing from the tree out front. Damien said he must have gotten tangled up with the ropes. Do you remember that?”

  I’d always suspected Damien killed the dog, and Rosie probably had thought so, too.

  “He kept Benny’s collar, remember. To remind us of what he could do. And it’s still hanging on the wall. I saw it tonight. He killed our dog, terrified the girls, and he hit both of us tonight.”

  For the first time, maybe, since she stumbled out of her ex-husband’s shack, she looks at me. Maybe it’s the first time she sees that I’m wearing the mark of Damien, too.

  “He and I got into it earlier,” I say. “At the Churchill. And then he had me by the throat when I went in to get the girls. By. The. Throat.”

  “Josh.”

  “You call, or I’m going to. And I don’t care how many times you lie, I’m going to keep telling the truth. Damien Wick is dangerous, and I can’t stay here, Rosie, if you’re going to let this happen again and again. If you’re planning to keep covering for him, I just might go to the U. I’ll show you I can do it even if you don’t believe I can.”

  “If you follow that letter all the way to Florida,” she says, “I don’t know how I’m going to manage. I believe you can do it, Josh—I’m sorry I made you think you couldn’t—but I can’t do this without you.”

  I’m sure some mothers say things like this all the time, but mine? Not so much.

  I could sink into the moment and take stock in this, but that could backfire. It’s like telling a girl you like her only after she tells you the same thing . . . and then finding out that she was joking. Can’t expose yourself to the vulnerabilities. That nearly happened to me once already today.

  Chatham: I love you.

  Me: I love you, too.

  Then hours later . . .

  Chatham: This was a mistake.

  My stomach goes hollow with the memory. If I acknowledge Rosie’s commentary, next I know, it’ll be thrown back in my face. Besides, she’s on the defensive. Because I came to her rescue today, I actually have a leg to stand on, so pretty soon, she’s going to be scrambling for a way to kick it out from under me. She’s always got to have the upper hand.

  So I wait it out.

  Chatham’s voice carries down the hall.

  “She seems great,” Rosie says.

  This might be the only thing we agree on.

  She tries again: “The girls really seem to like her.”

  “They do.”

  “But someone I’ve never met shouldn’t be sitting with the girls while they’re sick.”

  And there it is. I look at her. “Call the cops.” I push back from the table.

  “I told you to stay home that day.”

  I turn toward the girls’ room.

  “Josh.”

  I wave her off.

  I quietly walk into the girls’ room, careful not to disturb them. While I’m sure the events of this evening will rear up in their little heads and eventually prove damaging, they’re safe and content now, huddled in the same bed, with a book propped between them. They’re staring at pictures of Dr. Seuss’s fictional creatures.

  Chatham is perched on the floor opposite with one of the girls’ doodle pads on her lap. She’s sketching, and reciting words. Not reading. Reciting and telling the girls when to turn the page.

  This girl is amazing.

  Once the story about Sneetches is over, and the girls are all but sleeping, I lead Chatham past my mother, who doesn’t even look up to acknowledge us, and to the basement.

  I know Rosie’s expecting me to take Chatham back to the Churchill, but even if I weren’t worried about her being there alone, she and I are not done tonight.

  She all-out flipped out earlier, and maybe I was wrong to jump to conclusions about her hair, but there’s something she’s not telling me.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.” For all
the energy she put into Dr. Seuss, she isn’t saying much now. She pulls a few tiles from the Scrabble tray on the side of the table that has become hers over the past weeks.

  She places letters A, R, T, and C on the table, and at first she plays crate, but then rearranges the letters to play trace.

  I want to confront her about what happened. I want her to explain what the big fucking deal was that I noticed something about her I hadn’t noticed before. I mean, how does a girl have no problem with me kissing her most intimate scars, how does she tell me about her nightmares of little bodies beneath floors of a stable, but not want me to know she’s naturally blonde? But I don’t know how to ask without sounding pushy, and I don’t want to scare her.

  So I go with: “You know Dr. Seuss by heart.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Not like that.”

  She shrugs a shoulder. “If you memorize a story, you can tell it to yourself even when you don’t have the book in front of you.”

  “I guess you can.”

  Silence.

  I try again: “What happened earlier in the car . . . are you okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” she finally says. “I don’t know why it upset me so much.”

  “It’s all right.” I’m sitting on the other side of the table, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees, and I can’t help looking at her. It’s like I don’t want to look away. I want to memorize the way she looks tonight.

  Her skin is ivory-white, a stark contrast to her dark hair and dark red dress. Her chameleon eyes are sort of green around the rims tonight.

  The longer I look at her, the more easily I can imagine her as a blonde. “For the record, I don’t expect you to be anything. Your hair could be purple for all I care.”

  “I think, maybe, you’re the first person ever who could say something like that and I’d actually believe you.”

  Silence. She starts rearranging the letters on the board again. Pulling letters from words we’ve already played, and even some from the pool.

  C, H, A, T, H . . .

  She’s spelling out her name. Fine by me, I want to tell her. Label everything in this whole damn place. It’s all yours, if you want it. Because I’m yours.

  “It was the way you said it,” she says. “Like you thought I was lying to you or something.”

  . . . A, M, C, L, A . . .

  “I didn’t mean for it to come across that way. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

  She licks her lips.

  . . . I, B, O, R . . .

  God, I want to kiss her. “I mean, I feel like I spend most of my free time looking at you, and I’d never noticed. I was excited, and not because you’re blonde underneath but because I’m excited every time I learn something new about you.”

  . . . N, E.

  “Like your sculpture. I might not understand it,” I say, “but you can bet I’m going to be thinking about it for a long time because whatever it is, it’s part of you.”

  A hint of a smile appears on her lips, and while it’s not much of an invitation, I lean over the table, take her face in my hands, and press my mouth to hers.

  “I meant it,” she says. “Everything I’ve told you today, everything I’ve told you since the caboose park. I mean it all.”

  The doorbell sounds just as we’re about to kiss again.

  S i x I m p o s s i b l e T h i n g s

  The whirl of red and blue lights against the side of the house is like a beacon, and some of our neighbors—people I’ve never spoken to and rarely see—step outside to see what all the commotion is about. What these people must think of us. Cops here all the time, the constant screaming within these walls . . .

  I know at any minute that Rosie’s going to regret calling. When she appears at the door—I’m already on the front steps—she gives me a panicked look. But this is for the best. The cops need to know what’s going on.

  “I would’ve called,” she whispers. “You could have given me some time to get myself together.”

  “Wait. You didn’t call?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Well, I didn’t call,” I say.

  “Good evening.” An officer approaches. “Joshua Michaels?”

  The way he says it, I expect to hear you’re under arrest for . . .

  My heart speeds up. What could this be about?

  Did Aiden get pinched? Would he rat me out? Tell the cops I recently made a drop for him? No, he wouldn’t . . . But I never paid him for it, never gave him the hundred from that girl with the tattoo. Would that piss him off enough to tell the cops?

  Or is this about the rave? I didn’t do anything illegal that night, but maybe just going to one of those things is illegal.

  Or . . . I’ll bet Damien called and told them I charged at him earlier today. He probably did it as a precaution, so he could say holding me by the throat against the wall was a practice in self-defense.

  I clear my throat. “Yeah, I’m Josh.”

  “We’re responding to a tip that you were assaulted earlier tonight.”

  When the beam of a flashlight crosses my face, Rosie turns the swollen side of her face away.

  The officer turns off and stows the flashlight. “Seems there might be some truth to it.”

  “My stepfather,” I say. “Ex-stepfather. Damien Wick.”

  “Can we come in and talk to you about it, Joshua?”

  He keeps calling me Joshua. Chatham. She must have been the one to make the phone call.

  Of course she did! She’s going to tell them about the photographs, too.

  Rosie opens the door, and while she doesn’t necessarily invite the cops in, she holds the door open just long enough to indicate the two of them can come in.

  The girls’ rainforest soundtrack filters down to the foyer, a reminder that they’re asleep, and after a long, hard day, they need it.

  Maybe this is why my mother leads us all down the stairs to my realm of the house, the basement. “Have a seat.”

  Chatham isn’t in the family room, which is dim, lit only by a table lamp in the far corner. I turn on the fireplace and glance down the hallway. The light in my bedroom is on; she must be in there, changing out of her dress.

  I sit first, and the cops follow suit, but Rosie lingers in the shadowy outskirts of the room, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “We’re going to need pictures of the bruises,” one of the cops says.

  “He hit me in the face, and he had his hands around my throat.” I unfasten another button on my shirt. I haven’t looked at it yet, but my neck aches, so I’m pretty sure it’ll bruise.

  Rosie flips the light switch, and the overhead fixture buzzes to life, washing the room in the harsh tint of fluorescent bulbs. “He’s going to say my son provoked him. It’s what he always says. He’s going to tell you I deserved this, too”—she drapes her hair aside, allowing a clear view of her shiner—“and this.” She twists and lifts the hem of her shirt so we see the bruise I suspected was on her back.

  “And this.” Then, she turns to reveal a gory splash of black and purple fist-sized contusions on her abdomen. Not one or two. Several. Like he pummeled her repeatedly.

  “Mom.” Instantly, I’m on my feet. Tears cloud my eyes, but I don’t care who sees.

  “This,” she says, “was his reaction when I told him I’m pregnant. I’m not anymore.”

  Pregnant? The word blows me back, and its shrapnel embeds in my flesh, cutting and burning.

  The cops are on her now, asking questions, and she’s answering.

  The events of the past few weeks come at me like a fast-forward stream of images: the inexplicable bouts of crying, the ring he tried to give her, the incident with the stairs . . . her constantly telling me I don’t understand her predicament, insisting he’s changed.

  The image of her bruised abdomen keeps flashing in my mind. It’s now joined the other haunting pictures—Damien coming at me with a knife, Caroline dangling from his hands over the lof
t, Rosie using Margaret as a human shield—and will I ever forget the fear in Margaret’s voice on the other end of the line tonight?

  Of course Rosie would insist he’d changed. She’s trying to wish it true, trying to convince herself of the impossible.

  I keep wiping tears away, but my eyes keep filling up, and I keep playing the scene in my mind: fist after fist after fist pounding into her flesh. And she’s so thin . . . there’s no protection, no barrier. He probably damaged her insides. Could have broken her bones.

  And to think he was doing it with intent! Not only to hurt her, but to kill the mistake they’d made together . . . to kill the baby.

  Now, I’m remembering him waling on her when she was pregnant with the twins, and I damn near throw up.

  I cover my mouth and breathe through it. It’s in the past. It’s over.

  And maybe it wasn’t really over until tonight, but now she’s finally breaking. She’s finally telling the truth.

  “Mom.” I want to go to her, but I can’t make myself take the necessary steps. I’m angry with her for putting herself in this position, but I know I shouldn’t be.

  I hear, in the periphery, the cops’ questions, my mother’s answers—

  “How far along were you when Mr. Wick hit you?”

  “Have you been to the doctor?”

  “Do you have documentation to prove the pregnancy terminated after his assault?”

  —but it all seems so far away and distant, like I’m listening from the bottom of the ocean.

  I sink back to the sofa, and I drop my head in my hands.

  My ears are ringing.

  My hands are wet with tears.

  My chest is heaving with sobs I’m fighting like hell not to unleash. Have to stay strong. For my mother. For my sisters.

  “Mom.”

  Was the dickweed trying to kill the twins before they were born, too? Is that why he’d walloped her back then? This tremendous sense of loss pours into my heart, and it hurts. I can’t imagine life without my sisters.

  “Mom!”

  And the next I know, I’m holding her, and I’m holding her so tight, and she’s crying on my shoulder.

  My mom.

  My mother. She’s so small. Damien could snap her in half, and she stood up to him tonight. She’s strong. So strong.