“Let go of me!” Jill struggled to break free, but he only held on tighter, trying to make her look at him.
“You need to listen to me! She signed the adoption papers—I didn’t force her. Then six months later she went crazy and wanted the baby back. Wanted me to contest the adoption! I couldn’t do that to you—I couldn’t let you and David lose another child.”
“This had nothing to do with us—you were protecting yourself!”
“Would you stop saying that?” He shook her again, much harder this time, and Jill screamed at the blinding pain in her head.
“Be quiet!” Andrew said, voice and eyes panicked. “Just shut up and listen to me and you’ll understand!” He smashed his hand against Jill’s mouth to silence her, but then Sophia began wailing. She slid out of the car and ran to her mother’s defense, flailing at Andrew.
“Let go of Mommy! Don’t hurt Mommy!”
At her screams, something small and white shot from the garage and sank its teeth into Andrew’s ankle. He yelled, jerking his hands off Jill. She grabbed Sophia and took off running down the driveway, away from the house. Behind her, she could hear Andrew cursing as he tried to shake Cosmo off his leg. A muffled thud and then the dog whined, a pitiful sound.
“Jill, come back, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Andrew called, a hint of the old charm on top of desperation. She looked back and the lights from the garage illuminated him standing at the edge of the woods—hair lifting, top coat flapping around his legs.
Jill ran into the cover of the trees, stumbling through the darkness with Sophia’s sobs rising. “Ssh, baby, it’s okay, ssh,” she crooned, doing her best to soothe her. Jill didn’t turn back to see if Andrew was following on foot; she didn’t have to. She could feel him coming after them. She passed the steaming wreckage of Bea’s car, the smell of the gasoline strong now, and kept going. Hadn’t anyone been woken by the crash? Surely it had to have drawn attention, but most of the other houses were far away and no one had their windows open in this weather.
Over Sophia’s whimpering she could hear cracking as frozen twigs and branches snapped under her feet. A louder, whooshing sound and Jill turned in time to see the car wreck go up in flames.
Jill scrambled away, stumbling in her haste. She fell to the ground, landing hard on her shoulder to keep from crushing Sophia. Jill struggled to her feet and hoisted her daughter back up. Sophia was crying, but otherwise seemed okay. Jill’s left shoulder felt sore; she saw a trail of dark spots in the snow and realized she must have cut herself on something. Fear kept the pain at bay, spurred her on. “It’s okay, honey, just a little longer.”
She ran downhill as fast as she could, but it felt like lumbering between the snow and the weight of Sophia. Jill could hear Andrew struggling, cursing as his flat-soled wing tips slipped in the snow, but he wasn’t carrying a child. She could hear him gaining. Jill swallowed hard, tasting smoke. She hoped that she’d make it to the main road in time to flag down a car before he caught up.
Her mouth tasted like blood; her arms screamed for release. She couldn’t go any further; she paused to rest behind the wide trunk of an old tree. Sophia struggled to get down, but Jill wouldn’t let her go.
“Jill?” Andrew called; his warm voice seemed to echo through the trees. “Jill, wait for me. You and Sophia need help. You know I’d never hurt you.”
She didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything anymore. Not after the way he shook her. Her head was throbbing. She could hear the sound of Andrew’s footsteps crunching through the snow as he came closer, searching for them.
“Sophia, don’t you want to go see Daddy?” Andrew called.
“Let me go—” Sophia said, but Jill clapped a hand over her mouth, pressing both of them back against the trunk of the tree, her feet slipping in the thick carpet of snow-covered pine needles. She couldn’t put Sophia down, she wouldn’t. She could feel her daughter’s breath hot against her hand, then the warmth of tears. Maybe Jill was wrong. But she’d been so scared at the way he put his hand across her mouth.
She moved ever so slightly to see around the trunk of the tree. In the light from the flames, she could see Andrew standing about twenty feet away, looking for them. For a moment, before he spotted her, she saw Andrew’s face contorted by rage, the face of a powerful man angry at being thwarted. He shifted, and looked right at them, his face morphing back into its friendly mask, but something glinted in his hand. The gun.
Terrified, Jill ran, holding Sophia tight as she raced down the hill. She hoped the startled cry behind her meant that Andrew had slipped, but she couldn’t stop to look back. A pinprick of light pierced the dark woods. Was she imagining it? No, there it was again. Light shining through the trees. She could see the roofline of another house. Jill sobbed with relief. Surely someone would help them.
The house came into view as Jill got closer, a large brick colonial sitting at the middle of a circular driveway, lights blazing in multiple windows. She ran to the front door, setting Sophia down in front of her as she banged the brass knocker repeatedly against the wooden door. “Help! We need help!”
“The man got a boo-boo and he’s went to sleep,” Sophia said.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Jill said. “He’ll wake up.” But there was no answer. No sign of movement through the curtained windows. She looked behind her and thought she caught a glimpse of a figure moving through the trees. “For God’s sake, open the door!” she shouted, slamming the knocker so hard it chipped the paint.
“Mommy, he’s here,” Sophia whispered, peering around Jill’s legs. Jill looked over her shoulder and saw Andrew stepping onto the driveway. There was nowhere to go; they were trapped. Jill rattled the doorknob and the door suddenly opened. She fell inside, dragging Sophia with her and slammed the door behind them, locking it.
“Hello?” She called, but no one answered. The lights were on in the living room; there was a fire burning low in the hearth and a book facedown on a table as if someone had been sitting there, but the chair was empty. “Is anyone home? Please—I need help! Call the police!” Her voice seemed to echo through the house.
“The man’s went to sleep,” Sophia repeated, tugging on Jill’s jacket. “He no wakes up.”
Jill looked at her. “What do you mean? Where did he go to sleep?”
“Out there.” Sophia pointed toward the door. Jill looked in that direction and thought she saw a shadow at the window.
“Let’s check upstairs, okay?” she said, scooping Sophia back up with one arm and grabbing the brass poker from the set of fireplace tools with her free hand. She hustled up the stairs, calling out as she ran. “Hello? Is someone here?”
She held onto Sophia’s hand, dragging her down a hall decorated with old-fashioned floral-and-vine wallpaper. Empty room after empty room. Where had the owners gone? Jill could hear Andrew back at the front door, rattling the knob. One bedroom had an old phone sitting on a nightstand, but when Jill yanked up the receiver there was no dial tone. She remembered David’s iPhone and pulled it from her pocket. Still no reception. Jesus Christ. She opened a closet. It was dark and smelled of dust and mothballs, but it was stuffed with bagged clothes and there were shoe boxes piled high on the floor. She shifted the pile and pushed aside clothes in the back to make a spot. “We’re playing a game with Uncle Andrew,” she said. “You’re going to hide in here and be very, very quiet, okay?”
Sophia grabbed her around the legs. “But I want to stay with you!”
“You have to stay here now. Mommy’s going to come back and get you, but you have to stay here for now.” Jill tried to peel off Sophia’s hands, one at a time, but as soon as she freed one, Sophia latched on with the other.
“No, Mommy! Don’t let go!”
Jill knelt and hugged her hard. “I’m never letting you go. I’ll be right back. You hold onto Blinky and be very, very quiet or we won’t win the game, okay?”
Sophia nodded, clutching Blinky, but her lip trembled. Jill lifted her into
the spot and tucked the bags and boxes around her. Sophia whimpered as Jill pulled the closet door, leaving it open just a crack. She fled along the hall checking other bedrooms, but couldn’t find another phone. She tried the cell phone again, but this time there was too much static and the 911 operator couldn’t understand her.
She heard glass shattering downstairs. He’d found a way inside. It was just a matter of time until he found them. Jill gripped the poker. It crossed her mind that she hoped Sophia wouldn’t see Andrew killing her. She ducked into yet another uninhabited room, still clutching David’s iPhone as if somehow, miraculously, it could save her. And then she had an idea.
chapter forty-seven
DAY TWENTY-THREE
The sound of floorboards creaking. Andrew was searching downstairs; she could hear doors being opened. The desire to run was overwhelming. Jill grabbed hold of the doorknob to stop herself. She shrank back, slowing her breathing, willing herself to become invisible. She tried not to think about Sophia. A distinct footstep, then another. He was coming upstairs; he would find them.
“Mommy? Daddy? I need you! Where are you?” Sophia’s voice carried in the silence of the house.
Jill’s eyes teared at the sound, but she stayed where she was. It was too late to come out. Too late to do anything but stay where she’d hidden, hoping that if he found Sophia, Andrew wouldn’t try to kill her, too.
“Daddy, Mommy, I need you! Mommy!”
Footfalls pounded up the stairs and down the hall into a bedroom. They stopped abruptly. Andrew’s voice exclaimed, “What the fuck?” Jill stepped out from behind the bedroom door with the poker raised just as he stood from picking up David’s cell phone. She’d left it on the center of the floor playing an old recording of Sophia’s voice.
The poker missed his head, landing against his shoulder instead, but it was hard enough to make him drop the gun. It skittered across the wooden floor and for a split second Andrew and Jill stared after it. She lunged first, throwing the poker like a spear at him as she dove for the gun. He cried out and she knew the poker had hit him, but then he landed on top of her, his weight like a hammer nailing her to the floor, his arm reaching alongside hers, each of them with a hand splayed wide, skin taut and white, desperate to reach the gun. His hand was larger, fingers longer. His fingertips brushed the metal. He would kill her.
Adrenaline surging, Jill reached her other hand up and around her head to claw at his face. Andrew shrieked in pain. “Shit!” He reared up, grasping her hair with his free hand and shoved her face into the ground, but he’d shifted his weight off just enough that she managed to slide forward. She searched blindly, keening, her hand tearing at the floor until it closed around cold metal. Andrew yanked her back by the leg, but she twisted around in his grip, grasping the handgun in both hands and aiming it straight at his face.
“Get the fuck off me!”
He dropped her leg, rearing back. Jill scrambled up, holding the gun outstretched. It felt heavier than she would have expected, a substantial weight. Andrew got slowly to his feet, hands held up, palms out.
“Be careful,” he said. “That could go off.” He sounded surprisingly calm, sliding back into his usual charm even if his appearance belied his tone. Dead twigs and leaves were caught in his once beautiful coat, a pocket ripped, the high sheen wing tips coated with debris. The camera-ready hair now fell in limp strands; angry red gouges from her fingernails tore down one side of his face from eyelid to jaw. “I’m sorry I scared you, Jill. This has all been a big misunderstanding. Let’s put the gun away, and we can sit down and talk.”
“Give me your phone,” Jill demanded. As Andrew started to lower his hands, she shouted, “No! Just one hand. Slowly!”
He raised an eyebrow at her, but reached into the breast pocket of his coat and took out his phone. “I wasn’t going to hurt you, Jill. I’d never hurt you. You’ve got to believe me.” He held the phone out to her, but she shook her head.
“Place it on the ground, then kick it toward me.”
“C’mon, Jill, this isn’t the movies.” He smiled and there was something both desperate and mocking in it. “I’m not a bad guy.”
“Just do it!”
Andrew sighed, giving her wounded little-boy eyes as he slowly placed the phone on the ground and slid it across to her. It landed near her feet. Jill kept her eyes on him as she stooped to pick it up with one hand, the gun still raised in the other. Andrew’s phone always had connectivity. She dialed with her left hand, listening to a sporadic ringing, and then finally, blessedly, a voice: “911, what is your emergency?”
“There’s been a car crash, I need help—”
“Are you injured?”
“Yes. I need the police to come to—”
“What is your location, ma’am?”
“Fernwood—” The phone died. “Hello? Hello?” Jill pressed redial, but she couldn’t get reception. “Damn it all!”
Andrew’s hands lowered. “Keep them up!” Jill shouted, shoving the phone in her pocket and gripping the gun again with both hands. He smiled, taking a small step toward the door.
“They’re not coming, Jill.”
“Stand still!” The wound on her shoulder—or was it fear—had weakened her grip; the gun shook in her hands. Sweat, or was it blood, dripped into her eyes. She blinked rapidly, trying to hold the gun steady.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” Andrew said, taking another step back toward the door. “It’s not in you to shoot anyone.”
“Stop moving!”
“Mommy?” A tiny, trembling voice. Sophia stood in the doorway.
Jill’s gaze shifted from Andrew to her daughter. “Get back, Sophia!”
But her moment’s inattention allowed Andrew enough time to step to the door and catch the child. She screamed as he grabbed her, holding her high against his chest like a human shield, one hand clasping her small neck.
“Let her go!”
“Drop the gun or I’ll hurt her!”
Jill stared into her daughter’s wide, frightened eyes, watching her dangling helplessly in Andrew’s grip. She slowly lowered the gun.
“That’s it,” Andrew said, “drop it—”
The gunshot to his knee cut him off mid-sentence. He shrieked, an inhuman, high-pitched sound, releasing his grip on Sophia as he collapsed backward on the floor. Jill ran forward, holding the gun on him as she grabbed Sophia, trying to shield her from seeing the blood pouring onto the floor.
“You bitch!” Andrew pulled at Jill, trying to climb up her, and Sophia screamed, flailing at him with tiny fists.
“Let go of my mommy!”
Jill kicked him off, carrying Sophia out into the hall. She headed for the stairs, looking back as Andrew crawled into the hallway after them.
“You can’t leave me here, you stupid bitch! I’ll bleed out!”
She only moved faster, helping Sophia climb down the stairs and walk back toward the front of the house. Andrew’s cries followed them out the door.
Jill dropped the gun in one of the stone planters flanking the front walk. Up the hill the night sky was lit by fire. Flames from the wreck had caught the dry branches of nearby trees, traveling from one to the next like birthday candles being lit on a cake. She hurried down the driveway holding Sophia’s hand. Neither of them had boots on, and Sophia’s legs were so much shorter than Jill’s. After a minute, her mother hoisted her up once again in her arms, trudging down the driveway toward the road while the canopy above them burned.
“It’s going to be okay,” she told Sophia when they got to the road, but Jill was losing her grip. “Wrap your arms around me.” She felt her daughter’s small hands lock around her neck.
They were clinging to each other, staggering down the snow-covered road, when Jill finally heard the wail of approaching sirens.
epilogue
OCTOBER 2014
In what had become a weekly ritual, Jill dropped David off for physical therapy before taking their daughter, as pro
mised, to the park.
“Have a good time, you know I won’t,” David said, groaning in an exaggerated way to make Sophia giggle, before he got out of the car with his cane and limped into the building. The park was only a ten-minute drive from the medical center.
It was a hot afternoon and Jill held Sophia’s hand as they crossed the road to the playground, clutching the dog’s leash in the other. “C’mon, Mommy, c’mon!” Sophia pulled free and ran toward the slide, outwardly unscathed despite what happened in this same spot little more than a year ago.
“Children are surprisingly resilient,” the therapist said.
Cosmo pulled against the leash, straining to follow Sophia. The dog was a constant reminder of what had happened to her, to all of them. But after the police found him half-dead in the snow, Jill couldn’t deny him a home. Cosmo had saved their lives. Some mornings, Jill would find him curled up in bed next to Sophia and she’d say that he’d comforted her when she had a bad dream. The nightmares were becoming less frequent, fading away along with the memories. Given her young age, it was likely that Sophia wouldn’t remember much of what happened as she grew up, if she remembered anything at all.
Adults weren’t so lucky. What had happened had imprinted itself on Jill in ways that could never be erased. “You’ll probably always feel the pain,” the therapist had told her, “but it will hurt less over time.”
She and David still moved around each other tentatively, like guests in each other’s lives. Jill supposed it would be like that for a long time while they found their way to a new normal. So far, there had been no big discussion about the future of their marriage. At first because David had been physically unable to, and later because having all three of them back together under one roof had seemed like too big a miracle to mess with.
“Slow down!” Jill hurried after Sophia, careful to keep her in sight. The sun beat down, just like last week, and the park was crowded. A nice day so late in the fall meant everyone was out enjoying the sunshine. Sophia clambered up and around the plastic fort and slid down the slide with other children while Jill stood to one side with other parents, watching. A slightly older boy ran up the slide the wrong way, catching her eye. Something about him seemed familiar, but it wasn’t until she saw Sophia playing with him that Jill made the connection. She moved closer to get a better look. “Andy?”
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