House of Glass

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Are you kidding?”

  Ted paused and stared at her. “Look, Jen, I’m not the enemy here.”

  “I get that. But how can you eat?” Her own stomach had growled in protest, and she hadn’t eaten since taking Teddy to Jamba Juice after preschool, an outing that seemed like it had taken place days ago, not just hours earlier. But the thought of food was impossible.

  Ted looked down at the cracker in his hand. “I’m...I just thought we should eat something.”

  He looked so lost, and Jen wished he’d lie to her again, like he had before. Anything to stop her mind from chasing itself in desperate circles. She should never have come down on him so hard when he was only trying to keep their spirits up.

  But she’d questioned him then, and now she’d done it again, eroding his strength right in front of her eyes. It was all wrong. Her job was to bolster him, to help him be the strong one, to help him take care of them all.

  But the poison was in her mind, in her imagination. She kept getting flashes of the dark schemes the men upstairs might have in mind. Especially the young one. He seemed unbalanced, like someone who could hurt others without feeling remorse. Like he might enjoy it.

  The way he looked at Livvy, his gaze sharpening and his mouth going tight, and she didn’t even know what he was seeing. When he looked at her daughter, did he imagine tearing her clothes off her? Doing things to her, making her do things—

  Jen let out a whimper of terror, unable to stop the terrifying parade of images. Ted dropped the cracker on the coffee table and reached for her. “Honey. Jen. What is it?”

  “It’s Ryan. I just don’t trust him. With Livvy. I mean, didn’t you see him watching her? When he pulled her head back—when he touched her with his gun? Even if what you said about Dan is true, even if he just wants to take our things and leave, how’s he going to stop Ryan if he wants to...” She couldn’t bear to say it, to name her fear.

  “Dan’s not going to let things get out of control. He’s in charge here. There’s no way he’d risk that. Anything goes wrong, it takes them both down.”

  Jen seized on the hope he was offering her, willing it to be true. “I know it seems like he’s in charge. But what if Ryan tries something, anyway?”

  “Dan won’t let that happen.” Ted shook his head. “Look, I know guys like Ryan. There’s one in every locker room. On every team at work. They’re the guys who are always looking for an opening, trying to see what they can get away with. They always end up digging their own hole and getting fired.”

  “This isn’t an office—”

  “No, but Dan’s not going to let Ryan get the upper hand. Guys like that are tricky, but they’re weak.”

  Jen considered, dubious. It seemed like Ted’s theory was woven from the thinnest threads, but it was better than anything she had, and it had the advantage—the enormous advantage—of giving her hope.

  “I thought of something else,” Ted said. “A reason why they’re waiting.”

  “What?”

  “The cars. If they want to take the cars, they can’t risk driving out of here and being seen by someone who knows us. They could change the plates while they’re still in the garage, drive out in the middle of the night when there’s no one on the street. They could—come to think of it—” he snapped his fingers “—they could have a truck nearby. Make a few trips in our cars, get everything out and none of the neighbors would ever notice because everyone’s asleep.”

  “But then they’d need a third person, right? To drive the truck? Besides, how much could they possibly take? More than they could fit in two cars?”

  “Well, maybe that’s why they came so early. So they could take their time looking around.”

  “Or maybe they already knew what we have,” Jen said. “If there’s someone else involved, like we were talking about before. Like where the safe is, my jewelry, the art, your dad’s coins—all of it.”

  “I still think that’s such a long shot. I mean, someone who knew us well enough to know where all of that is—I just don’t know who that would be.”

  Or Livvy, Jen thought. Someone who knew Livvy. But she had promised herself to try to stay calm, to keep a grip on her fears.

  They were silent for a moment, both of them listening, both deep in their own thoughts. But upstairs, all was quiet.

  “Look—take the love seat,” Ted said after a while. “You might be able to get some sleep on it. I’ll take the floor.”

  “Well...” She thought about letting him have the love seat, since one of them might as well be comfortable, and she was pretty sure she would be wide-awake all night, no matter what. But she had to try, for the kids’ sake if not her own. “If you’re sure you’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah, the floor’s nice and firm, probably be good for my back.”

  He tried to smile, and for a moment Jen watched him, really looking at him the way she hadn’t in a long time. Something was different—some flicker in the depths of his eyes, some extra lines around his mouth. Of course it was probably just fear and exhaustion, the sheer weight of worry, but as Ted busied himself with spreading out some quilts on the floor, she couldn’t help feeling there was something else.

  She arranged her blanket on the love seat and curled up on her side, using a sofa cushion for a pillow. When Ted snapped off the light, the basement was completely dark, the kind of dark where you almost feel like you’re in another dimension, adrift, without even the glow of the moon through a window or a night-light down the hall to orient you.

  After a few seconds Ted turned the light back on. “I don’t want the kids to be scared if they wake up,” he whispered. “Will this be okay for you?”

  “It’s fine,” Jen whispered back, and rolled over so her face was pressed against the back of the love seat, finding her own total darkness.

  As she closed her eyes and waited for sleep, she tried to force her thoughts away from this horrible day, back to when things were normal. Yesterday, she’d gotten out of bed, brushed her teeth, got the paper, made the coffee. Packed a snack for Teddy and ironed a shirt for Livvy. Planned the details of her day, the errands, the car pools, the dinner menu, never dreaming that thirty-six hours later her life would be yanked out from under her. She’d had an extra cup of coffee with Ted before he went...where had he gone yesterday? Some errand...then she remembered, Ted had spent the afternoon at the BMW dealer having the oil changed and the dent fixed.

  Except when she came home tonight with Livvy, she could swear the dent had still been there.

  * * *

  She dreamed a dinner party, impossibly detailed, and even as she walked the rooms of her house she suspected that she wasn’t really there. It happened that way, sometimes, in dreams. She touched the stemware, the silky petals of roses in the pewter bowls. She walked among her guests, but she barely greeted them. She brushed past the hired bartender, through the butler’s pantry, a quick tour of her kitchen, where several of the women from her Zumba class were standing near the bay window, wearing those skimpy outfits they all bought at the new fitness store that had opened in the old Blockbuster space. Jen was annoyed that they hadn’t dressed for her party, but still she didn’t stop.

  She was looking for something.

  She made her way up the stairs, leaving the crowd behind. The kids’ doors were open; they were with friends for the evening. The hall bath was tidy. It smelled like disinfectant, which Jen found soothing.

  She hesitated at the door of her bedroom. It had been milled to match the rest of the doors in the house, solid six-panel construction. It was standing slightly ajar, and Jen tapped it with a fingertip and it opened a few more inches. Did she really want to do this? She could turn around; she could go back downstairs; she could have a glass of wine, a second, a third, however many it took to dull this wanting to know, this need, the one she cou
ldn’t bring herself to separate from, the way she knew was best, the way other women did. Choosing not to know—it was one of the most important tools in a wife’s arsenal.

  Some defiant spark wouldn’t let her turn away. She pushed the door open, hard enough for it to bang against the wall, and there they were. In her bed. Sarah Elizabeth Baker sitting astride her husband with her head thrown back, all that luxurious hair tangled around her shoulders as if she’d ridden through a windstorm to come to him. Ted’s hands were on her hips, pressing her against him, grinding up into her, and they were so consumed by the moment that even as they twisted around to see her, they didn’t stop their rhythm and the sight of them thrusting together was like an ax in Jen’s heart.

  Chapter Eight

  “Jen. Jen.”

  Ted was shaking her, his hand on her shoulder. Jen shuddered, trying to banish the nightmare, and then she remembered where she was.

  The basement was lit by the single overhead bulb, casting its small, gloomy pool of light down on the four of them. The kids were fast asleep, Livvy burrowed so far under her quilt that only her hair was visible, Teddy tangled up in his covers. Ted was on his knees at the foot of the love seat, staring up at her. Jen blinked and put her hand over her mouth.

  “You were having a nightmare,” he said. “You were thrashing around. Are you all right?”

  The last bits of the dream dissolved and were replaced with guilt. Absurd though it was, Jen felt like she’d been caught in a moment of betrayal, walking in on the scene between her husband and his lover.

  “I’m fine,” she said shortly.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I might try to eat again. I don’t think I’ve had a real meal since breakfast yesterday. You want something? We probably ought to.”

  Jen didn’t answer, but she watched Ted open the crackers, peel the wax off a cheese round, then another. He split the cheese into four squishy quadrants and stacked each on a cracker, brushing the crumbs into a little pile in the center of the plate. When he picked up a cracker and handed it to her, Jen was surprised that her stomach rumbled in response, and she was able to take a bite.

  They ate quietly, Ted opening a water bottle and sharing that with her, too. There were no sounds from upstairs, no footfalls, no water running in the taps. Jen wondered where the intruders were sleeping. Her bedroom? The guest room? Somewhere in this house they lay under blankets she had tucked under the mattresses herself, their heads on pillows that she had fluffed.

  Would they ever be all right in this house again? If they made it, if they lived? Probably not. They would have to sell it. Move to another neighborhood, another town.

  What about her marriage? The strain of this—this event, this crime, this tragedy, whatever they would come to think of it later—it was sure to be too much to bear, especially if Ted really had been having an affair. Jen wondered if she had been in some sort of denial. His afternoons away from the house, the calls and notes from Sarah—what kind of assistant gives that much attention to a former boss?—and now, lying about where he’d been. The trip to the auto dealership that he never made; the missing change of clothes. Why hadn’t she added it all up before?

  Jen watched Ted eat his crackers, his jaw working as he chewed. She’d always loved his jaw. He had the perfectly masculine bone structure of a 1940s movie star. She felt the pull she’d always felt toward him, the longing that she’d assumed would always be there for both of them. She couldn’t bear to believe he didn’t still feel the same for her, that he could have slowly grown away from her, little by little, until he was too distant for her to reach him.

  “If we get out of this...” she started, her voice wavering.

  “Hey, hey, what’s this ‘if’? There is no if,” Ted said. “Come on, honey, this is the hardest part, getting through the night, but it’s going to be okay. I swear it.”

  Jen swallowed, wanting so badly to believe him. She stared at his shirt, focusing on the plaid, and asked the question. “Okay, not if. When. When we get out of this, are you going to leave me?”

  “Am I what?” Ted sounded genuinely shocked, and Jen stole a look at his face. His eyes were stricken, reflecting confusion and dismay. “Why would you even ask that?”

  “The car,” Jen said, trying to keep her voice even, to keep the tears from forming. She couldn’t cry now, she wouldn’t cry, and it was ridiculous to have this conversation now, but she needed to know. Suddenly the idea of never knowing—if things went wrong, if she ended up dead, shot by one of the strangers upstairs—was intolerable. “You said you took the car in yesterday, but the dent was still there. And you’ve been seeing Sarah. Don’t tell me you haven’t, Ted. I’m not stupid. And all those afternoons you disappear—you really want me to believe you’ve been sitting in Starbucks checking your LinkedIn account? When you haven’t had an interview in over a month?”

  “Jen...look. Whatever you think I’ve been doing, I haven’t been having an affair. I swear to you.” He put a hand on the back of the couch for support. “Sarah’s just—there’s nothing there, honest.”

  “Then what have you been doing all this time?” Jen gave up her battle not to cry, angrily pushing the tears away with the back of her hand. “What am I supposed to think?”

  Ted reached for her, and she pushed his hands away. “Don’t,” she snapped, and Teddy stirred, murmuring in his sleep. That couldn’t happen; she couldn’t let the kids hear them fighting. “Tell me,” she whispered angrily.

  “I’ve...” Ted’s shoulders drooped, and he suddenly looked exhausted. There were deep smudges under his eyes, the skin loose and pouchy, the skin of an old man.

  The huddled form on the couch shifted, and Teddy emerged from the nest of quilts, rubbing his eyes. “Mommy?” he said sleepily. He looked around him, blinking, and his face crumpled. The basement, shadowed and rearranged, looked nothing like it did before, and Teddy must have thought he’d woken up in a strange place.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Jen said, picking him up off the couch. “Hush, it’s all right.”

  “I want Daddy,” Teddy snuffled, reaching out for Ted, and Jen handed him over, gently untangling the quilt that had been twisted around him. Ted cradled his son in his arms, hitching him up so Teddy’s cheek rested on his shoulder.

  “Hey, little buddy,” Ted whispered. “It’s okay.”

  “I lost my truck,” Teddy said, pointing somewhere off into the dark. Jen looked where he was pointing, but didn’t see anything other than a stack of boxes. “Livvy dropped it over there.”

  “Well, we can look for it in the morning,” Ted said. “Listen, how about you and me sleep down here on the floor. Like camping, what do you say?”

  “Camping?” Teddy asked, yawning.

  “Yup. Just us guys, the ladies have to sleep on couches because they’re not tough enough.”

  “Can we go to Moose Lake?”

  Ted pushed the coffee table away from the couch with his foot, making a space wide enough to stretch out. He set Teddy down and lay next to him, curving his body around his son. “Sure, we can go back to Moose Lake next summer. This is just practice, okay? We’ll practice down here so that when we’re in the tent, we’ll be really good at it. But you have to go back to sleep, and show me you’re ready for camping, okay?”

  It broke Jen’s heart to see how tender Ted was with their son, how gently he caressed the downy blond hair that never lay flat. Ted looked up and met her eyes, and he mouthed, “I’m sorry,” but Teddy’s eyelashes were already fluttering down. Their little boy would be asleep again in moments.

  Jen draped the quilt over them, tucking it around. She made a pillow of one of the folded quilts and slipped it under Ted’s head. Ted reached up and grabbed her wrist, not hard, but holding her there.

  “Jen. You believe me, don’t you? I would never... I don’t want any other woman. It’s y
ou. It’s only you.”

  Jen wanted to lie down in his arms, press her face to his chest and hear his heartbeat. Maybe then she could believe. Maybe she could detect in its rhythm the truth about his love for her.

  But that wasn’t possible, not now. Teddy needed him, and Jen gently pulled her hand away and sat back onto the couch, reaching for the last of the quilts.

  “Good night,” she said softly, and turned off the lamp, casting them all into total darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  “Mom. Mom!”

  Jen woke to Livvy’s urgent whisper, her daughter shaking her by the shoulder. Groggily, she sat up. She’d finally fallen into a dreamless sleep, and it took her a second to remember. She was alone on the couch, and Ted was asleep on the floor with Teddy.

  Livvy’s face was stark with fear. “I can hear them up there!”

  Weak light streamed through the window wells. It probably wasn’t even seven yet. Jen didn’t have a watch—who wore them anymore?—and Dan had taken their phones, all three of them. Livvy would have received dozens of texts by now, from her many friends. Jen wondered if Dan had thought of that. Then again, she doubted any of Livvy’s friends would notice anything amiss for a while. Sometimes Livvy got into a mood and refused to text anyone back. She was known among her friends for being a bit artistic, a bit prickly. Sensitive, Jen would have said, though some days her daughter seemed anything but.

  She pushed the quilt out of the way to make room for her daughter. Livvy sat next to her, stepping over her dad and brother, who didn’t even stir. She was holding something tightly in her hands, one of Teddy’s colorful toys. “I can hear them,” she repeated. “What do you think they’re doing?”

  “I don’t know.” Jen tried to think, to force herself to process what was happening. Of course she had hoped they would be gone, that they would have loaded up their cars with everything they could fit and driven away in the early hours of dawn.