Relief took the edge off Jen’s nerves: Ted’s mind was still clear. As Ryan headed into the bathroom, she thought that now would be a great time to get the gun from the bedside table, if they were those kind of people. She scanned the room for something she could use, something heavy or sharp or otherwise potentially deadly. But the familiar landscape of their bedroom held nothing useful: the polished ebony jewelry box, the wicker clothes hamper, the cashmere throw draped on the chair on her side of the bed. The leather tray...
The little slip of goldenrod was still there, undisturbed since she first noticed it. Thx tons, Thursday 2pm Firehouse xoxoxo. Jen looked from the note to the hamper, remembering the missing clothes, the gym bag in the closet. The fact that he still hadn’t explained where he’d gone Wednesday, or last weekend when she’d gone to Murdoch with Tanya.
Betting on some game wouldn’t have kept him out all night. And besides, he swore he was finished with gambling. So what was he doing last Saturday? And he had still never said where he went Wednesday, when he’d said he was getting the car fixed. Two times in one week that he hadn’t accounted for, even after coming clean about the money. A faint tendril of doubt worked its way into Jen’s mind, clouding her sense of purpose.
But no. Ted lay in a pool of his own blood, and his only thoughts had been for her and the kids. Even now he was struggling to smile for her, his eyes full of pain. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Livvy? How’s she doing?”
She shook her head very faintly because Ryan had come back into the room.
“Your daughter’s helping Uncle Danny look for your kid,” Ryan said as he started cutting through the ropes. “You better hope they find him.”
“It’s okay,” Jen said quickly. “She’s got her coat. They’re just looking around the neighborhood. There’s nothing—”
Ted moaned as Ryan tore off the ropes more roughly than necessary, jostling his arm.
“This shirt’s disgusting,” Ryan said, lifting a corner of the hem with distaste. “Get him something else.”
He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and watched as Jen unbuttoned the filthy shirt and eased it off Ted’s body, wincing when he cried out. She used the snips to cut through the sleeve, and again to remove his T-shirt, taking as much care as she could near the wound. The arm was swollen and purpled, the area around it dark and painful looking, the skin radiating heat.
“Please, let me put a bandage on him.”
“Whatever floats your boat, long as you do it in the next three minutes.” Ryan yawned and looked at his watch.
Jen wondered if he was enjoying Ted’s pain. She got the first aid box from the closet and dug frantically through the bandages, the rolls of medical tape, the squares of gauze. None of them would be adequate. Finally she grabbed a length of ACE bandage and a tube of antiseptic.
“You’ve got about a minute and forty-five more seconds,” Ryan drawled. “Then he goes, no matter what shape he’s in.”
Jen grasped Ted’s arm above the wound and steeled herself against his sounds of pain, centering the bandage against the worst of it and wrapping the arm as fast as she could.
“Time’s up. Put a shirt on him.”
She grabbed his old fleece-lined chamois from the hook on the closet door and eased his good arm into the sleeve, but he had begun to shiver violently and she didn’t dare try the other arm. Ryan reached under Ted’s shoulders and lifted him to a sitting position, and Jen draped the shirt around his shoulders.
Ryan hoisted Ted from the bed, straining under the weight. He staggered a couple of steps, cursing. Ted was trying to stand, but the sheets were tangled around his legs and he couldn’t keep his balance.
“Help me out here!” Ryan barked, and Jen took Ted’s other side, and they eased him into the bedside chair.
“Holy shit, you’re one heavy motherfucker,” Ryan said, breathing heavily. “You managed to get up here without help. Can’t you walk now?”
“I can try,” Ted said, and took another step, but then he started to list to the side. Jen struggled to keep him upright. He grabbed the edge of the dresser to support himself.
Ryan noticed blood on his own shirt. “Aw, man...” He tore off the shirt, wiping his hands on it before throwing it into the corner of the room. Underneath, his chest was white and hairless. “Did I get it on my pants? Jen, do I have any on my pants?” He turned around, looking over his shoulder.
“You’re fine,” Jen said.
“Okay, look,” he said. “Wrap up all those filthy sheets and stick them in the bathroom. Get a clean blanket or something so Ted here doesn’t stink up the chair. Ted, you’ll be fine in the chair for a few minutes. I’m going to change my shirt. But I’m keeping an eye on you,” he added.
Sure enough, he backed into the closet and watched her while he grabbed one of Ted’s clean shirts off a hanger.
“So we’re...not moving him?” Jen asked.
“Not unless you can lift him yourself. Here, use this,” he added, tossing her a cashmere throw that she kept in the closet.
“I thought—I thought you said—”
“You thought I said what? Are you questioning me, Jen? Is that what you’re doing? Because last time I looked I was still the guy with the gun—” He pulled the gun out of his pants and pointed it first at her and then at Ted, and then back to her. “And you’re supposed to be cleaning up your husband’s mess.”
“Hey,” Ted said, trying to turn toward Ryan. “Don’t you—”
“It’s okay,” Jen said quickly, putting her hand on Ted’s shoulder. “Honey, relax.”
She was afraid Ryan was close to losing his temper, and she had no idea what he’d do if he was angry enough. The plan was falling apart, and he seemed to be losing his focus, as well. She laid the throw across the chair and helped Ted sit down. Once she tucked the blanket around Ted’s body, she started on the bed, glancing at Ryan out of the corner of her eye. He pulled the shirt on, a royal-blue polo shirt with a pink whale embroidered on the chest. It was too big for him, and it made him look skinnier than he was.
Jen tugged the comforter and sheets and mattress pad off the bed. Under the linens, a stain at least two feet wide and twice as long was drying to brown at the edges, bright red in the center. She grabbed two pillows and set them on top of the stain, and folded the rest of the linens so none of the blood showed and put them in the bathroom, closing the door.
Ryan seemed to have calmed down. He wandered to Ted’s side of the bed and picked up the remote from his bedside table, turning on the TV and then muting it. A group of men sat around in an industrial shop of some sort. Most of the men had beards and tattoos. After watching for a few minutes, Ryan laughed and turned it off. “That fucking Overhaulin’.” He chuckled. “Man, I love that show.”
Jen sat down warily on the edge of the mattress closest to the chair. She reached for Ted’s good hand and gave it a squeeze. His skin was hot and moist.
“So, Jen.” Ryan abruptly tossed the remote onto the mattress and sat at the foot of the bed a few feet away. She tensed, feeling the mattress shift beneath his weight. “How long you guys been married?”
“Nineteen years.” Jen kept her voice even.
“Yeah, see, I don’t get that. All that time, same person? I mean, I’m making assumptions.” He laughed, and Ted stiffened.
“Watch it,” he muttered, his voice sounding thick, like his mouth was stuffed with cotton.
Ryan laughed again. “Hey, hey, chill. I didn’t mean nothing. I mean, what a man does outside the home, you get a little on the side, a little taste, that’s your business, right? I mean who can blame you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ted said. “And I’d appreciate you not talking that way in front of my wife.”
“Calm down, I’m just talking man-to-man here. You keep
yourself fit, take pride in yourself? Drive a nice car, throw around some cash? That gets the ladies’ attention, am I right?” He chuckled, scratching at his chest near his underarm. He kept glancing between Jen and Ted, and she got the sense that he was digging, trying to find a way to stir them up. “Not bad at all. I mean, a guy like me, I’m just a regular guy, but I do okay, right? I got no expense account, got no four-hundred-dollar shoes. All’s I got’s what the good Lord gave me.”
He put his hand on his crotch and gave it a squeeze. The gesture was so crude and so unexpected that Jen shrank away from him.
“Hey.” Ted tried to stand but immediately fell back again, his legs seeming to crumple under his weight. The stale smell wafted from him.
“Ted, don’t. It’s all right. Just sit.”
“Nice,” Ryan said, grinning. “Nice. I like it. I like how you’re there for him, Mrs. G. Standing by your man. Letting him know that, no matter what he did, you’re there for him. Man, you don’t see that a lot these days, right? Am I right? Women—they’ll screw you first chance they get. But not you, Jen. Come here, come sit a little closer.” He patted the mattress between them.
“I’m fine,” Jen said, eyeing the expanse of quilted cotton.
Ryan leaned toward her. “I just want to sit next to you, have a little up close and personal.”
“You leave my wife alone,” Ted snarled, but his voice was slurred, his syllables running together. He slumped into the corner of the chair, his wounded arm resting on his lap, the fingers upturned, useless looking. The arm had swelled further. The fingers were puffed and pale, and the flesh darkened near the wound, an angry purple fading to gray.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Seems she’s been spending a little too much time alone. Seems to me someone’s been neglecting his duties. Am I right, Mrs. G? Are you getting what you need at home? You can tell me. I care, I do. I want to know.”
He was speaking just to her now, his words lilting and hushed. She could feel his breath on the side of her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Oh, I think you do,” Ryan said, chuckling softly. “Come here and talk to me about it.”
Ted suddenly lurched forward off the chair with a strangled cry, his good hand crabbing against Ryan’s chest, reaching for his throat. Any advantage he had in size and weight was lost the minute Ryan shoved him backward. Ted slid to the floor next to the bed, his head bouncing off the seat of the chair as he went down.
Ryan stood and kicked him hard in the ribs.
Ted’s garbled cry was horrible, cut off by a second kick that left him gasping for breath. Then Ryan lifted his foot and Jen saw it coming, watched the arc of his shoe in the air—an oversize skate sneaker like the boys at Livvy’s school wore. Jen pushed herself off the mattress, trying to prevent what was about to happen, but she was too slow, and Ryan smashed his foot down on Ted’s wounded elbow, and then there was screaming, unearthly desperate sounds as Ryan put all his weight on that foot and twisted.
Jen grabbed Ryan’s arm and pulled him off Ted, and he was lighter than she would have guessed. He went crashing into the dresser and fell back on his ass. She knelt down in front of Ted. His gasps turned to vomiting, and when he started to choke she grabbed the collar of his shirt and forced him to turn his head so it went on the floor. He heaved several times before taking several ragged breaths, and his groans turned to whimpers. She didn’t look at his arm, couldn’t bear to look at it, but even in the periphery of her vision she saw the bright red stain spreading on his shirt, fresh blood, the arm surely now injured beyond repair.
“That’s disgusting,” Ryan said behind her, and then she felt it on the small of her back, the cold hard contact of a gun. “Get away from him. You’ll get puke all over you.”
“I can’t leave him like this,” Jen protested. She put her hands on Ted’s face and tried to make him focus on her, but his eyes were rolling up inside his head. “He needs help.... He needs a doctor—”
“He might as well have done that to himself,” Ryan said calmly. He used the gun to trace slow curves on the skin of her back, sending shivers of revulsion through her body. “He left me no choice, coming after me like that.”
“He was only trying to protect me!” Jen twisted, slowly, carefully, trying to draw her body away from the gun.
“Not much of a man,” Ryan said. “Like I said. And now he’s going to have to watch—”
Suddenly there was a jarring blast of music, heavy metal rendered tinny and static. Ryan cursed and dug in his pocket, held his phone to his ear. “Yeah?”
His scowl deepened as he listened. Jen could hear a voice, but not what the caller was saying.
“Don’t you think I’d call you if he showed up?” Ryan said shortly. He paused and turned toward Jen. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. Ryan was blocking her view of Ted, but at least his gun was hanging loose in his free hand, and not pointed at either one of them. “She’s fine, but, Dan, funny you should mention, about Ted, he seems worse. I don’t know, just worse. Blood and shit, I don’t know, man.” He paused again. Dan’s voice was louder now, and Jen thought she caught the words risk and fuckup.
“Yeah?” Abruptly, Ryan turned away from her, jamming the phone harder against his ear. “Well, I’m not the only one deviating from the plan, am I? I mean, if we did it my way, none of this would have happened. We’d be done and on our way. Uh-huh...well, I guess that’s a matter of opinion, since ain’t either one of us—hey—hey—Goddamn it, you want to stop fucking interrupting me?”
And then he was staring at his phone, his eyebrows knitted together incredulously. The call was over, but Jen couldn’t tell who had ended it. For a moment she thought Ryan was going to throw the phone at the wall. Instead he slid it with great care back into his pocket. When he turned to Jen, he was smiling.
“No sign of Teddy,” he said calmly. “Jen, you’re going to have to go back downstairs now.”
“What about Ted?”
He closed his hand around her upper arm, tugging her away from her husband.
“Ted’s fine. He’s going to be fine. Let’s get you settled, and then I’m going to hang out up here with him, okay? Nothing bad, I promise. You believe me, right? ’Cause I wouldn’t lie to you, Jen. I’m not going to hurt him.”
Jen said nothing as Ryan pulled her along. She took one last look at Ted before they left the room. His eyes had rolled up and his mouth was open, and he was taking rapid, rasping breaths. Ryan led her down the hall, pulling her roughly. He pushed her ahead of him down the stairs, all the way to the basement door. He slipped the key in the lock, and Jen knew that this was the moment. If she was going to fight him it had to be now, because once she was on the other side of the door she would be powerless to do anything but wait for the next terrible thing to happen.
Ryan put his hand on the small of her back and gave her a gentle shove. It was his hand—not the gun. The gun was gone. He wasn’t going to shoot her, not right this second, anyway, but just as she was gathering up the courage to do something, anything, he closed the door the rest of the way, leaving her standing on the landing in the dark.
No, she wanted to say. Wait, come back. There had been a moment when she could have changed something. But the moment was gone, and she hadn’t been brave enough or quick enough or strong enough to save anyone at all.
Chapter Eighteen
In the afternoon, the moms and little kids came out in force, taking advantage of the first bright sunshine all week. Teddy abandoned the little playhouse when a trio of older boys crowded into it. He took one last look around the parking lot for Livvy, and then he walked back around the edge of the playground where the picnic tables were.
Near the far end, someone had left a coat on a table. Teddy could tell it had been forgotten because there were no other belongings nearby, no di
aper bag or picnic basket or bucket of toys. A mom would probably come looking for it tomorrow when she realized it was missing, but after staring at it for a long time Teddy decided she wouldn’t mind if he borrowed it for now. It was red, with a fuzzy lining. Teddy was suspicious that it might belong to a girl, and he didn’t want to wear a girl’s coat, but he put it on, anyway, and it warmed him up fast. The coat was much too large; the sleeves extended over his hands and the hood left only a little of his face exposed when he zipped it all the way up.
On a table nearby was a torn brown bag. Through the flapping paper Teddy could see juice boxes and Doritos. No one was looking in his direction; all the moms were busy with their kids or talking to each other. Teddy walked up to the table and waited a little longer to be sure, but no one saw him, so he took two juice boxes and the big bag of Doritos and turned around and walked away, up the hill overlooking the park. He found a hiding spot behind some bushes and ate some chips and drank some juice.
Soon he was feeling better, but then two women came walking up the hill, one of them carrying a baby, and Teddy was worried that the food he had taken might have belonged to them. Maybe they were trying to find the person who took it, and he would be in trouble. He squeezed himself farther in between the bushes, the branches scratching his hands and face.
The women didn’t see him. They went to the flat part of the hill, where the snow had all melted away, and helped the baby practice walking between them. He stumbled every few steps, making a face like trying to decide if he wanted to cry. Every time he fell down, the women cheered and clapped, and eventually he smiled and got up and tried again.
Teddy started to get antsy waiting in the bushes. He found a plastic soda cup that had blown into the bush and started making a worm house out of it. First he put a layer of dirt in the bottom. Next he picked little tufts of grass to make a soft bed, and searched for tiny rocks and small sticks that would be fun for the worm to dig under.
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