House of Glass (10 page)

Chapter Twelve

Ryan was in their kitchen making Stouffer’s French Bread Pizzas. Livvy recognized the smell even all the way down in the basement because it was her favorite after-school snack, and because whenever the little bits of cheese got on the pan they burned and made the whole house smell.

She was never going to eat one of those pizzas again, if she ever got out of here.

All morning she had been trying to decide if she should tell her parents about the text, but then her mom left with Dan and her dad was losing it, she could tell. He kept picking Teddy up and putting him down, and then he’d come over and tell her everything was going to be just fine, with this horrible fake smile on his face that told her he was really scared. So it didn’t seem right to say anything, especially since there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

The only person who could have done anything about it was her, but now it was too late. Allie was one crazy, unpredictable bitch—everyone said so, and besides, once her cousins got involved that was a whole other thing. They were supposedly in a gang. Livvy didn’t know anything about it except for the rumors, which she didn’t believe half of, but she also figured some of it was probably true.

Monday when she got to school there had been a shirt hanging out of her locker. Poked through the vent slit, only part of it hung free, and since Livvy had an A period and got to school early, she didn’t think anyone saw it but her. It was a gym shirt, a dirty one, gray, with CALUMET PHYS ED on the front. Under that someone had written
Whore
in red lipstick. Bright red, like blood.

The shirt wasn’t any mystery—anyone could steal them out of the PE lost and found. Livvy stuffed it in the trash, her face burning with shame. When she saw Allie across the cafeteria at lunch, Allie smirked at her and gave her the finger, her hand half-hidden under the tray.

Livvy figured that was the end of it. She didn’t tell anyone, not even Paige. Allie was constantly getting into trouble at school, and if Livvy went to the counselor she was pretty sure they’d take it seriously, call Allie in, maybe suspend her again. But then Sean would find out. And he would...she wasn’t sure what he would do, because she didn’t know what he thought about her now, if he ever thought of her at all. But maybe he’d be angry, maybe he’d hate her, and while that shouldn’t matter, because she was so much better off without him and he had never been good enough for her in the first place, she still hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him, remembering all the times they’d been together. Wishing. Missing him.

Allie knew it, too. Somehow she knew how bad it hurt, because when she passed Livvy in the hall on Wednesday, she pretended to drop something in front of her so Livvy had to stop walking and then Allie stood up and said, real quiet, “He told me everything. He told me you didn’t even know what to do. When you were together. He fucked you as a
favor.
” She smiled, revealing her sharp little teeth with the gap between. Livvy was close enough to see her eyelashes clotted with mascara, to smell her perfume.

Livvy had gone through the day numb, hardly even hearing anything the teachers said. Paige asked her if she was sick. She looked for Sean after Spanish and saw him heading into the robotics lab, high-fiving Mr. Jenkins, and he was so much like he used to be with her, funny and kind of silly and smart; he always did well in the classes he liked, it was just the ones where he was bored that he had trouble. And it was more than Livvy could stand. She just had to know if it was true. What Sean really thought. If he ever thought of her at all.

She waited for him near his locker, pretending to text, her face flaming. “Livvy,” he’d said, sounding surprised, sounding maybe a little glad she was there, and she’d tried to say what she’d rehearsed, but it didn’t come out. She would have gotten around to it, she was working up to it and Sean was sort of half smiling, letting his backpack slide down to the floor, putting his hand on the locker next to her so she was between him and the locker.

Then Allie showed up. She didn’t say anything, just slid her hand into Sean’s back pocket and moved her body in front of him, edging Livvy out of the way. She kissed him on the lips and put her arms around him so his face was in her neck, and Livvy backed away. The look Allie gave her was pure hate, and when Livvy got off the bus, she had a text from a number she didn’t know.

You will pay for that I told you to stay away from him youll be sorry

Well, she was sorry now, really sorry, because all Allie would have had to do was tell her cousins to send someone, to take care of it. There were rumors her cousins had killed someone who was going to testify against them, that one of them had killed another prisoner at Hennepin County jail, so sending someone to rob Livvy’s house would have been nothing to them. Ryan was probably in the gang with them, and Dan...well, Livvy didn’t know how that worked, how he fit in, but now he was off with her mom doing God knew what.

Which she couldn’t think about. Because that was her fault, too.

The basement door opened and Ryan came down the stairs. Teddy was sitting next to her on the couch playing with the paper from an origami set that she had never used, folding the pretty colored squares into random shapes. Livvy had tried to teach him how to fold a fortune-teller, but he was too little still, he couldn’t do it, so Livvy just let him do whatever he wanted with the paper. Her dad had been sitting next to them looking at nothing. Every once in a while he would reach over and pat Livvy’s knee, very gently, like he was afraid he might hurt her. Like he was making sure she was still there. But when Ryan started coming down the stairs, her dad threw his arm in front of her and Teddy the same way he did when they were driving and he had to put on the brakes suddenly, his big arm pushing them back against the couch cushions.

As if that would help anything. As if he could stop anything.

Ryan stood in front of them with one hand resting on the gun he kept in his pants. He had something on his face, a fleck of white that it took Livvy a minute to figure out was shaving cream. Ryan had shaved in her house—he had used her dad’s stuff. She felt like she was going to throw up.

“I made lunch. Livvy, you come up and eat and then you can bring the rest down here for them.”

“Absolutely not.” Her dad stood up. He was taller than Ryan, though not by much. Ryan stepped back and raised the gun and pointed it right at his chest.

“Back off,” Ryan said.

Her dad raised his hands halfway, but he didn’t sit back down. “You won’t take her upstairs alone.” He wasn’t scared, not for himself.

“What are you going to do about it?” Ryan demanded.

“You try to take my daughter up there with you, and I’m coming after you. You can shoot me if you want, but you’d better be damn sure you stop me with one shot.”

“That’s all it would take, man.”

“Maybe.” Her dad stayed calm. “Maybe not. You shoot me, you got a whole other set of problems on your hands. Just go back upstairs, and leave us alone down here. We have food. We’re fine.”

Ryan’s mouth twitched at the corner. She could tell he was trying to decide what to do.

For a minute they glared at each other, and then Ryan laughed. Teddy had put down the paper squares and crawled into Livvy’s lap, and she wrapped her arms around him.

“Whatever. You can all come up. Make the kid go first, then her, then you. Go straight to the kitchen table.”

Livvy couldn’t believe he was going to let them upstairs while Dan was gone, but she didn’t have to be told twice. She picked up Teddy and started up the stairs, pretending not to be scared. Her dad was right behind her. At the top she put her hand on the doorknob and imagined slamming it into the wall so hard it wouldn’t lock again, taking a hammer to it, the old ax her dad kept in the shed. Something, anything. But instead she just opened the door and went into the hall. She carried Teddy to his chair. Her dad sat in the one he always did.

“Hurry up,” Ryan said, even though she was going as fast as she could. But Teddy was fighting her, wiggling to avoid getting in the chair. Livvy thought she knew what the problem was.

“He has to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh, Christ, tell him to hold it. He can go after lunch.”

“Kids
can’t
hold it,” Livvy said, not even trying to keep herself from sounding like she thought he was an idiot. “Besides, he always washes his hands before we eat.”

“Well, then take him.” He waved his gun at the powder room across from the kitchen. “But the food’s going to get cold.”

Only then did she notice that he had laid out lunch on the counter: two plates with pizza on them, two glasses of milk. Two napkins folded in half. He’d gotten it all ready for the two of them, had planned it out. Livvy shivered with revulsion.

“We’re fine, Daddy,” she said, making her voice sound upbeat, knowing he could see the two plates, too. She carried Teddy into the bathroom and locked the door behind her and turned on the fan.

Teddy got the step stool and scrambled up on the toilet. It always took him a while, and he often sang or tried to whistle while he sat and waited. Livvy got on her knees in front of him. “Listen to me, Teddy,” she said, suddenly sure of what had to happen next. She couldn’t take back what had happened already, but at least she could help Teddy get away. “This is really important, okay?”

Teddy looked at her skeptically, his face twisted in concentration. She knew he wouldn’t talk now, not even with the door closed and locked. Not while there was a stranger in the house.

“When we go out of the bathroom, I’m going to go in the kitchen and make a lot of noise. And you are going to run to the front door and unlock the lock, as fast as you can, and then run to the Sterns’ house, okay? Run as
fast
as you can, because Mark is waiting for you to come over for your playdate. You don’t want to be late, do you?”

Teddy thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

“Listen to me really carefully, Teddy. No matter what happens...” She stopped, trying to think of what to say that wouldn’t scare him. “I’m going to pretend to get mad at Daddy and Ryan. But it’s just a game, okay? I’m tricking them. But I’m going to yell and it might be loud, but you just have to go as fast as you can and don’t turn around. Don’t come back, no matter what. You
have
to run to Mark’s.”

Teddy said nothing. He closed his eyes and his urine finally trickled into the bowl. Livvy waited, her heart pounding with each passing second. When he was finished, she repeated the plan as he got down from the toilet.

“You remember how to turn the lock?” she asked as she ran water and helped him wash his hands. “Grab the lock and make it go this way.” She took his right hand in hers and made the twisting motion. “Just like this. Remember? Then grab the door and open it and
run.
”

Now, suddenly, she
was
really scared. But she couldn’t let him see. “Teddy, you can do this. Promise me, you’re going to go as fast as you can. Run to the door, do the lock, open it and
go.
No matter what you hear. No matter if you feel scared. No one is going to be mad, I promise. Mom’s going to be really proud of you when I tell her.”

She was messing this up. She had told him it was a game, but she could see that she was scaring him now. She rinsed his hands and he dried them on the hand towel and she knelt before him. She made herself smile and she kissed his cheek, the skin that was softer than anything she had ever touched, softer than her mom’s, softer than her own. “You ready?”

After a moment, Teddy nodded.

“I love you,” she whispered, and he nodded again.

She took a deep breath and opened the door. She gave Teddy a shove down the hall, and he ran, his shoes slapping on the wood, and he didn’t look back, just like she told him. But she had to turn away from him; she had to run into the kitchen and pick up the coffeepot—it was sitting right there on the kitchen island. And even though Ryan was already moving toward her, running, yelling something, she managed to crash it against his shoulder. She saw her dad rising from the table, but it was all so slow, too slow. Her arm hurt from the impact of the pot against Ryan’s shoulder, but she hadn’t even managed to stop him.

The pot clattered to the floor, and her dad tripped on it as Ryan fired the first shot, and Livvy waited for her body to register where she had been hit. She grabbed for the pan on the stove, the pizzas sliding to the counter, the metal still hot in her hand. She hit Ryan with the pan, but it was too light to hurt him and it just bounced off him. Her dad was on his knees, tackling Ryan around the legs, and she threw herself at Ryan, too, trying to grab for his gun hand, but he bucked her off and she slammed into the cabinets, hitting the back of her head on the knob. Someone grunted, and she couldn’t tell if it was Ryan or her dad, but her dad was reaching for Ryan’s throat, and she knew if he could just get his hand around it he would crush the life from it, her strong and fearless father, but the gun went off a second time and her dad fell against the cabinet, spraying red against the white paint.

Chapter Thirteen

Neither of them spoke as Dan pulled into Crabapple Court.

Dan and Ryan would have their money by tomorrow afternoon, and this nightmare would be over. Jen thought she could detect the effects of stress on Dan—the sallowness of his skin, the depth of the lines on his face. The past twenty-four hours had cost him.

Her home appeared eerily unchanged on the outside. There was no hint of the terror that was taking place inside, nothing out of place to indicate that the Glass family was under siege. Peeking from the snow was one of Teddy’s toys, a bright blue plastic boomerang he must have been playing with before the last snowstorm. Other than that flash of color, their house was like every other house on the block: tasteful if a little ostentatious, a suburban stronghold.

After he parked, Dan pulled his gloves back on. Jen wondered what he planned to do about the prints on the steering wheel. She guessed that Ted had been right—they were going to take the cars when they left.

She followed Dan into the house, wiping her feet on the mat from habit. But two steps inside the mudroom, she went still. Something was wrong. The interior of the house had been altered in her absence. Some faintly unpleasant smell tainted the air, and the silence was edged with tension.

Surely it was just her imagination, the physical embodiment of her fear. Jen steadied herself, putting a hand to the wall, brushing against Ted’s parka that hung there. She steeled herself to walk into the kitchen when she heard what sounded like a moan coming from upstairs.

“What was that?”

Jen hesitated for only a second before sprinting toward the living room. She felt Dan grab at her and miss. But she knew this house like the back of her own hand. She grabbed the door frame for balance and slid around the corner on the polished floors, catapulted into the living room and skidded. There was Ryan, stretched out on the sofa with his feet up on the ottoman.

“What happened?” she demanded, her voice rising.

Dan caught up with Jen and seized her shirt in his fist, yanking her backward. “Settle down,” he snapped, wrapping his elbow around her neck and cutting off her air. Only when she went limp and stopped fighting him did he ease up the pressure on her throat.

“What was that noise upstairs?” she gasped.

“Nothing. Things...well, things kind of happened while you were gone.” Ryan lifted his hand and let it drop, an oh-well-what-can-you-do gesture.

“What do you mean? Is everyone all right?”

“Well...that.” Ryan sighed. “Some shit went down, see? It was totally not my fault. Suddenly people want to mess with the plan, they get what they have coming.”

Jen wrenched herself free of Dan’s grasp, crashing against the coffee table and rebounding off the sofa. By the time she got her balance, Ryan had his gun out and resting casually on his lap. Jen held up her hands and stayed where she was.

“Where is my husband?”

Dan pushed between her and Ryan, forcing her to sit down on the sofa. He sat down with her, wedging her into the corner, trapping her there. The look on his face was clouded with uncertainty. Because he didn’t know the answer to Jen’s question. He didn’t know what had happened while he and Jen had been gone. He’d lost control, he’d left Ryan in charge, and now even he looked like he was afraid of the answer.

“Ted’s just having a little rest upstairs.” Ryan sounded weary and irritated. “He got in the way of a bullet.”