House of Glass (14 page)

“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—God
damn
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 diaper 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.

When the baby got tired and began to fuss, one of the women picked him up and they started coming back down the hill. Teddy wasn’t able to wiggle out of sight, and they saw him. After conferring briefly, they walked over to the bushes.

“Well, hi there,” the younger one said. Teddy decided she must be the baby’s mom, and that the other one was his grandma. The mom gave the baby to the grandma, and he started to cry, his face crumpling up and turning red. The mom crouched down in front of Teddy and smiled at him.

Teddy made himself keep looking at her so she wouldn’t worry. He knew that when he didn’t look at people when they were talking to them, they thought he wasn’t listening to them.

“What have you got there?”

For a moment Teddy worried that maybe the cup belonged to her and that he was in trouble because he had filled it with dirt and grass and sticks, and then he remembered that grown-ups never thought that trash was good to play with. He held it up so she could see it wasn’t really trash anymore, now that he had the worm house started.

“Wow! Well, isn’t that—you’re making something special, aren’t you?”

Teddy nodded, glad that she understood. He knew it would be easier for people to understand him when he started using words, but he still wasn’t quite ready. Sometimes, when he was working with Mrs. Tierney, Teddy felt like he was almost ready, but then he’d get busy with other things and the moment would pass. He had tried to explain it to his mom, that the words were all there, waiting.

“So, is your mom here?”

Teddy looked down at the cup in his hands. Some of the bits of grass had fallen out, lifted by the wind and blown gently back into the dirt. He wasn’t sure what to do now. If the women started looking for his mom, a lot of people were probably going to come over and ask him questions and then get upset when he didn’t speak. It had happened before, when Livvy was supposed to be watching him at the mall.

If the two women would just leave him alone, his mom would come as soon as her errands were done. She always did. If he could tell the women his mom’s name they would probably go and get her, but he couldn’t do that, so it would be better if they just went away.

“Beth,” the older woman said in an irritated voice. She was jiggling the baby from side to side, which was making him cry more. “I think he’s hungry, I can’t get him settled.”

“Just a sec,” the mom said. “This is important.”

Teddy looked down into the park, where there were fewer moms and kids now. It was almost dinnertime, the sun slipping down in the sky and his stomach rumbling with hunger. But there was still a group of moms over by where the benches were, next to the sand lot, chatting while the kids played on the jungle gym.

Teddy pointed to the mothers gathered below, moving his finger, trying to decide which one to choose.

“Oh, your mom’s down there?” the woman asked, sounding relieved. “Does she know you’re up here?”

Teddy nodded, exaggerating the motion to make sure she understood.

“It’s kind of cold up here, isn’t it?”

Teddy shook his head. He wasn’t really cold anymore. The coat came down almost to his knees and made a sort of blanket to sit on, and he was able to pull his hands into the furry sleeves whenever they started to feel too cold.

“Okay, well...have fun up here. Go back to your mom if you get too cold, okay?”

The woman stood up and took her baby back and settled him onto her chest. He let out a loud burp, which made Teddy smile. She took the baby’s hand and waved it at Teddy, and Teddy waved back as they went down the hill.

When they got to the playground, the mom turned around and looked back up at him, and then over to the women on the benches. She and the grandma stood there for a minute talking and then they went into the parking lot and put the baby in his seat in a big silver car, got in and drove away.

Teddy went back to his cup. Soon he’d have the house all nice and ready, and then he’d just have to find a worm.

Chapter Nineteen

“Where’s Daddy?”

Livvy had to repeat the question twice. Jen was so relieved to have her daughter back unharmed that she wasn’t able to do anything but hold her, warming Livvy’s cold hands in her own.

“He’s resting upstairs, honey,” she said, hoping Livvy wouldn’t see the lie in her face. She hoped that Ryan had at least helped Ted back up onto the bed. Maybe he’d even given him something for the pain, a few Tylenols or some of the Vicodin she was pretty sure was left over from when Livvy had had her wisdom teeth out.

“So you didn’t see any sign of Teddy?” she asked, helping Livvy unzip her jacket.

“No, nothing. We went through the woods and along the ravine. We looked in all the cul-de-sacs and over by the gas station. He wasn’t anywhere, Mom. He’s got to be at the Sterns’. Is Daddy doing okay? Did you get to see him?”

“I did, actually,” Jen said lightly. “I went up there with Ryan to help. Ryan wanted to, um...he wanted to wrap up Daddy’s arm better. Why don’t you come sit with me.”

Livvy seemed skeptical, but she didn’t voice her doubts. Maybe she didn’t want to know the truth—maybe she couldn’t bear to know.

“Mom, listen, I was thinking, while we were looking for Teddy.” Livvy sat on the couch and ran her hand under the edge, coming up with the toy receiver. “We
have
to try to call Jake on the walkie-talkie. It’s going to be dinnertime soon, and you know Jake will have his on, especially since he missed us last night.”

Jen glanced at the window. The light was failing fast. Her tongue felt sluggish in her mouth, the sense of possibility making her faintly dizzy. “I’m sorry, sweetie, I just don’t know how we would manage it,” she said.

“Mom, come on! Please!” Livvy drew a frustrated breath, pushing the button on and off.

Jen calculated: Could it actually work? Their house was well within the units’ one-mile range, but they only worked when both boys were by the windows above the trees, without a lot of buildings or branches in between.

And being denied the nightly call last night would probably only make Jake more hungry to talk to Ted. He adored his uncle, and Ted hammed it up for him— “Hey, Jakey my man, calling Jake the Snake 1—2—3—4, one foot on the floor, one hangin’ out the door.” So the odds were very good that Jake would have his unit turned on. But unless they got out of the basement, it would never work.

“There’s just no way for us to get up on the second floor.”

“We have to find a way,” Livvy said. “I’ll just say I want to see Daddy.”

“Honey. Listen.” Jen took her hand, lacing their fingers together. “This is a great idea, and I think we should try to figure it out, but I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. And I don’t want you to worry, because everything is already all set up. The funds were wired today. Tomorrow Dan and I will go to the bank and get the money and then they’ll leave and this will all be over.”

“Mom!” Livvy exclaimed, pulling her hand back. “Daddy is
hurt
and Teddy is
gone,
and it’s all my fault. We can’t just wait around doing nothing. We have to get help.”

Her voice dissolved into tears, and Jen hugged her close. “Baby, no, it’s not your fault. You’ve got to stop thinking that way. Sweetie, come on, you’ve been so brave....”

As Jen tried to comfort her daughter, she wondered if Livvy had stumbled onto an idea that might really work. God willing, Teddy was safe at the Sterns’, but at some point Cricket was going to come to the house to find out what was going on. And the longer Ted went without medical attention the worse it would be. She didn’t know much about medicine but it seemed likely that there could be infection, blood loss, shock, things she didn’t even know the name of. Frankly, if Ted got through this with anything left of his arm she would be grateful.

“Honey. All right.” She gave in to the lure of hope. “I’ll try to get upstairs.”

“Tell them you have to see Daddy,” Livvy said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “Tell him we need him back down here with us tonight. Maybe they’ll let you go up there to help bring him down here.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, since he’s stable where he is.” Jen couldn’t let Livvy see Ted’s arm, couldn’t let her see how weak he was. “I don’t think he should be moved.”

“It doesn’t matter...you just have to say it,” Livvy said impatiently. “Say anything, whatever it takes to get up there. But it has to be at seven, Mom. Jake always tries right at
seven.
If we’re too early or too late, it won’t work.”

“How are we going to figure out what time it is? I don’t even have a watch down here, a phone, anything—”

“Mom!” Livvy’s voice was increasingly hysterical. “You have to! Just think—come on, you always figure things out. You
always
do.”

Hearing Livvy’s desperation, Jen knew she would fix this because she
had
to fix it. She couldn’t let Livvy down.

She looked around the room. The basement had accumulated more clutter than she’d realized. She scavenged the shelves, searching for something, anything that would help them.

“What are you looking for?” Livvy said, following in her wake.

“I don’t know—something to tell us what time it is. I thought maybe I could find that souvenir wristwatch we got you in Disneyland.”

“Mom, I was in seventh grade! That was four years ago!”

Jen kept looking. Maybe she’d find that silver-plated clock they’d received as a wedding gift, the one that Ted had insisted they display for years just in case his aunt came to visit. There had to be
something
among all this detritus from their past, the hundreds of possessions they simply had no room for, enough to furnish entire homes, blocks, villages.

In a box Jen found the Easter decorations she had lovingly packed away last April, the hand-painted eggs from the little import store downtown. In a dusty unlabeled Rubbermaid tote were dozens of juice boxes and Clif Bars, the product of Ted’s fleeting enthusiasm for disaster preparedness. There were boxes of outgrown toddler clothes, little overalls and turtlenecks Jen hadn’t quite been ready to give away.

Jen worked her way around the room, getting splinters in her hands from the rough plywood shelves, but finding nothing that would help them. She was reaching behind stacks of plastic shoe boxes filled with the kids’ school papers when her hand brushed against something soft—the silken nap of synthetic plush—and she knew immediately what it was and she gasped because she’d forgotten she’d kept him.

Licorice.

Her fingers tightened involuntarily on his soft paw and the room seemed to tilt. Her vision flickered and faded, and she gripped the post holding up the shelves. She tried to speak, but nothing came out of her mouth as she slowly slipped to the floor.