Chapter 9

N icola and I appraised each other. “I can definitely tell,” she said.

“Well, I can hardly see anything. You look amazing.”

“So do you. That new underwear is really nice,” she added. “JuJu has good taste.”

“I picked this out myself,” I said, looking down at my new pink bra. It really was more comfortable, too—my old ones must have stretched out more than I’d realized. “Can you really see a difference?” I pressed my big sister, and I flexed my arm a little.

“I really can. I thought you looked good before, but you have muscles now, Sophie. That yoga is good for you.”

“I like it. It’s funny how Mom and I do it together with the baby in between us. It puts Esme in a good mood, too.”

Nicola turned to the side, her hands cupping the curve of her tummy. “Jude doesn’t mind how I’m getting bigger,” she told me. “I think he’ll change his mind when I’m at forty weeks, though.”

“No, he won’t.” I shook my head. “He thinks you’re the most beautiful woman in the world and he wouldn’t care if you suddenly turned green and sprouted horns. You didn’t mind when he grew that terrible beard over the winter.”

“I thought he was so cute with that beard!” she protested, and it was honestly a little unnerving how much the two of them loved each other.

“Nicola? I’m going to pick up the wood for the crib,” he said from outside the door, and she stuck out her head to kiss him goodbye as I reached for my clothes. I’d been trying on my new stuff and putting on a little fashion show in her bedroom and she’d shown off her rounding belly. I’d also wanted to get her opinion on my yoga body, because I’d been feeling a lot stronger due to the asanas—and yes, I’d picked up some of the lingo, too. Even my mother seemed impressed by my progress, and I mentioned that now to Nicola.

“Mom says we’re going to start doing more advanced moves soon,” I said. “You know, because some of the things are getting too easy for me. Like, I’m doing the half-wheel.” I paused. “She does the full one.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I bet you’ll be fully wheeling soon,” my sister said, because she’d always had a lot of faith in me. “If Mom can, why couldn’t you?” She pulled one of her husband’s shirts over her tank top and I also thought she looked beautiful. “You guys are spending a lot of time together, more than you ever have before. How’s it going?”

“You know.”

“Yeah, I do,” she said. “I know very well, which is why I’m surprised. Is it because of Esme? Is this closeness really for the best?”

That was when I saw her worry. “Do you think I’m bad for the baby or something? Holy Mary, Nic!” I couldn’t think of the last time my feelings had been so hurt, because I didn’t care what other people thought—but I did care about my sister’s opinion.

“No, of course I don’t think that!” she scolded. “I mean that you were never very interested in the little kids in our family, but you take care of Esme like she’s your own baby. That’s what worries me.”

I had been concerned about that as well, but only in regard to our other sister, Addie. Nicola thought I would get sucked in, too? No way! “You don’t have to worry about me getting overly attached,” I responded. Addie would have, but I wasn’t built like that. “I’m totally clear that I’m her aunt, the best one in the world…”

“Ha.”

“But only an aunt,” I concluded. “I’m not going to let myself get too involved in this situation. If stupid Patrick would step up, then I wouldn’t even be there at all.” I paused, watching her appraise me. “Go ahead. Ask about Daniel.”

“What about him?” she immediately questioned. “What’s happening?”

I’d been fielding texts from Addie about this topic and my mom hadn’t given up yet, either. Nicola’s interest wasn’t unexpected and I was prepared. “Nothing is happening,” I told her firmly.

“Nothing?” Her eyes narrowed. “Liar. I can see it in your face.”

“No, you can’t! You can’t, because there’s nothing to see. He’s my neighbor and he’s my friend again. Which I’m very glad about,” I conceded, and even I had heard my voice soften. We had been seeing a lot more of each other, and oddly, it was mostly centered around the baby. He frequently stopped by my parents’ house to have dinner and then to hang out, and honestly? It was a huge relief to have him there. I’d moved a lot of my stuff into my dad’s office to try to work during the day and my mom was ok for short bursts with Esme, but mostly I was trying to multitask and that was extremely frustrating, not to mention difficult.

Then Daniel would ring the doorbell, and I became totally, overwhelmingly happy. That was entirely about the baby, of course, because he loved to hold her, to feed her, and to talk to her. He didn’t even mind diapers, which was something my brother still had fits over when I asked him to change them. So I was thrilled to see him, but only because he was so good with Esme. I told Nicola that and she shook her head at me.

“When you figure yourself out, let me know.”

“I’m totally figured,” I let her know now and shortly later, I left to hurry back to my own home. A hauler guy had been working all day to remove the mess surrounding the shack where Daniel’s dad had lived, and he was heading over to clean up my house, too. I wanted to be there to help and observe, and I wanted to explain that I’d put a few more things in the back that he wouldn’t have been expecting.

He wasn’t at all happy about my additions. “I don’t know if that will fit,” the junk guy said, staring doubtfully at my stuff.

“Well, take as much as you can,” I suggested, and he grunted. “Thanks for doing this favor.”

“Favor? I’m getting paid, lady, but not enough for all this shit.” He shook his head as he glared at the yard and it did look pretty bad, especially with how I’d lately increased the mess. Then he got on his phone and so did I.

“You’re paying him?” I wrote to Daniel, and he told me we’d talk later, which meant yes. He hadn’t mentioned that to me before, so prior to the angry salvage guy’s departure from my yard, I would have to find out how much I owed so that I could pony up my share for this clean-up.

It was a beautiful day and it would have been nice to stay outside, but I didn’t. I watched the guy with the truck swear into his phone for a while and then I went into my office, but it was hard to be at my old desk. I tugged on the window and eventually, it opened so I could enjoy the promising warmth in the air. While Mr. Cranky worked with his crew, shoving my junk into a trailer that did already seem full, I worked on the laptop I’d brought with me, cleaning up a report I’d hurriedly typed earlier while Esme was taking a catnap. She really was getting better about sleeping, and was on a slightly more predictable schedule. She was getting better about eating, too. The pediatrician had been very pleased with her rate of growth at her checkup, which I’d taken her to the day before. She had met all her milestones…

No, I was working, and I was not going to think about the baby again. Addie was hanging out with her and my mom today and also discussing wedding plans. My younger sister was now wearing a giant emerald on her left ring finger and it appeared that she was not going Nicola’s route of a backyard ceremony and party. They were going to do it up, and I’d already gotten a little gift with a note asking me to be a bridesmaid…

No, I was working, so I wasn’t going to think about Addie’s wedding, either. I tried to pay attention but not too much later, the hauler guy was honking long and loud in the street and complaining just as vociferously that he wasn’t going to be able to take the damn appliances, that no one had mentioned anything to him about all that crap, and on, and on. I got him calmed down, got him to copy me on the invoice that he was planning to send to Daniel so I would know how much I owed, and got him to leave.

Then I went back inside to return to the job that I still hadn’t done. I’d heard my neighbors come home from their own jobs and now the street was quiet again. I continued to try to focus but I had an uncomfortable feeling, like an itchy spot in my brain. It was telling me that I’d been away from Esme for too long. I knew that Addie would take care of her so I didn’t have to worry; I tried to ignore that itch, a feeling that was getting familiar. I’d been experiencing it fairly frequently when I wasn’t with the baby.

But I hadn’t even finished going through my emails, and Esme was in good hands. I nodded and tried again, typing a quick response to a woman who was interested in me putting together a report on her daughter’s boyfriend, a man she described as “obvious bad news.” Yes, I could look into him. It seemed like the kind of easy, low-stakes job that I usually knocked out with no problems.

When I finished typing, I reviewed what I’d written and saw the spelling mistakes, sentence fragments, and general incoherence of my answer. It was not something I could send out or even something that I wanted to try to fix…ok, I could finish all this later. I could stay up late like I used to do, although my schedule had changed a lot since Esme had arrived. Now my routine was a lot closer to the one followed by a majority of people in the world: sleeping during the night and awake in the day. In fact, I had to go to bed early to get enough rest, and I also liked to be the one to give Esme her first bottle of the morning. I enjoyed when the world was just waking up and we talked together. Well, she snuffled and cooed, and she was a good listener as I told her what we would do that day, what an amazing girl she was, and how much I loved her.

My mind went to what Nicola had said to me about being overly involved. Was I actually spending too much time with Esme and behaving as if I were more than an aunt? “You take care of her like she’s your own baby,” my sister had told me. But clearly, she was wrong. I didn’t even want children of my own! I was doing the same things that anyone would have done, just taking care of a helpless infant. Nicola was being ridiculous.

And to prove that, I would stay right here in this desk chair and I would ignore the itch that urged me to drive as fast as I could to my parents’ house to hold the baby in my arms. I would get this stuff done, my actual work, and that would demonstrate that I was only an aunt who was helping out at times but who didn’t need to be around continuously. I buckled down, only texting Addie for updates a few times, and I worked until the evening lengthened into darkness. I’d told my mom that I wouldn’t be there for dinner and she wrote back in a non-hysterical manner that they were fine, so my sister really did have everything under good control.

I kept going, and when someone knocked on my front door, I was immersed enough that I jumped. My thoughts immediately went to Daniel because I’d told him that I was home, so he could have come here instead of going over to my parents’ house…I ran to see him. But when I looked through the glass at the top of the door, a man I didn’t know stood on my stoop. He’d tilted his head down so I couldn’t see his face, but that would have been difficult in any case because I’d forgotten to replace the lightbulb in the fixture out there.

“Yes?”

“Sophia Curran?” he asked me.

“My name is Brenna. Who are you?”

“How are you, Sophia? A mutual friend referred me to you. I need research done on one of my business associates,” he told me. “Can I come in and we can discuss it?” His voice was muffled and it was hard to hear.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go away,” I answered.

I heard his next words very clearly: “Open the door.”

“No. Get out of here,” I said, and then I heard something else, a noise at the back of the house. I spun around and at the end of the hallway, visible in the soft glow of the computer screen in my office, I saw the outline of a man. He started moving towards me, moving very fast…sugar.

I had never been quick on the uptake, at least not physically. But when I saw him, my body jerked into motion. I ran toward him but veered into the office and I slammed the door and locked it. I had a brief thought that it might hold him off but he was already pounding on it and the whole frame shivered. I jerked again, this time to the window. I yanked on it and since I’d opened it earlier that day, it slid pretty easily—and I jumped through.

“She’s out,” I heard a voice call, but I was too invested in running to pay attention. Yoga hadn’t prepared me for this activity but apparently adrenaline had kicked in, because my legs flew. They brought me across the street, passing much too close to the front door where the man had been knocking, and through the city darkness toward Daniel’s house. I’d headed there without even thinking about it, moving on instinct. I flung myself at the door, pounding on it and screaming his name.

He yanked it open. “Sophie?” But I didn’t answer because I was pushing him to the side and frantically smashing it closed and scrabbling for the locks.

“There’s someone in my house! There are two men in my house!” I told him.

Daniel moved even faster than I had. He pulled me away from the door, made sure I was physically ok, got his phone, called the police, and reported to them what was happening as he watched across the street from his window.

“I see two people leaving,” he said. “There’s a car parked down the block and they’re getting into it.”

I had regained enough breath to talk. “Get the license plates! Say it out loud and try to take a picture.”

“There are no plates on the car but I think it’s a…no, I can’t tell what model. They’re gone. They even closed the front door behind them.” He listened and said, “Ok. Thank you,” and stuck the phone in his pocket before turning to me. “The police are coming. What in the hell is going on?”

I held up my hands to show that I had no idea. Then I reached out to him and he crossed the room to me and took them.

“Are you really all right?” he asked.

“No. That was awful. I looked over my shoulder and there was a man there, and he ran at me. I jumped out the window.”

“Did he touch you? Did you hurt yourself?”

“No.” But then I realized that my arms were stinging, and I turned them over. We both saw the scratches on them, either from the window frame or from when I’d fought my way through the bush that was underneath it.

“Let’s wash these,” he said.

“Ok,” I agreed, and I let him lead me into the kitchen. He put his arm around me as I cleaned off the blood and patted my skin dry with his kitchen towel. Then he carefully put bandages over the superficial wounds and we sat together at his table, holding hands again while he told me that it was going to be all right.

We waited a long time there for the police to arrive. When they finally did, I told them the story and they looked around my house, but of course the men were long gone.

“There’s no way that this was a normal burglary,” I said as they were preparing to go, and it was at least the tenth time I’d repeated that—so the officers had heard it a minimum of nine times before but they hadn’t seemed to believe me. It wasn’t uncommon to have your house broken into, not in a big city. But like this? I’d tried again and again to convince them of how strange it was but they had other crimes to investigate.

“You’re lucky,” they’d let me know. That was true because I was fine, unharmed except for some self-inflicted scratches on my arms, and the only things that had been stolen were my laptop and an external drive I used for backup. Their official opinion was that I had scared off the pair of thieves.

“But they knew I was here. They knew my name and what I do for a living,” I’d argued. “I have some jewelry, I have more electronic stuff. I had my purse sitting right next to the door with the wallet on top! Even if they got scared, they could have at least grabbed that. They’d parked down the block in front of two houses that don’t have cameras, they took off their license plates, and when they were done, they drove away so quickly that none of the other front door cameras could get a good shot of the car. They really knew what they were doing.”

But again, the police didn’t want to waste time and resources searching for one laptop for a woman who was totally fine. They left after suggesting that we talk to the other neighbors to ask if they’d noticed anything strange lately. They also said that we could organize a watch for our street and that I needed to replace the light bulb on my porch—basically that I should occupy myself with useless and performative tasks that would give me a false feeling of security. Well, I really did need a new light bulb, but there had to be more I could do.

“They’ll never catch them,” I said, also for about the tenth time, as Daniel closed my front door behind the police.

“Probably not,” he answered. “I’m going to go nail up the back. Do you need anything out of here to take to your mom’s house?”

I did want to gather a few things. While he hammered boards over my back door, broken by the man who’d gotten in while the one at the front distracted me, I looked around again and tried to piece together what to do next. Obviously, I had all my data backed up, but I would need a new computer. And I would need to figure out why they had targeted—

Someone knocked and my heart might have stopped, but at almost the same moment Daniel spoke. “Sophie, it’s me. I’m coming in and I didn’t want to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” I told him when he entered, but he walked right to me and took my hands.

“I could see you shaking from across the room. Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I’ll park your car in my garage and take you to your mom’s house for the night.”

I figured that he was right that I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel myself. I picked up my water bottle and my purse, and then I grabbed the valuables that the criminals hadn’t thought to grab themselves.

As we pulled out of his driveway, I swiveled and watched my house through the truck’s back window. I wondered if I’d ever want to go there again and if I did, if I’d always be afraid that the man was behind me. Daniel was thinking about them, too. “I’m glad you didn’t try to fight,” he said. “It was a very good decision to run.”

I didn’t say that I’d been running without any clear thought except that I needed him. “Fighting didn’t occur to me. My body just moved.” I looked back again, but we had turned a corner and I couldn’t see the pink stucco anymore. “I’ll use my dad’s computer to make sure that I can still access all my data.”

“Don’t worry about work tonight,” he said. Then he reached over and took my arm. “Is this ok?”

“Yes. The scratches weren’t so bad.”

He didn’t let go, however. “In high school, I never saw you act scared. Now I’ve seen it twice, when Esme was born and today.”

“Maybe I was tougher back then. Maybe I was never so scared before, either.”

“Do you remember when you stood up to my dad for me?”

I turned to him. “Why are you thinking about that right now?”

“Because when you showed up at my door tonight, I wanted to run across the street and kill those guys for you. That was how you acted for me in high school. You acted like you were going to kill my dad.”

“I wanted to. I know that I have a bit of a temper—”

“A bit,” he said, and patted my arm.

“But you’re right, I never felt so much anger as when I saw him hurt you. I hadn’t ever guessed he’d been doing that,” I said. I hadn’t understood that he was abusing his son, not until the night that Daniel and I went to our first Cineribus concert when we were seniors, eleven years before. His dad had needed him to come home so we’d left the hall early, and then we’d walked into a terrible situation.

His gaze was on the road now, so I could only see half of his face. “I never told anyone. It didn’t happen very often.”

“Once was one time too many.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” He considered for a while as I watched him. “I didn’t know any difference for most of my life. I gradually understood that he couldn’t stop himself. He just wasn’t able to function like a regular father, or even a regular person.”

“My parents were weird and they definitely made mistakes, but they never, ever did anything like that. I was so shocked,” I told him. He hadn’t wanted me to walk with him through the junk to the shack where they lived, but I’d guessed from how he was behaving that something was very wrong. I’d insisted on it. And the moment we’d approached the building, his father had burst out through the door. He’d slapped his son across the face, hard enough that Daniel had fallen down in the midst of the trash on the ground, and I’d screamed.

His father hadn’t seemed to hear me, and he didn’t listen to my friend saying no and stop. So I had stopped him. Just like tonight when I’d run across the street, I hadn’t thought about it. I’d just done it.

“You laid him out,” Daniel said.

“No, he wasn’t unconscious,” I corrected. “He was only stunned.” He had stumbled backwards after I hit him and sat down on the steps of the shack, and then he’d shook his head a few times like he was getting the cobwebs out. I had run over to Daniel and was trying to pull him up and also to prepare for when his father came at him again—but he hadn’t. His dad had looked at us and had slowly risen to his feet, wobbling a lot. Then, still without a word, he’d gone inside and Daniel had told me that I should go home. He’d walked me back to my car, his lip bleeding, but he’d been more concerned about my hand and with saying thank you. Thank you, Sophie, thank you for helping me.

But I hadn’t done enough, and I was too young and stupid back then to know that I had to do more. When he’d begged me not to tell anyone, I hadn’t and I’d thought I was doing the right thing.

“I’m so sorry about that,” I told him now.

“You have no idea how much it meant to me. It was like…” He considered. “It was like the first step.”

“What do you mean?”

“My job was taking care of my dad and keeping us afloat. That was what I did for so many years,” he answered. “I just took it, I just took everything he gave me. That night, I started to make plans about how to fight back, and then about how I was going to leave. It took me a while to plot it all out. I always need to think about things for a while.”

“And you never came back.”

“No, I never did. When I told my dad that I was going, it was at the curb with a car there, engine running. He said if he saw me again that he would kill me and I believed him. I think he would have tried.”

“Daniel…”

“After a while, I was big and strong enough that I could have stopped him, but by then I wasn’t scared anymore. I was so pissed off. He let us live like animals,” he said. “He beat the crap out of me and made me feel worthless, terrified all the time. I didn’t want to go back and help him, so I didn’t see him again. Then he died alone, surrounded by piles of trash. I feel pretty guilty about that, but I’m trying not to.”

“I wish you didn’t.”

“I wish that, too. I wish I had told a teacher, or let Nicola report it. I wish I hadn’t made you keep quiet, either. Those years that I was away, I had a lot of time to think about things, and I made the decision that if I can help someone else, I’m going to. I’ll always help you, Sophie. I’m glad you came to get me tonight. Another thing I thought about was how much I owe you—”

“No, you don’t. You don’t owe me anything!”

“You were my friend when I really needed one.”

“I don’t know if I was. I didn’t know that you did community service.”

“What?” he asked. We’d come to a red light so he turned to look at me. “You mean how I work with Bruno?”

“I mean that I didn’t know how you used to volunteer in high school. I didn’t know that your dad was abusing you.” He seemed to wait, but I didn’t continue to list the things that I hadn’t understood, all the parts of him that I hadn’t known about, the parts that had been such a surprise when he’d finally acknowledged them.

“I hid stuff,” he told me. “That was the way we lived, keeping everything secret. I still have a hard time not behaving that way today.”

“You don’t have to keep secrets from me, not anymore. I want to be a better friend to you because I don’t think I was a very good one back then. Maybe I was too self-centered.”

“You were just young. We all acted like that.”

“No, you didn’t.” I wiped off my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry I made you cry. I’m sorry those guys broke into your house and I don’t want you to be there alone. I’m glad you’re sleeping at your parents’ place.” We were driving again but he glanced over. “Maybe I’ll stay for a while.”

The first thing I wanted to do when I unlocked the door into the kitchen was to find Esme. She was already in her crib, but I hurried up the stairs and stood quietly in the darkness, watching her. I put my hand over her round tummy and felt her breathing and I took deep breaths, too, willing myself to calm down.

“You’re so funny, Sophie,” my mom said when I came back downstairs. She, Addie, and Daniel were seated at the kitchen table, drinking mugs of tea. “She was in good hands!”

“I know that,” I said. If I’d wanted to start an argument, I would have said that Esme had been in Addie’s hands and those were more than good—but I kept it to myself.

Daniel wouldn’t have said anything to my mom about the burglary and I, of course, would never tell her anything, either. But my sister was already looking worried and she watched me walk around the kitchen, since I was still too keyed up to sit down.

My mom talked about the wedding plans, and yes, they did seem a lot more involved and expansive than Nicola’s had been. We’d put that party together in about a week, but Addie had scheduled her wedding for next fall. “We already booked the venue but I need to get my butt in gear and find a dress,” she said. “Will you come with me, Soph?”

“Do you actually want to hear my opinion about clothes?”

“Everyone be there together,” she said quietly.

I realized that she really did want me to be there. “Ok,” I said. “I’ll go if you want me to. I’d like to.”

My mom said that she would come, too. “I remember shopping for my wedding dress. That was the day that they had a fire in the bridal salon and I had to run outside wearing only my slip and a veil,” she recounted happily, and I tried really hard but had to roll my eyes.

“I think I’m going to sit on the patio for a while,” I said. “It’s so nice tonight.” And also, it seemed hard to breathe in this kitchen, like the air was close and stuffy.

Daniel put his mug into the sink and followed me out, and unsurprisingly, my sister trotted along as well. “What’s going on, Sophie?” she asked as soon as we’d closed the door behind us. “Why do you look so upset?”

I told her, giving only a brief outline that emphasized that I was fine and omitted the part about the man running after me, which meant that I also didn’t explain how I’d leaped out the window. My house was only one story, after all. It wasn’t such a crazy thing.

But Addie got very upset, anyway. “I don’t understand. They knew your name?”

“I don’t understand that either. I was targeted.” I looked at both of them. “Right? Why else would they have come and asked for me, and why else would they have chosen to break in when I was home?”

“It would have been easy enough to rob you when you weren’t there. You’re hardly ever around your house anymore,” my sister said. “Were they trying to hurt you?” That thought made her even more upset. “I’m getting Granger.”

“What is your fiancé going to do?” I asked, but that guy did seem to know a lot. He had sources of information that I couldn’t access, which had always made me wonder about his former career, before he owned his restaurant.

Addie called him and they talked for a while before she passed the phone to me. I had to go over the story again and he asked a lot of questions, more than the police for sure. I gave him all the details, which included the things I hadn’t told my sister. I watched her eyes get big as I spoke and when I hung up, she got mad.

“Sophie!” she scolded, but then she hugged me. Addie was much more into that kind of thing than I was, but I was glad for the hug tonight. Eventually, she ran out of ways to chastise me and went home to her fiancé, and I was left with Daniel. Although it was late, we stayed outside with the baby monitor because I still didn’t feel like I was ready to try to sleep.

“Will that hold us?” he asked me, pointing to a three-seater wooden swing that my dad had hung years before from an oak tree.

“It should,” I answered, and he took my arm and guided me to come sit there with him.

“This is better,” he explained as we rocked. “It’s soothing, like how you sway when you hold Esme.”

I immediately picked up the monitor from the ground, but only heard soft breathing. “She’s ok,” I assured us both.

“She is. You are, too.” He put his arm around me and tugged, and very stiffly, I rested against his shoulder. It felt so nice that I relaxed, my muscles finally un-tensing and my heart slowing to a normal rate. The swing moved in its gentle arc and I looked up at the faint moon in a sky that never got as dark as it might have in the Caribbean.

“You’re ok, Sophie,” Daniel reiterated.

“I’m fine,” I agreed. “Will you stay, though?”

“I will. As long as you need me,” he answered.

How long might that be? I didn’t want him to go and I wished that I’d never driven him away in the first place.