Pulling into the driveway, Kirby is relieved to find that all appears to be well, that nothing was accidentally left out this morning in the dark. He dashes for the kitchen door, the rain cutting his face and hands as he moves across the backyard. Inside, the rooms are dark. He calls out a hello, but the house stays quiet. It’s unusual, this silence. It worries him. He wanders down the hallway, ducking his head inside each doorway he passes. In the bedroom he finds Frida, one leg emerging from underneath a pile of bedding. He sits down next to her and encircles her foot with his big hand, rubbing his thumb along her calluses.
“Frida,” he says, a prick of worry entering his mind. She makes a sound but doesn’t emerge, burrowing deeper into the mattress. “Where are the boys?”
“Living room,” she says, still inside her cocoon. “Cartoons.”
“No…” he says slowly, feeling the word take up space. “They’re not. Frida, they’re not in the house and it’s starting out there. When’s the last time you saw them?”
Now she emerges, sensing that the stakes have risen, that she has made an error, that something has gone wrong while she lay here. She sits up. Kirby forgets to hold her as he’d planned to, to tell her with his hands what he doesn’t trust his words to convey—that she isn’t alone, that he feels this impossible pressure of the world unraveling, too, that he’s sorry he isn’t brave enough to say it out loud. A new problem teases him away, the way they always do.
“Gone?” she asks. “But…” It’s not her fault, he tries to remind himself, but the camaraderie he felt in the truck is slipping away. How does it dissolve so quickly? Kirby watches the tears forming in her eyes, watches her struggle for a sentence that might fill this space, and suddenly he cannot bear to see the gravity of the situation settling over her. It’s too much—this breakability that she has encased herself in, a glass shell, permanently cracked, forever in the process of shattering before his eyes. He cannot be with her in this moment. Not when there is work to be done. He stands up.
“What can I do?” she asks.
“Nothing. Stay here,” he says, and walks out of the room, knowing it sounded harsh, knowing that this is not how he wanted today to go, but unable to attend to both the task of protecting the tender bodies of his children and holding space for something so inconsequential as a feeling—Frida’s or his own.
“Kirby, wait,” she calls after him. But he doesn’t. He can’t.
Chapter 13
Frida hears him stomp back through the house to the kitchen door. The engine of his truck rumbles and then it recedes into the distance. The silence returns, but now it has curdled. Pain rolls through her once more. She doesn’t want to call them contractions; she can’t face that word yet. They’re probably just false labor pains. It’s the stress, the anxiety, the low air pressure. Some old TV trope—a drama trick, an unearned climax. An old wives’ tale. This pain isn’t real; it can’t be. Maybe if she stays very still it’ll go away.
But how can she stay still when those little boys are missing and it’s her fault? She sits up and gathers the sheet around her shoulders. Her mind leaps out ahead of this moment to touch on all of the most horrifying possibilities this hurricane could bring: Kirby losing control of the truck; the boys getting sucked into the river; all the debris that could connect with these delicate humans who are so precious to her. All three, she realizes now, even Lucas. He’s only a child underneath that show of brattiness, and it was her job to watch them, to keep them safe. She realizes now that she has not appreciated this family as she should have, spending this whole summer not wanting the boys, not wanting Kirby, not wanting the baby even. Outside, the wind is eager for destruction. She can hear the windowpanes rattle against their frames, can hear the moans and the howls and the screams of air and water gusting, twisting, pressing into this small town just so. Is she being punished for this not-wanting? And if so, is the fear her penance, or is it only the precursor of something worse?
She unravels herself from the sheets and paces the house, checking the boys’ room, the living room, the kitchen, as if they are only hiding and Kirby has simply not looked hard enough. But they are in none of those places, and if Frida allows herself to truly examine the remnants of the past few hours in her mind, she will find a dreamlike auditory memory of the front door opening and closing, the sound of voices outside in the yard, the absence of the television’s chatter, and a house that is too deliciously quiet to possibly contain her two stepsons. She cannot allow herself to examine this just now. She can barely remember to breathe.
Frida tries Kirby’s cell but it goes to voice mail. She immediately calls again, unable to stop herself.
“Unless you know where I should be looking for them, I can’t talk about this right now,” he snaps at her. The sound of the rain beating against his truck dilutes the volume of his voice, but it cannot disguise his tone.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into the receiver.
“It’s fine, Frida. Just let me handle this and we can talk later.” He hangs up. While he looks out there, she resolves to look here. She paces the house once more, searching for clues, and thinks suddenly of the tool shed. Perhaps the boys went out to play some game and then lost track of time. Maybe they didn’t hear Kirby’s truck pulling into the driveway in this thunderous rain. Maybe they’ve been telling ghost stories in there this whole time and she will go out and find them and Kirby will come home and they will all weather the hurricane together and none of this will be very bad. It will just be this singular burst of panic triggered by the clot of disquiet that she has carried with her ever since Poppy. The dread she has felt circling all day will dissipate. The storm will wait. The baby will wait. The worst has already happened; how could it possibly visit her again?
She steps into a pair of tall rain boots by the door and throws on one of Kirby’s jackets, eager to manifest this happy resolution, her nightgown streaming out from under the waxed brown canvas, pink silk tail feathers whipping around her legs. She pulls the door open and the wind knocks it back on its hinges. Immediately the storm sweeps into the kitchen. All at once—a mason jar full of coupons skitters across the counter then smashes to the floor; the oranges she picked yesterday roll after it, thudding among the broken glass; the curtains snap and twist. The storm has not waited. It’s already here.
Frida ignores these things crashing to the floor and manages to climb over the sandbags in the doorway, her skirts flying up around her waist, a tutu now, the rain driving into her exposed skin, the enormous jacket wrapped around her belly. Stumbling into the yard, she protects her face with her hands and pushes forward, lurching toward the shed as pieces of debris, swept in from who knows where, roll through her little garden beds. She shouts the boys’ names as she goes, but there’s no answer.
At the shed, she wrestles with the door, knowing even as she yanks the handle that they won’t be here, that this is wishful thinking at best. But she’s come this far and so she gets it open and looks inside, where there are only half-full buckets of paint and toolboxes and a band saw and the ladder Kirby climbed just that morning to install the plywood on the windows. She is gasping for air, the baby constricting her lungs, crushing her organs with its mere presence. Her pelvis clenches in pain again when she takes in the emptiness of the shed, a pain that is radiating through her entire body now. She lays both hands over her belly, trying to funnel whatever is left of her well-being into her own womb, to mitigate the damage that is surely being caused by this agony. A bright, fully charged crackle of panic rips through her. She has so much to lose.