And then I notice the marks on her socks, and I wonder if she was tied to a chair, too. No, taped to the chair, one of the reclining theater seats in the playroom. That was the sound I heard before, the harsh creak of the duct tape ripping off leather so Baxter could race to the bathroom.
But it doesn’t explain how Beatrix managed to wriggle free.
Especially if her bindings were anything like mine, double and triple wrapped around my skin, as unforgiving as steel cuffs. Other than a slimy arm and a dull throbbing behind my front teeth, I’ve gotten nowhere with the knot at my wrist. Clearly, I am not one of those mothers who could lift a car to save her children, or bust out of chains like the female version of the Hulk. I strain against my bindings, but my arms and legs don’t budge.
I’m stuck.
Helpless.
But not Beatrix. She stands there and stares at me, her eyes big and wide and round.
Go, I mouth, but I don’t dare call out to her, not even a whisper. And honestly, go where? Not back to the playroom, certainly. The man will be back in what—thirty seconds? A minute? Not enough time for Beatrix to get very far. And as soon as she opens any of the doors downstairs, she’ll trip the alarm.
At the sound of the first siren I start shooting, and the first two bullets are for the kids.
If Beatrix is lucky, she might escape, but Baxter and I surely won’t. There are no good answers here.
Go.
Beatrix nods, but her feet don’t come unglued from the floor.
I hold my breath and listen to the noise coming from farther down the hall. Baxter is still chattering away, the occasional word piercing the low hum of water running through the pipes. Washing his hands at the sink, I’m guessing, which means he’s close to finishing up. The man is still silent, nearby but unaccounted for, which terrifies me. He could be waiting by the door. He could be halfway to the hall by now. What if he comes back to check on Beatrix?
I shake my head at her, but I don’t know what I mean by it. Don’t get caught? Don’t leave me here? Both, probably. My hands ball into tight, frustrated fists.
On the other end of the hall, a toilet flushes. A door creaks, followed by footsteps.
Go! I mouth the word again, stretching my lips around it so she understands, leaning forward and adding another: Run!
And this time—finally, thankfully—she does.
I first tried my hand at acting in middle school, mostly to escape from the dark cloud of misery hanging over our house—a silent father who spent his evenings dozing in front of a TV, a surly older sister eating her feelings and everything else in sight, rooms that without my mother’s touches had grown faded and dusty. I coped by cloaking myself in someone else’s skin—a lighthearted mermaid falling in love for the first time, or the dancing, singing, footloose daughter of a strict preacher father. Anyone but a sad and lonely eighth-grader longing for her mother.
It’s those old, sucky acting skills I call upon now when I hear noises at the end of the hall. I sit up straight as my body goes rock-hard, my fingers digging into the velvet armrests of the chair. I wipe my expression clean and force my muscles to relax, my face to look normal—or as normal as a mother’s face can be, tied to a forty-pound chair.
An animated Baxter comes first, his stuffed gorilla Gibson pinned under an arm, skipping like he’s headed for a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. He blathers on about the shows he wants to watch, the popcorn his mommy would let him have. I stare at him, gritting my teeth and trying to appear fearless, courageous. My son doesn’t so much as glance over.
The man follows behind. He comes into view, and my heart clenches.
Showtime.
I can’t quite see him from this angle, but I know the second he spots Beatrix’s empty chair. I hear his grunt of surprise, the stumble in his footsteps when he comes up on an empty room. He curses, a long string of expletives followed by Baxter’s high-pitched giggle.
“Beatrix! You get your butt back in here, missy. Right now.”
There’s a long stretch of silence while he waits for an answer. I hear the low volume on the TV, fast and heavy footsteps, breaths huffing with emotion, but nothing from Beatrix. Of course there’s not. By now she’s had a good thirty, maybe forty-five seconds to get wherever she’s going, and I already know her tiptoe skills are stealth. I picture her downstairs, sneaking from room to room, trying out all her normal hiding spots until she finds the best one.
The man stomps into the hall. “You better believe I’m going to find your scrawny little butt, so you might as well come out now. Come out and take your punishment like a girl.” He looks at me, eyes flashing. “Where is she? Where’d she go?”