“Come in with us,” Bessie said, but I shook my head. I got up and walked to a lounge chair, reclined. In my sunglasses, I felt like a movie star. I couldn’t see myself, which helped the fantasy. “I’m going to lounge for a bit,” I said.
“Aw,” Roland said. “That’s no fun.”
“Watch us,” Bessie said, her hand slapping the surface of the water, like she was punishing some stupid baby.
“I am watching,” I said. With my sunglasses, they couldn’t really tell where I was looking. I just needed a second, this little space where they were not my entire world. I needed the smallest break. Who would deny me this? I mean, besides these two kids. I looked up at the clouds. They all looked like things, but I was too tired to give them names.
I wondered what Madison was doing. It was hard not to feel like she had tricked me. I had barely seen her. I remembered those first days, before the kids, when it was just the two of us. She bought me a wardrobe. We played basketball. I thought we’d be together. I mean, I knew I’d be here, with the kids, but in my mind, Madison was sitting next to me, laughing. I thought we’d be eating those dainty, gross tea sandwiches while the kids played hopscotch or some shit.
“Watch us,” Bessie said again, louder.
“I am watching you,” I said. “You look beautiful.”
“Aww,” Roland said, knowing that I was lying.
I felt the sun on my face, listened to the sound of the kids in the pool. It was peaceful. It was boring as shit, but it was peaceful. I closed my eyes for a second. The summer seemed to stretch out for miles, forever.
When I woke up, my whole body startling into consciousness, I looked in the pool and the kids were gone. How long had I been asleep? A minute? Eight years? Anything between these two periods of time seemed possible. My neck was killing me. “Bessie?” I said, quiet, so no one would hear me. It defeated the purpose, but I was trying to be cool, so cool. “Roland?” I said. Nothing. The pool was calm, empty. I looked around. The kids were gone. I instinctively looked toward the windows in the mansion. There was no sign of Timothy, no witness to my irresponsibility. And then I thought, What if the kids are in the mansion? What if they sneaked into it? What if they’ve got Timothy in a headlock? I felt sick to my stomach.
I stood up and started walking around the pool, checking behind the lounge chairs, making sure they weren’t hiding from me to teach me a lesson. I looked into the pool, all the way to the bottom, but it was empty. I ran back to the guesthouse, opened the door, and shouted for them, but there was no response. I checked every room: no sign of them. I looked at the phone, thought for a split second about calling Carl, but I could not imagine the judgment inherent in that interaction. I’d never live it down. It would be noted in the permanent record on me that Carl kept inside his brain.
I slipped into the mansion undetected and went to the kitchen, where Mary was making pasta, folding the dough into these intricate little purses.
“Mary, have you seen the kids?” I asked her, so casual, like I already knew the answer and was only testing her.
“Not in here,” Mary said, not even looking up at me. “You lose them?”
“Maybe,” I said, unable to lie to Mary. She smiled a little, her hands moving so effortlessly. “Better find them,” she replied.
“I guess so,” I said. “Don’t tell Madison about this?”
“No,” Mary said, the word so certain, so strong, that I wanted to kiss her. I knew we weren’t in this together. But it made me happy to be protected by her, even if just for a few seconds.
And now the world seemed to become large and overwhelming. I’d spent so much time inside this estate, which, yes, was fucking huge, but it had seemed manageable, safe. I looked around, I am not joking, to see if the kids had sprinkled bread crumbs to make their path visible to me. They had not. Goddamn, these children. Not a single crumb of bread. And now some witch was eating them. Or they were burning down the witch’s house. Whatever they were doing, I knew who would get blamed.
I kept walking, not calling out for them, trying to locate them by some kind of ESP, like I would find them just by holding them in my mind until they simply appeared in front of me, definitely not on fire. I kept looking toward the horizon, searching for smoke.
And now that I was a one-woman search party, it finally hit me that I was responsible for these children, me and me alone. This was a big fucking responsibility. Why had Madison and Jasper entrusted me with such a job? The magnitude, the lives of two children, holy shit. It’s strange that this didn’t sink in when the kids were actually on fire. Fire had seemed manageable. Disappearing without a trace, that seemed more problematic, more serious. Or at least, I knew which situation would result in my getting blamed more than the other. One was genetics. One was negligence. I wasn’t prepared for this. If someone stole a package of steaks from the Save-A-Lot, who cared? I didn’t. I most certainly did not. This was different. How had it taken me this long to realize it?