“Where are you?” The pleading in his voice made me prickle all over with cold. “I need you. Your daughter needs you. We had a deal, goddammit, and I’ve kept it. Now you keep it. I swear to God, if you leave me alone with this…”
I leaned into the quiet that followed the threat, then lurched back from the sound of his fist meeting wood. Four blistering bangs, then silence.
That’s when I stopped being angry at my dad. There was only one person to blame, and even he couldn’t reach her.
I retreated to my room. I was scrolling through texts from Amina, trying to figure out how the hell I could respond—the last one, from an hour ago: Either your dad took your phone or you’re dead—when I heard my parents’ bedroom door fly open and hit the wall.
I jerked upright. My dad pounded across the hall and my heart clawed its way to my throat and when he threw the door open I saw right away he wasn’t angry. He was terrified.
“Where’s the box?” he said.
“The box?”
“The box you took from the safe.” He was breathing too fast. “Give it to me.”
I reached under my bed, to where I’d stashed the cigar box, and held it out.
“Jesus H., Ivy, not that one—the golden box!”
“The gold—” I shook my head. “I left that in the safe. I didn’t even know it was a box. What’s in it?”
Something was balled up in his hand. He dropped it on the bed, fingers trembling. “Are you sure you didn’t take it out? You’re absolutely certain?”
“Yes. All I did was pick it up and put it back. I couldn’t even tell what it was, I thought it was solid metal…”
The longer I babbled, the eerier his silence. He was too pale, his skin drawn too tightly over his bones.
“The person you thought could’ve broken in. Describe her again.”
I did, watching his face for recognition and seeing none.
“Okay,” he said, when I was through. “I’ll keep—trying to reach your mother. And if Hank gets in touch, can you please tell him to call me back, for god’s sake?”
I didn’t reply. I was looking at what he’d dropped on the foot of my bed. Slowly I leaned forward to pick it up: the button-up work shirt I’d given to the pale stranger, by the creek. The one she was wearing when I tailed her home from the 7-Eleven.
“Where did you find this?”
My voice must’ve sounded normal enough, because a fractional smile skated over his face. “Floor of our closet. You must’ve dropped it when you were snooping. I don’t think you’re cut out for a life of crime, kid.”
The shirt smelled like sweat and fried food and, oddly, my mother’s perfume. I squeezed it in bloodless fingers. “Dad,” I whispered.
He was studying the cigar box sitting on the bed. “Ivy, do you mind if I…？”
I shook my head, more shudder than assent. Carefully he lifted the lid, laughing softly at what lay inside. The ring of wood, the faded theater ticket, the guitar pick. He touched a finger to the lock of red hair. Then he closed the box and clicked its latch back into place.
“You’re a good kid,” he told me. “This is all gonna be fine.”
That’s when I truly understood he couldn’t protect me. He wouldn’t even know how to try. His only defense against the darkness was comforting lies.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
* * *
So the girl was here for me.
That was the conclusion I’d reached. Knees drawn up, thumbnail in my mouth, staring at nothing until my eyes felt like swollen plum pits. She stole something from their closet, but she left my shirt. She broke into our house when I was alone, only to creep around taking bites out of my cookies. Like what she really wanted was to show me how close she could get.
Stay away from mirrors, Sharon had said. My belly bottomed out as I remembered that flash I’d seen after bleaching my hair, the girl’s pale face in the bathroom mirror instead of my own reflection. What if I hadn’t imagined it?
My dad came in one more time, around ten, to kiss me good night. He was still pretending everything would be fine, and I complied with a solid imitation of a person who wasn’t losing her mind. When he slipped away my brain returned to its obsessive loop, leaping from one discovery to the next, gliding over the darkness between. It all felt like puzzle pieces from different boxes.
There was something that wanted to break through. A question, maybe, or a memory, slithering along the edges of conscious thought. I fell asleep still reaching for it, and in dreams it tiptoed from its hiding place.