She was pulled back into the house and her mother shut the door and twisted the lock. “We can’t go out there,” her mother said. She looked scared and her breath was fast and shallow.
Holding hands, they moved back through the living room and the dining room and into the kitchen. “I’m really hungry,” the girl said, itching to snatch a banana from the countertop. Her mother opened a cupboard filled with cans of soup and beans and corn. She opened another that held boxes of cereal and crackers and cookies.
“We can’t take too much,” her mother said, scanning the choices. “If he notices anything missing, he’ll know that we were up here.” She hesitated but settled on two cans of soup and an orange and an apple from the refrigerator.
“Let’s go,” her mother said. “He could come home at any time.” The girl reached for the knob on the basement door but her mother didn’t follow. She stopped at the telephone affixed to the kitchen wall. The girl watched as, with trembling hands, her mother lifted the receiver, placed it to her ear, and began to press numbers.
The girl wanted to ask who she was calling. They didn’t have a phone downstairs, she had seen one only on television, but her mother seemed to know what she was doing. A soft trill came from the phone and then a woman’s voice. “Hello?” she said. “Hello?”
A deep sadness settled onto her mother’s face and she quietly hung up the phone. Carrying their small stash of food, they moved through the basement door, her mother pausing to engage the lock. They walked downward, and at the bottom, her mother sat on the bottom step and began to cry. The girl sat at her feet.
When her mother finally stopped weeping, she wiped at her eyes and said, “Don’t tell your dad about this, okay? It will be our little secret.”
The girl liked the idea of having a secret with her mother, so she nodded, and they pinky promised. But two questions remained on her tongue, unasked. Why hadn’t they ever gone outside before? And what was stopping them from doing it again?
27
Present Day
So the woman and the boy were running from an abusive man. It made sense. Fleeing in the middle of a blizzard, her desperation to stay hidden, her paranoia. “The police can help you,” Wylie said sitting down across from them. “Once the storm stops, we’ll go to the sheriff.”
“No,” the woman said, shifting in her seat painfully. “You don’t understand. He’s going to come for us. You don’t know what he’s like.”
Wylie couldn’t disagree. She didn’t know what this woman had gone through, what kind of man she was married to. Her ex, for all his faults, wasn’t an abusive man. Just a stubborn, self-absorbed jerk.
Wylie, in the course of researching her books, had come across some of the most possessive, abusive spouses and partners out there. No, Wylie didn’t know what this woman had endured in her relationship, but she could empathize.
“Why don’t you tell me your names? Tell me his name?” Wylie asked. “So when the storm lets up, I can go with you to the police and they can help keep you safe.”
“I can’t.” The woman shook her head. “I can’t say anything. Not until we get far away from here.”
“You’ve got to trust someone, sometime,” Wylie said in exasperation. “Why won’t you trust me?”
The woman got to her feet. “Come on,” she said to her child. “We’re going.”
Wylie laughed but then saw that the woman was serious. “Where do you think you are going?” Wylie asked incredulously. “Your truck went up in flames, you’re injured, and you think you’re going to drag your little boy out into this storm? No, way.”
“I’m not a boy,” came a small, defiant voice.
“What?” Wylie asked, looking at the child. “What did you say?”
“Shhh,” the woman said, glaring at the child. “Don’t talk.”
“I’m a girl,” the child repeated more forcefully, running a hand over her shorn head.
Wylie was dumbstruck. She had been working under the assumption that she had found a little boy lying in her front yard.
“What’s your name?” Wylie asked. The girl looked about to speak but her mother cut her off.
“Don’t tell her. I mean it,” the woman said fiercely, tears springing to her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, leaning into her mother. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you see now?” the woman asked. “Do you think I would cut my daughter’s hair like that, just because I wanted to leave my husband? Do you think this is just some custody battle that got out of hand?” The woman was yelling now. “If he finds us, he will kill us.” She paused, trying to gather herself. “Or worse. He’ll take us back home.” The woman pulled up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. A wreath of scabs encircled each wrist.