He doesn’t look up as I head out of his bedroom and downstairs. He’ll be fine for at least another fifteen minutes. I grab my glass of wine from on top of the refrigerator. I poured it before we went upstairs so it’d be ready and waiting when I came down. I sip on the way to John’s office. He hasn’t been in his office in over six years, but I still think of it as his.
His study is big—much larger than mine—with bay windows overlooking the garden. Built-ins line two walls filled with all his books. His mahogany-colored desk is the commanding piece in the center of the room. It’s bulky and awkward, but he insisted on having it. All his favorite things are still on top. The blue antique-style lamp. His piles of paper. The open stapler that he was in the middle of refilling but never finished. It’s all untouched.
My daughter, Savannah, thinks it’s morbid. Like I’m keeping some weird shrine for him and I should redecorate the room, but I refuse. She says it’s creepy and that it’s long past due for me to move on, but she’s just like every other nineteen-year-old girl who thinks she’s a grown woman—she doesn’t know anything. But she thinks she does, just like I did when I was her age.
I take another big drink, then set the glass on John’s desk and slide open the doors on the entertainment center on the back wall with both hands. It’s huge and outdated, just like the flat-screen TV behind it. I grab the remote and press power. The hardest thing about the security system is this stupid remote, and if you screw it up, you can easily get locked out. Happened to me twice. I switch the aux to the right input, and six small screens fill the larger one. I stand close, eyeing each one for any sign of movement. I sweep along with the cameras from our driveway to the pool in the backyard and over to the side of the house, then back to the front of the house and around the garage.
Everything is in its place, but I don’t trust these cameras. The images are too dark and grainy. It’s so hard to see in some spots. What about behind the trash cans? Is that movement? I squint and lean closer, practically touching the screen. It’s nothing. Only a shadow. I need better cameras. This system is old. I never cared before. Now I do.
Just like I used to not care about the security code for the gun cabinet in the back of our closet in the master bedroom. John had his guns, and I had mine. His favorites were his .357 and an old Smith & Wesson that belonged to his grandfather. He was always adding to his collection, switching and upgrading, but I’ve had the same one since I was sixteen. A pretty pink pistol with a special grip that my daddy gave me on my birthday. Most girls my age got their first car for their sweet sixteen, but my daddy was special that way. John told me the digits for the cabinet years ago, but I never wrote them down, and I can’t find them anywhere in his office. The last time we talked about the guns was a few years before he died, when cars were getting broken into all over the city. He pulled out his Magnum and asked if he should sleep with it underneath his pillow. I laughed at him. Told him he was being paranoid. And he was.
But I’m not.
He’s out there.
Somewhere. That Monster that killed Annabelle. Mason and I call him that because that’s what he is. A filthy animal. A savage beast. My blood boils every time I think about him. It’s a combination of terror and rage. A blinding fury I’ve never felt before, and it sucks all the air from my lungs whenever it hits.
Is he watching us? Seeing what we’re doing? Who we’re talking to? Does he know we were at the police station again today? I wish we were still there. That’s where I feel the safest. It’s the only place he can’t hurt us. Not when they have guns. I couldn’t stop staring at Gunner’s slung on his hip when he brought me into the conference room. All I wanted to do was grab it.
The floor shakes above me as Mason stomps to the beat of the music upstairs. Eight more minutes of free time and then another long night. We’re both too keyed up to sleep. I might give him a sleeping pill if he doesn’t fall asleep by one. Too many nights without sleep isn’t good for him. Makes him act funny. We can’t have that. I’d take one, too, but one of us has to stay up, and that one of us is always me.
The first half of the night isn’t so bad. It’s when the house gets quiet after Mason finally settles that I can’t even sit down anywhere. I just pace the house with my Fitbit tracking every step. Over three miles last night. But then it starts getting later and later. Like real late. The stumbling-home-from-the-bar kind of late. That’s when my mind starts traveling places I don’t want it to go. That’s when Annabelle’s face plays tricks on me.
If only I hadn’t looked at her.
But I did. Mason screamed and I looked. But how could I not? I’ve never heard sounds like the ones that came out of Mason’s mouth as he crouched next to Annabelle. I looked before I thought not to because I never imagined what I’d find. Now I can’t get it out of me.
Her wide-open eyes paralyzed in a moment of fright. Blood wet her cheeks. Ropy red tendrils stuck to her eyelashes. Her mouth a half-frozen scream. All that’s seared into my brain in the same way we’re probably seared into That Monster’s.
A twig snaps outside, sending me flying to my feet. I race back over to the monitors. Nothing’s changed. It was probably just Hilary’s cat from around the block. She’s always getting out. It could be the cat, sure. It could. It could also be him, because if he knows who we are, then he knows where we live.
I need my gun. Somebody has to protect us from That Monster.
THEN
My favorite. This. After that.
This.
Hand so soft. Kind as she washes this dirty away.
My dirty.
Mama so clean. Kind. Love me. Smell that smell.
Don’t forget. That’s the moment that you keep. The one that you treasure.
I’d take this over ten million thats. Do I have a choice?
Someday. Someday Mama says.
I love Mama.
SIX
CASEY WALKER
I turn off the news as I finish cutting up Harper’s strawberries on the counter and hope she doesn’t notice. Our mornings, much like everything else, have to follow a specific routine, or she melts down. The WDYM morning show is always part of breakfast. I peek at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s spooning the last bite of Cheerios into her mouth, which means she’s close enough to finished that the news being off won’t matter. She’s probably already rehearsing her next step under her breath—get dressed.
I can’t stomach any media right now. They just keep interviewing residents, and everyone keeps saying the same things over and over again:
“We never thought it could happen to us.”
“Things like that don’t happen round here.”
Technically, Tuscaloosa is a city, but it’s really just an overgrown small town where everyone knows everybody else. That’s why people move here. Some people have never lived anywhere else. This is home for me. I’m a true southern girl, but of the less traditional variety. I was always more likely to be driving the pickup truck than I was to be riding in the passenger seat like most of my girlfriends. We grew up with Friday-night football games, home-cooked meals, and church on Sundays. Not much has changed since then. We like believing we’re safe, but if the mayor’s wife can die, then nobody is safe.