Ryan waiting for me as I drove Cole and Emma to school. The four of us like a battle shield—a protection in numbers, for each of us. Witnesses at school, and safety in the exposure.
“Wait, he fell a car behind,” she said, craning her neck. “The universe is going to collapse.”
I was trying to cut Emma some slack, because I had, effectively, replaced her in the car hierarchy. That used to be me back there, with her up front beside Cole. Now I had usurped Cole, and he was riding shotgun, and she was relegated to the back, out of the loop.
I thought of Emma, and people like Emma, completely unaware of all the dangers surrounding them. I was sucking her in, and she didn’t even realize it. She was in danger just by sitting in this car, with me.
Ryan met us beside the car in the school parking lot, leaning down to brush his lips against mine as Emma mock-gagged behind us. He slid an arm behind my waist, and I decided I loved the new routines we were forming. Or better yet: the surprises. They felt fresh and right and mine, and I wanted them, the things I wasn’t expecting.
Another day when I tried to lose myself in moments like this, before reality came slamming back.
Another day when I looked over my shoulder as we walked inside together, wondering—but seeing nothing.
Another day when I started to fear not the shadows, but their absence instead.
Ryan and I walked to math class together, his arm around my waist, and I wanted this, I wanted this to be my new normal.
But the dangerous truth was that I also did not want the shadows to leave. If they disappeared, she would go with them. When I was safe, she’d be gone for good.
The fears were a familiar comfort. They were a reminder of who we were, and who we had been, and that we existed—and continued to exist. Who was I without them?
“So, I was thinking,” Ryan said.
“What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about this weekend, and whether I could take you out, except by take you out I mean have you over, just so we’re clear.”
Because taking me out might not be safe. Because he needed to keep me hidden away, too.
“Don’t you have work?” I responded, feeling like I was watching the conversation play out in front of me, my mind somewhere else.
“They want me to take some time off, after everything. Normally I’d complain, but I’m choosing to see the positive here.”
I nodded, and he smiled, leaning closer. “Yeah?” he said.
Then Mr. Graham poked his head out of the room and said, “Care to join us?” and we followed him in.
—
I got the message in the middle of class, feeling my phone vibrate in my bag. I asked to use the bathroom, and took my bag with me when I left. The message was from Jan. The police had called and had finished their processing at my house.
The house was mine again.
She said she’d come home early and meet us at her place, and then she’d take me over, for anything I still needed.
But I thought of what the police had said: that there was something more that my mother had taken. Where else would she go? The house was her entire world. The house would have all the answers.
And if someone was out there, watching and waiting, it was possible—no, more than possible—that I wouldn’t be the only one looking for it.
I could not be collateral anymore. I would not be used against my mother. There was something in that house that they would eventually be back for, and I had to get it first—before they found it and disappeared for good. I could bring it to the police, as proof. I could convince them my mother had been taken. They could use whatever it was to lure them back. They could find her.
—
I left Ryan after math, kissing him in the hall, even though people were passing and everyone saw. Even though Mr. Graham cleared his throat and told us to move along. “See you at lunch,” Ryan said.
“See you,” I said, and I turned around, biting my cheek so he wouldn’t see the lie.
I hoped he would forgive me for it.
I hoped this was the right choice. That keeping this to myself was the best way. That some secrets were meant to be kept, and some lies were the safest options. Because the more I stripped away from my mother’s lies, the more truly dangerous the world became.
—
I had never been alone in Cole’s car, and it felt too big, too wide, too silent and empty and cold. The day was gray, the sky overcast and the clouds descending, the woods covered in a light fog that turned everything muted and dull. The cool air sharpened my senses.
There were too many cars in the lot, too many possible eyes. I started to drive, and the fears set in. Would someone try to run me off the road? Were they following, right this second? There were too many unknowns, too many possibilities, and I kept my phone in the cup holder, as a comfort.
I caught glimpses of sky and trees in the rearview mirror, the shadow of something following—but when I looked closely, there was nothing there. Just wisps of fog and shadowed curves. I had to believe that the unexpected would work in my favor. That Eli was not watching while I was supposedly in class. That he’d gotten what he needed in the form of a photo, two days before.
I was supposed to be accounted for until three p.m., and this wasn’t even my car. Still, I couldn’t shake the fear that there were eyes following, eyes everywhere.
There was no familiar comfort in pulling into my neighborhood. Nothing that promised home and safe. Instead, there was only the unknown, a shiver working its way to the surface. I paused at the entrance to our driveway, heard my own heartbeat echoing inside my head. There were no cars—nothing I could see down the road, or in the rearview mirror. But the police were gone. And now it was just me and the house, everything that had happened, and everything that might.
I drove past the entrance, instead parking at the start of Annika’s driveway. Out of sight of both her house and the road. Outside, the breeze was turning stronger, the leaves rustling up above, a few falling to the earth around my feet. I stood outside the car and listened. Nothing but the wind and the leaves echoed back.
Just like that night when I heard Ryan’s Jeep idling in my driveway, I inched down the side of my road, preventing the noise of my feet kicking up gravel. I felt, for once, like the eyes in the woods instead, hidden inside the fog. The things my mother would look for from behind the safety of the tinted windows.
I slipped into the trees, just in sight of the front door, and watched. I listened, but heard nothing. No cars, no voices, no presence. It was just me and the trees, and the emptiness.
To be sure, I circled the house on foot, tracing a path between the stone wall and black iron gates.
I wrapped my hands around the bars of the gate around back, but heard a noise in the woods—a snapping of a branch, like a footstep—and I froze. I stared into the woods until a small animal darted out of sight. The hinges cried in the breeze, unlocked and unlatched, as I pushed them open.
The house beyond was dark, but the web of cracks where the bullet had lodged stood out in the otherwise smooth surface. I cupped my hands over my eyes and leaned in close, but the curtains were pulled shut. I held my ear to the glass instead, listening for movement. I didn’t let myself in through the back door until I was convinced I was alone.
The scent overwhelmed me as soon as I stepped inside the kitchen. The hazy smoke was gone—the house had been cleaned. Instead, the scent of industrial cleanser filled the room, and my stomach rolled with nausea. An instinct. Nothing more. Or maybe it was something else: that I was standing in the kitchen of what had been my house just a few days earlier, and now we had been stripped from its surface.
All I felt was the emptiness.