The Invasion of the Tearling

Of course, the house’s surveillance system was set up so that Greg could watch her in the nursery, even while he was at work. But Lily had taken care of that wrinkle early on by recording several days’ worth of innocuous footage–Lily knitting, napping, even staring longingly into the crib, as well as plenty of footage of the empty room–and looping it within the feed. Greg was not particularly computer-literate; in his parents’ house, everything had always been done for him by the nanny, the tutor, the bodyguards. Now, at work, he had a secretary who handled his entire life. But Lily knew something about computers, at least enough to alter the surveillance system. Maddy had been something of a hacker; in the last two years before she disappeared–was taken, Lily’s mind amended; this was a fact she was never allowed to forget inside her own head–Maddy had more or less lived in her room with the door closed, spending long hours on the computer. But sometimes, during weeks when Lily and Maddy were getting along, Maddy would show her interesting things, and this was one of them: how to cut into surveillance footage. If Security ever decided to monitor their surveillance system, Lily would need a new trick, but fortunately Greg’s job as a military liaison meant that he and Lily were respectable citizens, and so their house feeds were supposedly closed. Lily had a sneaking suspicion–confirmed the longer she got away with it–that Greg didn’t like to look at the nursery, not even on a monitor. If he did check up on her in this room, it was probably limited to a brief glance, certainly not long enough to connect anything he saw with earlier footage. So far, it had worked fine. Her time in the nursery belonged to her and no one else. Even in the past year, as Greg grew increasingly invasive of her few remaining privacies, this place was still safe.

Lily closed the door behind her and took the pills over to the secret place beneath the corner tile. Even if Greg ever did decide to come in here, Lily didn’t think he would be able to spot the loose tile, which lay perfectly flush with the wall. Over the years Lily had hidden plenty of contraband here: cash, painkillers, old paperback books. But nothing was as important as the pills, which Lily arranged in neat, careful stacks of three boxes each beneath the tile. She stared down at them, wondering for the hundredth time why she was so different from all of her friends, why she didn’t want to be a mother. Being childless was a failure; she heard this message constantly, from her friends, from the minister, from the government bulletins online (the tone of these had grown increasingly panicked in the past ten years, as the ratio of poor to rich had quadrupled). There were even tax incentives now, deductions for people above a certain income level who had multiple children. To the outward eye, Lily had failed at her most important task, but she could only dissemble the shame that her friends would have felt. Inside, she thanked God for the pills. She wasn’t ready to have children, and certainly not with Greg, not when he got worse all the time. The night last week … Lily had tried not to think of it since, but now the bubble in her mind popped, and all at once, for the first time, Lily found herself seriously considering a new life.

Considering escape.

Even Lily knew that the world was full of dark places to hide. She thought again of Cath Alcott, who had bundled her children into a car and simply vanished. Had Cath had a plan? Had she joined the separatists? Or had she reestablished herself somewhere as an ordinary citizen, with a new name and a new face? There were forgers and surgeons out there who would do such work.

But I have no money.

This was the real stumbling block. Money bought options, the ability to disappear. Lily could ask her mother for help, but Mom didn’t really have any money either; when Dad died, his company claimed he had breached his employment contract, and so there was no pension. Mom barely had enough to pay the property taxes on the house. But even if Mom had been rich, she didn’t want to hear about Lily’s problems with Greg. As far as Mom was concerned, Lily had made her own bed. She had plenty of friends in New Canaan, but no real friends. There was no one she could trust, no one who would help her with something like this, and she suddenly found herself hating Dr. Anna, hating her utterly for trying to upset the status quo. Lily didn’t need to peek over the horizon at another, better world that was far beyond her reach. This, right here, was the best possible outcome: to get her pills every year and not have to bring a child into this house.

“Lil!”

She started guiltily. Greg was home. The front door panel on the wall was blinking brightly, but she hadn’t noticed.

“Lil! Where are you?”

She shoved the tile back into position and stood up, hastily smoothing her skirt down over her hips. On her way out, she tapped the panel on the wall and was rewarded with the quiet, somehow comforting whirring of the house beginning to make dinner as she went down the stairs.

Greg had gone straight to the bar. This was another thing Lily had noticed lately: Greg used to drink only when something good had happened at work, but now it seemed to be every night, and his intake was increasing. They didn’t all turn into bad nights for Lily, but she couldn’t help noticing the correlation, the way Greg immediately went for the booze every night now, the way he drank as though he were trying to escape from something.

“How was your appointment?”

“Good. Dr. Davis said it’s looking better.”

“What’s looking better?” He came toward her, tumbler in one hand, and wrapped an arm around her waist.

“He thinks my body will respond well to something called Demiprene. It stimulates my ovaries.”

“To release eggs?”

“Yes.” The lies flowed glibly, well rehearsed, from Lily’s mouth. She had done her research two years ago, knowing that the time would come when Greg would demand real information about what the hell was wrong with her reproductive system. But his questions grew more pointed all the time, and Lily had begun to have the uneasy feeling that he was doing his own research now.

“I got good news today,” Greg remarked, and she relaxed a bit; there would be no real interrogation tonight.

“Really?”

“Ted said–well, hinted–that there’s a Senior Liaison spot opening up next year. Sam Ellis is retiring. Ted says I’m in line for it.”

“That’s good.”

Greg nodded, but his hands were already pouring another glass of scotch. Lily saw that something was troubling him, badly. “What’s wrong?”