I never saw their bodies. The police said I wouldn’t want to.
It turned out my parents had far less money than they pretended to, so I came home to a house buried in mortgages and just enough money to pay an estate lawyer to settle everything and get rid of it. My parents weren’t even who I thought they were; they were frauds. They couldn’t afford to live in Hidden Oaks; they just pretended they could. I had no family left and didn’t know what one was.
Millicent built ours. I say it was her because it couldn’t have been me. I had no idea how to build a home or even how to get everyone together for a meal. She did. The first time Rory sat in a high chair, she pushed him up to the table, and we’ve been having meals together ever since. Despite the rising complaints from our growing kids, we still eat together.
When Millicent was pregnant with Jenna, she created our family rules. I called them Millicent’s Commandments.
Breakfast and dinner together, always.
No toys or phones at the table.
Allowances must be earned by doing chores around the house.
We will have movie night once a week.
Sugar will be limited to fruit, not fruit juice, and special occasions.
All food will be organic, as money allows.
Physical activity and exercise are encouraged. No, they’re mandatory.
Homework must be done before TV or video games.
The list made me laugh. She glared at me when I did laugh, though, so I stopped. By then, I knew the difference between when she was pretending to be mad and when her anger was genuine.
One by one, Millicent instituted her rules. Instead of turning the house into a prison, she gave the family structure. Both our kids play sports. They aren’t given money unless they work for it. We all sit down and watch a movie together once a week. They eat mostly organic and very few sugary foods. Their homework is always done by the time I get home from work. This is all because of Millicent.
The same Millicent who kept Lindsay alive for a year while doing god knows what to her.
I still cannot sleep. I get up and check on the kids. Rory is spread out on his bed, the covers thrown everywhere. When he turned fourteen, he no longer wanted dinosaurs painted on the walls. We redid the room, repainted it, refinished the furniture, and now it has one dark wall and three beige ones, a smattering of rock band posters, a dark stain on all the wooden furniture, and blackout curtains for when he sleeps. It looks like a child’s idea of an adult room. My son is becoming a teenager.
Jenna’s room is still orange. She has been obsessed with the color almost since birth. I think it comes from the color of Millicent’s hair. Jenna’s hair is like mine, dark brown with no sign of red. She has posters of female soccer players on her walls, along with a few musical groups and a male actor or two. I don’t know who they are, but whenever they are on TV, Jenna and her friends squeal. Now that she has reached the mature age of thirteen, all her dolls have been stuffed into her closet. She is into fashion, jewelry, and makeup she is not allowed to wear yet, along with a few stuffed animals and video games.
I walk around the house, checking all the doors and windows. I even go into the garage, looking for signs of rodents or bugs or water damage. I go out into the backyard and check the side gate. I do the same in the front yard, and then I go around the house again, relocking all the doors.
Millicent used to do this, especially after Rory was born. We were living in the run-down rental, and every night she walked around locking all the doors and windows. She would sit down for a few minutes, then get up and do it all over again.
“This isn’t a dangerous neighborhood,” I told her. “No one is going to break in.”
“I know.” She got up again.
Eventually, I decided to follow her. I fell in lockstep behind her and mimicked every move she made. First, I got the glare, the real one.
When I still didn’t stop, she slapped me.
“You’re not funny,” she said.
I was too stunned to speak. I had never been slapped by a woman. I hadn’t even been spanked, not even playfully. But since I had just mocked my wife, I threw up my hands and apologized.
“You’re only sorry because you got slapped,” Millicent said. She whipped around, went into the bedroom, and locked the door.
I spent the night thinking she was going to leave me. She was going to take my son and just go, because I had ruined everything. Extreme, yes. But Millicent does not put up with shit, period. Once, when we were dating, I said I would call her at a certain time, and I didn’t. She didn’t speak to me for more than a week. Wouldn’t even pick up the phone.
She came back to me that time. But I had no doubt that if I pissed Millicent off enough, she would just leave. And one time she did.
Rory was one and a half, Jenna was six months old, and Millicent and I spent all day, every day, juggling the kids and our jobs. One day, I woke up, exhausted again, and realized I was twenty-seven years old with a wife, two kids, and a brand-new mortgage.
All I wanted was a break. A temporary reprieve from all that responsibility. I went out with the guys, and I got so drunk they had to carry me into the house. When I woke up the next day, Millicent was gone.
She did not answer her phone. She was not at her office. Her parents said she was not with them. Millicent had only a few close friends, and none had heard from her. She had vanished, and she had taken my kids with her.
After three or four days, I was calling her phone every hour. I e-mailed, I texted, I became the most insane version of myself I had ever been. It wasn’t because I was worried about her. I knew she was fine, and I knew my children were fine. I went crazy because I thought she, they, were gone forever.
Eight days went by. Then she was back.
I had fallen asleep late, sprawled out on the unmade bed littered with pizza boxes and assorted plates, cups and random food packages. I woke up to a garbage-free bed and the smell of pancakes.
Millicent was in the kitchen, making breakfast. Rory was at the table, in his high chair, and Jenna was in her bassinet. Millicent turned to me and smiled. It was real.
“Perfect timing,” she said. “Breakfast is just about ready.”
I ran over to Rory and picked him up, holding him high in the air until he squealed. I kissed Jenna, who stared up at me with her dark eyes. I sat down at the table, afraid to speak. Afraid I was in a dream, and I didn’t want to wake up.
Millicent brought a full stack of pancakes over to the table. As she set them down, she leaned in close, so that her mouth was right next to my ear, and she whispered: “We won’t come back a second time.”
I have spent our entire marriage with no choice but to believe her. Yet I still slept with Petra.
And the other one.
Eight
When I get home from work, Millicent and the kids are there. Rory is lying on the couch, playing a video game. Millicent is standing over him, hands on hips, her face hard-set. Behind her, Jenna is moving her phone back and forth, trying to take a selfie in front of the window. The TV screen casts a glow over all of them. For a second, they are frozen, a portrait of modern life.
Millicent’s glare shifts from Rory to me. Her eyes are the darkest of green.
“Do you know,” she says, “what our son did today?”
Rory’s baseball cap is pulled down low over his eyes and face. It doesn’t completely hide his smirk.
“What did our son do today?” I ask.
“Tell your father what you did.”
Jenna answers for him. “He cheated on a test with his phone.”
“Go to your room,” Millicent says.
My daughter walks out. She giggles all the way up the stairs and slams her bedroom door.
“Rory,” I say, “what happened?”
Silence.
“Answer your father.”
I do not like it when Millicent tells our son how to act toward me, but I say nothing.