“It’s a new phone,” she lies. “Can you call her?”
The man shakes his head as if disappointed in the youth of today. He goes back into his guardhouse and picks up a phone, his eyes glued to Ella as he dials. For a long moment, nothing happens. He doesn’t speak. Then he hangs up the phone and walks back.
“No answer. Why don’t you try coming back in the morning?”
Tears prick at the corners of Ella’s eyes, and although normally she would find that inconvenient and embarrassing, now she’s grasping at straws. Let him see how scared and upset she is. Let him look in the eyes of a crying kid who wants to see her grandmother and still not let her through.
“Please. My parents are in quarantine and I’m living with my grandmother and my baby sister is in there and she needs me and I just ran out to get my medicine and I really, really need to get back. Please.”
The man sighs and rubs his head as if he had his pity gland removed and she makes the scar itch. He stands on the curb, just out of striking distance, the holstered gun and his crotch at her eye level.
“Look, kid. That’s a sad story. It is. Lots of sad stories going around these days. But my job is to keep out people who don’t belong.” He crosses his arms and takes in her face, her body, her car. “And you don’t belong. I see a kid in a beat-up car wearing a black hoodie who’s got a sob story, I see someone trying to lie their way into a much nicer neighborhood than they can afford, I assume they’re about to do a B and E.”
“A…what?”
“Burglary.”
He tucks his fat thumbs through his belt loops, one by the gun and one by a knife, and rocks back on his heels like this is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, having some little smack of power over a terrified girl.
“So if you really think your grandma is in there, you get in touch with her and tell her to put you on the list, or else you stay out there where you belong.”
Ella is full-on crying now, her throat a raw ache. She has to get through. She has to. Brooklyn is in there, and Brooklyn needs her. She’s all that Brooklyn has left. The thought of her little sister falling out of bed and waking up alone in the dark after a nightmare, calling for her big sister and getting no answer—it makes her hands go to fists and her whole body glow red hot with impotent fury.
“Let me in,” she growls.
The guy sneers as if her answer proves his point.
She doesn’t belong in there.
“Or else what?” He snorts. “Get the hell out of here, kid.”
When he saunters back to his hut, he picks up his phone and holds a threatening finger to it. Who’s he going to call—the police?
It doesn’t matter.
He’s not letting her in.
She uses the turnaround, slowly, tires crunching over the expensive stone. With her car facing the intersection, she doesn’t know where to go.
She’ll come talk to Homer in the morning. He’ll let her through. He knows her.
Until then, she has to find somewhere safe to spend the night.
But there is nowhere safe. Not anymore.
26.
Patricia has a prescription to help her sleep, so she barely has time to worry before she falls insensate. This house is a fortress—she’s made sure of that. She had every name but hers struck from the list to get into the neighborhood, which means neither Chelsea nor David can get in without her say-so, and neither can Randall or his squirrelly secretary. He hasn’t contacted her at all, even though he said he would send Diane over. For now, this place and its contents are hers, and she’ll protect it with every resource at her service. That’s how she spent the first forty years of her life, and it comes back as easily as riding a bicycle. Her sleep is deep and dreamless.
Until she jerks awake in the dark, unsure of where she is or what’s happening. There was some sort of loud noise.
“Nana? Nana!”
Patricia Lane is not a woman who likes to be woken up. She prefers to set the terms of her days, and even if everything else is out of control, there is no reason on God’s green earth that a small child should be standing outside her locked door, knocking and screeching like a dying cat.
She stretches and stands, resenting every ping and pop that reminds her that her body is no longer youthful and spry. With exaggerated care, she walks to the door, her room barely lit by the sunlight limning her heavy-duty curtains. She unlocks the door, and there is Brooklyn, her face tearstained and her eyes frantic. Patricia raises her eyebrows.
“Brooklyn, this is not ladylike behavior.”
“But Nana!” Brooklyn’s lower lip trembles, and she lurches forward and latches her arms around Patricia’s hips like a lamprey, the child’s face buried uncomfortably in the crotch of her silk pajamas. “Ella is gone. I had a nightmare, and I woke up, and she wasn’t there, and she’s not anywhere!” This last sentence ends in a wail that goes on and on. Good Lord. Does the child not breathe? Has no one ever taught her to…not cry?
Chelsea was a brat, but she was never this needy. Patricia has always believed that children thrive with clear rules and consequences, and that too much hugging and coddling will just make them weak and soft. She always kept Chelsea at arm’s length for this reason and wasn’t afraid to lash her with words or a wooden spoon if she didn’t immediately toe the line. For all her faults, Chelsea understood how to take care of herself at this age, and it’s clear she didn’t pass that gift on to her youngest daughter.
Patricia pats the child’s head as if she were a dog and gently pries her away until Brooklyn is standing on her own in a too-small nightgown with garish horses on it.
“Have you checked the restrooms, or outside?”
Brooklyn looks at her like she’s speaking another language. “No?”
“Well, I think you should do all of your research before resorting to waking people up before dawn.”
“It’s after seven.”
Patricia shakes her head. “Don’t talk back.”
“I wasn’t talking back! I was telling you what time it is.”
Patricia pauses, makes eye contact. “You’re still talking back.”
Brooklyn’s mouth is open, her hands in fists. She looks angry and confused, and Patricia wonders what Chelsea was so busy doing when she should’ve been teaching her child how to respect adults. Not working, obviously. Not cleaning.
Just being a disappointment.
Which is why Brooklyn has not accurately assessed the situation and wisely chosen silence.