Lily deflated with relief as she watched their tattered patio umbrella flap in the wind. “I think it was only a shadow, sweetie. A cloud or that old umbrella. It’s really blowing out there. Have you been having bad dreams again?”
He shook his head, eyes still locked on the window. But then he looked at her and shrugged. “A few, not many.”
“Were you having a nightmare tonight?”
Another shrug, which was a definite confirmation in tween language.
His nightmares had started the same night the police raided their house, looking for his dad. He’d had them every night for the first week; then they’d died down a bit. But when they’d been forced to leave their home, his bad dreams had returned with a vengeance for a whole year. Monsters coming to get him, monsters taking his dad, monsters coming for his mom too. Slowly, slowly, Everett had left them behind, stopped screaming for his father’s help, and eventually they’d gone altogether.
Or maybe he’d just become too embarrassed to tell her.
She kissed his head. “I’m going to go turn on the porch light. I’ll be one second. Are you okay?”
He nodded, but he still clutched his covers like a scared boy.
Lily circled out to the hallway and around to the sliding door near the kitchen to hit the light switch. The patio sprang into view, revealing a square of cement stalked only by the stray cat, who hunched in a corner, glaring right at her.
“Everett, I think it was that cat!” she called.
“It wasn’t!” he responded as she hurried back to his room.
“The cat’s sitting right outside.”
“It wasn’t the cat!” he snapped.
“Fine, but you only saw a shadow. Right?”
He looked a little calmer now, irritation with her distracting him from his bad dream.
She lowered his blinds tightly. “Better?”
He waited a moment before nodding, and she paused, feeling awful for him and not quite comforted herself. He wasn’t a little boy anymore, but he was still a boy and he was still her baby. “Want to bring your blankets to my bed?”
His second of hesitation revealed exactly how spooked he was, but he finally shook his head.
“We can make you a place on the floor.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Well, leave your door open at least. It gets warm in here, and that helps the circulation.” But then she noticed the extra blankets piled on top of him. “Everett, why was the window open? It’s cold tonight.” She glanced at the blinds, then back to him. “Everett. The cat?”
“What?” he snapped. “She’s nice.”
“You know we’re not allowed to have pets.”
“She doesn’t live here! And she’s good for keeping rats and mice out of the units. You know that, Mom.”
“Everett . . .” She sighed, shaking her head, but she couldn’t bring herself to scold him when he looked so much the scared little boy hiding under the covers. “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in my room tonight? We could put on a podcast for a while. Something funny.”
“I’m okay,” he said, and he did look better. But then his eyes slid away from hers, and his lips parted and closed a couple of times before he spoke. “Mom . . . are the police asking you about Dad again?”
Damn it. He’d heard her on the phone with Detective Mendelson, and she’d been too cowardly to talk to him about it. Now he was having nightmares again? It was her own fault. She shouldn’t have left him alone with his thoughts so he could worry over them.
“Sweetie, it’s okay. Unfortunately, the police won’t ever stop looking for your dad. He has to go to trial and have his day in court, even if he doesn’t want to. The authorities think I know where he is, and they like to check in and ask every once in a while.”
“So everything is okay?”
“Everything’s fine. The police can ask me about your dad all day long. That’s their job, and it’s okay. You understand?”
He nodded, the smooth skin of his forehead still creased, but he tugged the covers up a bit as if he were ready to settle back down.
“You’re sure you don’t want to sleep in my room?”
When he shook his head, she gave him a kiss and tucked him in tightly, but she left his door open and turned on the bathroom light for good measure. He didn’t object.
After checking all the locks and turning off the rest of the lights, she was shocked to realize it was only a few minutes past midnight. She felt so exhausted and aching with adrenaline that she’d been sure it was three in the morning.
She poked her head into Everett’s room one last time, but he’d already put in his earbuds and closed his eyes.
Of course Lily was wide awake when she climbed back into bed. For one terrible moment she’d been convinced someone was in Everett’s room. Maybe a bogeyman or maybe Jones.
Climbing out of bed again, she padded to the living room and through to the office to review the video. It wasn’t until that moment she realized none of the cameras pointed at their patio. Of course they didn’t. No one wanted their employer watching them every day and peering into their windows. But she cycled through all the exterior cameras and saw nothing. Headlights had come down the road around ten, but they hadn’t gotten close enough to reveal anything. It had probably been that damn cop spying on her.
Lily sighed and turned off the monitor.
It was only the ghost of Jones again. Everett had been thinking about the phone call, and it had been a trigger for him. He wasn’t dealing with new nightmares; he was dealing with old ones. Her poor baby.
Fucking Jones. She hated him so much. And she hated that she hated him, because that meant she still felt something, when she wished he was just a blank void inside her. A vacuum in her heart that would eventually seal itself closed.
All that emotional energy for a man who hadn’t ever loved her. He couldn’t have.
It had felt real, but so had his steady-provider routine. It had all felt real, so one thing must have been as fake as the other. She’d obviously been married to some kind of sociopath.
Lily knew she’d never have another normal romantic relationship after what he’d done. Never. She couldn’t even have a normal friendship.
Jones had been her one chance, her best attempt at creating the family she’d wanted back. A mother, a father, a child, a house, all of it planted smack dab in the middle of the hometown she’d been dragged out of at age ten. She was a textbook case of family dysfunction, come to life and lurching around the countryside like a tragic monster.
Or she was just tired and being melodramatic because she was worried about Everett.
Lily sighed, ordered herself to get her shit together, and checked all the apartment locks one last time. When she reached the patio door, she remembered the sawed-off broomstick that had been there when she moved in. She dug around in the pantry until she found it, then dropped it into the track of the door as an extra precaution. Now that she knew the camera system didn’t have quite the all-seeing eye she’d thought, she felt more vulnerable.
She tiptoed to Everett’s room to look in, and he seemed to be sound asleep. She wished he’d agreed to at least sleep in her room so she could reach down to the floor and smooth a hand over his warm head, for her own comfort if not his. He’d been ten before he’d stopped the occasional nighttime snuggles, and she’d mourned the change. But she supposed she should be proud he’d grown braver. She’d thought herself wise and independent at his age too.
Wiser than her own mother, certainly.
For all the stability in Lily’s life until age ten, her later childhood had spun into chaos. The modest child support payments had helped financially, but nothing had been effective at pulling her mom back from her emotional tailspin. She’d been angry and ranting and weeping at first. Then she’d been single-mindedly determined to show up her ex-husband. There’d been an endless march of new boyfriends and all the trouble they brought along, interspersed by the occasional volatile marriage, and always, always spiced with way too much drinking.