—Really. Dottie and I aren’t doing anything. You go do your job in the mountains and Lydia will stay the night with us. We’ll make popcorn and cocoa, then tomorrow morning I’ll bring them around here. What time’s good?
Lydia had never spent the night away from home, and the thought of her first time being under Carol’s roof felt too much like turning over the reins to forces he couldn’t control.
—I don’t think so, Tomas said, looking at his watch, as if his reasons were trapped behind its scratchy face.
—It’s up to you, O’Toole said. But just know it’s no big deal for Dottie and me. I’m sure Carol’s got some extra PJs and a toothbrush she can borrow.
—Ewww, the girls chimed.
Tomas tried to come up with a meaningful response, but even to himself he sounded like an uptight weenie, especially with the girls rolling their eyes and O’Toole shushing them for their disrespect. And so with the smell of snow in the air and headlights beginning to pierce the gloom outside, Tomas conceded. Lydia could spend the night at Carol’s.
—Come around in the morning and you can help me with story time. Deal?
—deal!
Lydia barely even hugged him before following Carol and Mr. O’Toole out the library doors. Tomas stood at the window and watched the girls running across the snowy parking lot and through the pluming exhaust of O’Toole’s yellow truck. As their taillights disappeared into the rising dusk, he thought of Dottie tucking in his daughter on this cold night, kissing her on the forehead, and with an empty heart he went in search of the Bookmobile’s keys—with no idea of the darkness the night would bring.
That evening at dinner, Lydia could not stop staring at Carol’s family. While Mrs. O’Toole scooped out plates of macaroni-and-hot-dog casserole, Mr. O’Toole gave the two girls their first sip of beer—straight from his Coors can at the table—and let them eat cold marshmallows with their dinner. Mrs. O’Toole teased him about leaving his plumbing tools all over the house, so he made a big show of dragging his toolbox off the kitchen counter and putting it on the small back porch, and when he came in he sprinkled fresh snow on the girls’ heads and laughed like a goof. For all the uneasiness Lydia felt sitting at their table—Mr. O’Toole releasing little beer burps, then winking at Lydia and Carol; Mrs. O’Toole folding and unfolding her napkin—she recognized a certain fullness in their home, in their balance as a family.
Mrs. O’Toole was especially mesmerizing. Throughout the whole dinner, as Carol yammered on about their night’s plans, Lydia couldn’t keep her eyes off Dottie—the swirling orange shine of her hair, the slight chip in her front tooth, the rings she kept twisting on her fingers—maybe because it was impossible to avoid imagining what she would be like as a mom. All throughout Carol’s house, Lydia noticed details that were different from her own, like the glittery pinecone candleholder on the shelf, and the way their orange tablecloth matched the orange flowers in the wallpaper and the orange swirls in the countertops and even the orange yarn of the God’s Eye on the wall. A mother’s touch.
The night evolved into dirty dishes and television and ice cream, and as bedtime approached, the heavy snow that had been dropping on Denver showed no signs of letting up. Lydia forgot about Mr. and Mrs. O’Toole altogether as she and Carol shoved aside the coffee table and other furniture and set up a fort of blankets and cushions around the couch, smack-dab in the center of the living room. When it got late they rolled out their sleeping bags inside the fort and fluffed up their pillows. With flashlights in hand they listened to Carol’s parents murmuring in their bedroom down the hall and falling gradually to sleep. They listened to the snow and wind swelling against the front door and living room windows. Then the girls listened to each other. Inside their warm fort they giggled about the time Lydia had seen Raj’s wiener falling out of his soccer shorts, looking like a plucked brown duckling, and they read for a while from Carol’s book of scary stories, and soon they decided it was time to tell their own stories—about magic bathtubs and a drain that sucked children through its silver pipes and led them to a world of silver manholes and silver clouds and silver homes—
But their stories were interrupted when the back door swung open and banged hard into the kitchen wall. Back doors always banged like that, except it was after midnight and the door crashed with enough force to strum their ribs a room away. Both girls froze. Lydia wondered if this was some kind of a mean trick Mr. O’Toole was playing, but she could still hear his droning snores at the end of the hallway so she knew it wasn’t him. Inside the fort Carol grabbed the flashlights and clicked them off.
—Shhh! she quickly hissed.
Lydia and Carol froze beneath the sagging blankets as someone unknown closed the back door and walked through the kitchen. Into the living room. Mrs. O’Toole had left the hallway light on so that Lydia could find the bathroom if she needed it but the man out there slapped at the switch, turning off the only light. The darkness that followed was immense, but Lydia still had seen, through the slit in the fort:
A white latex glove, tight around a hairy man-hand. In the glove a hammer.
The man out there was gripping a hammer, but Lydia didn’t fully register this until later, when the negative space that the hammer had occupied was filled in by her memory: a wood-handled hammer, claw and head painted industrial black. It fit his perfect grip.
The rest of it happened slowly. The Hammerman stepped into the hallway and toward Mr. and Mrs. O’Toole’s bedroom. Inside the fort, Carol gripped Lydia’s wrist tightly for what seemed like hours, then abruptly let go. By the time Lydia reached out to hug her, nothing was there but a fluttering blanket. From her spot she couldn’t see a thing but her ears splashed sights through her mind. She could hear Carol’s knees scrabbling over the carpet and into the hallway and she could hear Carol screaming Daddy Daddy Daddy! The Hammerman spun around and his back collided with the wall, as if he’d momentarily lost his balance. Glass popped and a framed family portrait slid down and shattered on the carpet.
For the briefest moment the house went silent. Until Carol screamed again, and in between she seemed to be struggling for air, pivoting in the hallway, scampering to get away. The Hammerman quickly found his footing and the sounds that followed would follow forever: the man’s thick boots trailing Carol and Carol’s screams and Carol’s screams extinguished.
An egg dropped. Another egg dropped. Another.