Tap-a-tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
Then what? What if all the bullets I had in the gun and in my pockets didn’t kill him? How far could I go? I walked to the kitchen and got a butcher knife from the drawer, the one he had used to chop veggies chef-style when he’d gone through his cooking obsession. I laid it on the counter. Plan B.
I could still see him from the kitchen, lips moving and knife tapping messages to me, or to someone, maybe to the house itself for all I knew. His left horn had fallen a couple of inches, making him look a little pitiful. I realized then that he was wearing lipstick. Bright red lipstick from Ivana’s collection. She wouldn’t be happy about that.
I wasn’t happy about it either. Most of all, I wasn’t happy with what he had made me face about myself. Ever since Hope was born, I could have guessed that I would kill for my kids if I had to, if I was backed into a corner. But I never imagined I would step over that line and want to kill, wish I could get away with it. Sure, I could tell myself it was still for a noble cause, not a cruel, cold-blooded desire without a grander purpose, but that didn’t make me feel all that much better.
The only thing that could was choosing not to do it.
The sun was setting behind him, a molten hell nowhere near as hot as the hell inside his own mind. I’m sorry, Cara, he had said about the schizophrenia. It wasn’t something he chose. And it was, without a doubt, the saddest thing I had watched in my life. A man stripped of logic and his family, left with only enough of his mind to know what he lost and that he still loved those missing things. Sad beyond words.
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t still shoot him if he got through my door.
He moved around to the kitchen window where Hope had seen him so many nights since the divorce. I wondered if that was where Jada had seen him this morning. Minutes later, he appeared in the dining-room window, back to his starting point. Ring-around-the-rosy.
He was trying the front door, turning the knob and shouldering against it, when blue lights flashed up the driveway, moving slower than I thought they should. Four officers approached while his knife tapped a final, frantic message in code. Karma felt warm in my hand, pointed at the floor, but ready, just in case. You never know what might happen. Anything was possible in this crazy world. Anything.
Through the long leaded-glass windows in the front door, I didn’t see him resist or threaten, but he may have. Maybe I wanted him to so they could take care of the problem for me, but I didn’t think hard on that. It was going too far, stepping across a dangerous line in my mind that I’d already rejected. They pushed him to the ground, shouting and making a lot of noise I couldn’t interpret. I imagined my mom there with me, holding me together. Without her, all my pieces would have surely flown apart and left the house through the smudged windows.
I saw him dragged away—it took all four of them—and heard their radios make buzzes, beeps, and fuzzy voices, and I waited for a gunshot that never came.
When an officer knocked on the door, shouting his name and mine, time found its weight again and jolted my heart forward so hard it hurt. I looked around for Hope, but she was gone, and I wondered if she had ever really been there or if shock had painted her at my side. My face felt like it was only made of eyes when I opened the door, Karma loaded, finger on the trigger, barrel pointed at the floor. I couldn’t feel the gun in my hand. Couldn’t even tell I had a hand. How had my eyes grown so large?
A redheaded officer took the gun and unloaded it, lips moving but no words coming out. Or maybe they were, but I wasn’t ears, I was only eyes. The calm I had been so sure was with me to stay flew right out the door and chased the blue lights of the first cruiser down my driveway.
I felt paralyzed right up until the officer tried to put his arm around me. The touch burned against my raw nerves, and I jumped back from him, every cell alert and coursing with adrenaline. I ran up the stairs to Hope’s room with Hershey on my heels. Something between a knock and a claw brought Drew’s face into the crack of the door, up near the top because he was crouched on the dresser they had pushed in front of it.
“Kids upstairs,” Officer Red said into his radio, and then “Jesus!” when I swung around, eyes wild and teeth bared like I could rip his throat out with them. I hadn’t even noticed him following me.
Don’t sneak up on a mama bear. Stay back. Stay where I can see you.
That’s just what Officer Red did, slipping back toward the stairs while I told the kids it was safe to come out.
Drew was slow to believe me. A police officer’s uniform might have reassured most kids, but mine had seen too much. No badge or restraining order had stopped a man from coming after us in demon horns. Hope and Jada talked Drew into pushing back the dresser and opening the door. He came out first, knife in hand. I could see that he was ready to use it, and I knew firsthand how difficult it was to come to terms with what you were capable of doing to another person to keep your family safe. And I knew that hugs and words couldn’t erase that knowledge or give him back a measure of innocence.
“You’re sure he’s gone?” he asked. Looking out one window and then another with no idea that he was circling the house from the inside in the same way Adam had from the outside.
I grabbed his arm and held him still. “Stop it. Listen to me.”
He did.
“They took him away in a police car. Probably to the state hospital?” I looked at the officer for confirmation, and he nodded. He had a thin red beard to match his hair. I hadn’t noticed before. I searched out his name tag. I couldn’t call him Red out loud. Hamm. You’ve got to be kidding me. Officer Hamm. No doubt the victim of an endless stream of pig jokes.
Drew snickered. He had seen it, too.
Jada tugged on my hand, needing reassurance. I hugged her hard enough to nearly crush her. “Too close!” she whined.
Yes, I thought, that was too close. Much too close for comfort.
“I’ll need to get a statement from you,” Hamm said, staring at me a beat too long.
I still had the impression that my eyes filled most of my face. The better to see you with. My ears were foggy, like everyone was speaking into a tin can, and my voice had gone small, overshadowed by my eyes. My head had started to pound and my back ached from the adrenal-gland workout. I looked away from Hamm and back at the kids, whose eyes were stretched and hollow, too. I walked past Hamm to the stairs, waving the kids after me.
When you fall off a horse, you get back on.
When your house becomes the scene of a horror movie, you reclaim it.