“Him!” she says insufficiently as she sinks low under the bedcovers and tosses them above her head. Maisie is hiding. Hiding from some man. A bad man that is coming after her and Nick. But Maisie knows nothing about bad men, or so I believe, and so I try to convince myself that it’s only make-believe, the hunters who killed Bambi’s mother or maybe Captain Hook coming after her and Nick in a dream. But as she says it again, wide-awake and far more terrified this time for it to be make-believe—the bad man is after us!—my mind makes up for Maisie’s lack of details, imagining a bad man trailing Nick and her down Harvey Road, and at this my heart begins to pound, my hands to sweat more than they are already sweating.
“Maisie,” I plead, as mollifying as I can, though inside I’m anything but relaxed. But Maisie is under the bedcovers now, and she is not speaking. When I try to touch her, she screams out, “Stop!” and then she goes silent, like some sort of toy whose batteries have just died. She’ll say nothing, though I ask and then I beg. And when the begging is ineffective, I find myself becoming angry. It’s out of desperation, only. The reason I become angry. There’s a desperate need to know what it is that Maisie’s prating about. What bad man? What does Maisie mean?
“If you tell me, Maisie, we can get donuts in the morning,” I say, with the promise of a Long John slathered in strawberry icing.
I promise other material things, as well—a new teddy bear, a hamster—hoping to lure her out of the pitch-black, suffocating world beneath those sheets. But that world beneath the sheets is also safe for Maisie, and so she won’t come.
By now, Felix has begun to scream. “Maisie,” I say again over the sound of Felix, trying to pry the covers from her hands. “What bad man?” I ask desperately, and it’s speculation only when I probe, “Was the bad man in a car?” and from under the covers I sense the nod of Maisie’s head and hear her tiny voice whisper, “Yes,” and at this I gasp.
A bad man. In a car. Following Maisie and Nick.
I stroke Maisie’s hair and force myself to take measured breaths, trying hard to remain calm as the world crumbles around me, and I find it harder and harder to breathe.
“The bad man,” Maisie blubbers again as I slip her teddy bear beneath the sheets and into her clammy hands, asking sedately, “Who, Maisie, who? What bad man?” though inside I feel anything but sedate. Who is the bad man that was following Nick and her? Who is the bad man that took my husband’s life?
And without sitting up in bed or sliding the covers from her face, she thrums, her voice masked by the density of the sheets, “The bad man is after us. He’s going to get us,” and with that she flies out from under the sheets like a rocket and into the master bath, where she makes haste of slamming closed and locking the door with so much zeal that a frame falls from the wall and smashes onto the floor, shattering into dozens of pieces.
NICK
BEFORE
There was no way I could have known that morning as I stood at the foot of our bed, watching Clara sleep, the way our lives would change. I stood there for longer than I planned to, staring at her as she lay on the bed sound asleep, completely transfixed by the movement of her eyes beneath their lids, the curve of her nose, the delicacy of her lips and hair. I listened to the sound of her breathing, flat, even breaths interrupted by the occasional gulp of air, the thin blue sheet pulled clear up to her neck, hiding our baby, so that it swelled with each breath.
I stood at the foot of the bed watching Clara sleep, wanting nothing more than to climb back into bed and spend the day wrapped up in each other as we used to do, to run my hands over the ballooning belly and spend hours trying to come up with a name for our baby boy.
There was no way I could have known, as I leaned over to plant a kiss on Clara’s forehead, that outside a storm was brewing, a supercell storm that would soon tear through our lives, and that all that unstable air moving around the atmosphere was waiting for us just outside the front door.
There was no way I could have known that I was running out of time.
Outside the bedroom door, Maisie stands, arms crossed across herself, her hair standing on end. She’s still half asleep, her eyes trying to adjust to the traces of light that come in through a hallway window. She rubs at her eyes. “Morning, Maisie,” I say in a whisper as I drop down to my knees and take her into my arms, this tiny little thing that collapses against me, tired and tuckered out. “How about we get you some breakfast and let Mommy sleep for a while?” I suggest, hoisting her into my arms and carrying her down the stairs, knowing how Clara’s nighttime sleep has been interrupted of late, always trammeled by her inability to find a comfortable position to sleep. For the last few weeks, the leg cramps have woken her in the middle of the night, either that or the baby kicking in earnest to get out. He’s got his days and his nights all mixed up, Clara said, though I find it hard to believe there’s some sort of timetable in utero, that the baby has any notion of when is night and when is day. But maybe.
I can’t do anything about the cramps or the kicking, but I can occupy Maisie for a while so that Clara can sleep.
I warm frozen waffles in the toaster oven and serve them to Maisie at the coffee table with a side of syrup. I brew my coffee—decaf, as if I am pregnant, too; my vow to Clara that she doesn’t have to suffer through this pregnancy alone—and pour Maisie juice. I turn on the TV for Maisie and set the kitchen timer for an hour. “Please, don’t wake Mommy until after two episodes of Max & Ruby or when the timer rings,” I say to her, adding, “Whichever comes first,” before planting a kiss on her forehead, too, one which is still waxy from sleep. “Did you hear me, Maisie?” I ask, and, “When can you wake Mommy?” just to be sure Maisie was listening and that she heard. Maisie is a smart girl—sometimes too smart for her own good—but she’s also four, eyes and ears lost to the cartoon bunnies that now fill our TV screen.
“When the timer rings,” she says, eyes not meeting mine. Harriet sits at the floor beside her feet, ever hopeful that Maisie will drop her waffles to the floor.
“Good girl.” I stuff my feet into a pair of shoes and find my car keys. “See you later, alligator,” I say, opening the garage door to leave.
“In a while, crocodile,” says Maisie, mouth stuffed full with food.
I make my way to the garage. I’m not halfway there when a text comes through on my phone, and I stop midstride to see who it is, groaning already because of course it’s bad news. Good news never arrives at 7:00 a.m. in the form of a text message.
Take your time, it says. Another cancellation. Wilsons flew the coop. —N
CLARA
Morning. A stay of execution for those who are grieving. The first few marks of sunlight appear in the darkened sky, bringing oxygen back to the stifled world and making it easier to breathe.
I wake on the floor beside the bathroom door, Felix spread lengthwise on my extended legs. The door to the bathroom, as I jiggle the glass knob for the eighteenth time, is locked. It’s an antique, a 1920s fluted crystal glass knob; we no longer have the key. Perhaps we never had the key, but this didn’t matter, not until Maisie took to locking herself on the wrong side of the door as she did last night when she cried out, The bad man is after us. He’s going to get us, before scurrying from bed.
She won’t come out.