Page 69 of In a Haze

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Only one way to find out.” He turns the van back on and I start looking around the parking lot, hoping in the few seconds we were distracted that the psychiatrist didn’t already arrive.

When Joe approaches the garage door again, he stops and then holds the card out of the window toward the post. A little red light changes to green and beeps loudly before the door begins its journey upward.

As he drives the van back into that manmade cave, I feel a little claustrophobic. I didnotwant to come back here. When I hear stirring behind us, I turn. “He’s awake.”

Joe stops the van and turns. “Where do you usually meet your contact at the institute?” When Don doesn’t say a word, Joe repeats himself. Don remains silent, but he’s glaring at me, trying to make it look like he’s not struggling against the makeshift ropes. Joe puts the van in park and gets out of the seat. Ducking his head, he stands and moves to the back. With more violence than I’m used to, he flips Don over and straddles him at the thighs. He’s holding his tied-up hands in his and wraps a fist around a pinky finger. “Talk. Or I fucking break it.” Don still doesn’t say a word. Joe begins twisting his finger in a way it’s not meant to go and I turn my head, suddenly feeling nauseated. Don makes a noise of discomfort and Joe says, “Talk, you son of a bitch.” Another few seconds pass and I still can’t look. “I swear to Christ I’m not messing around. I’ll break ‘em all. And then I’ll move to your fucking toes.”

Don makes another sound of discomfort and says, “In the garage. We meet in the garage.”

“Where in the garage?”

“Near the front on the top level.”

“Perfect.” Joe gets up and returns to the driver’s seat as I’m looking out the mirror on my side. No one has come behind us, so we’re not stopping traffic and, thus, not arousing suspicion. Joe returns the van to the parking space where we got it from. “Now we wait.”

In the silent semi-darkness, my mind wanders over the past few hours and settles on my children. Suddenly, I feel angry, hurt, grief-stricken. “You bastard,” I spit out. Turning in my chair, I glare at the man I used to call my husband. In my mind, I will never refer to him that way again. “You’re telling my babies they have a new mommy?”

He snarls at me but doesn’t say a word—as if daringmeto break his other fingers.

But I can’t say anything as one final memory floods my brain.

It’s the dream I remember from when I first woke up.

“Mommy. Mommy! Daddy, why is mommy on the floor?”

I force my eyelids open, even though they feel like they’ve been coated in lead. My babies need me and I’ve worried them. Everything in my house seems coated in a haze, but I need to see through it. It’s the only way I can reassure my children.

There’s Emma, right beside me, her doting brother Ollie right behind her. And, in the distance, is Jessica, the nanny, coming through the doorway. I hired her a year earlier when I decided I needed to do more than just be a mother—and now that seems so foolish. All that time I could have been spending with my babies…

Jessica’s expression says it all. Something about what she sees horrifies her, and it dawns on me that Don was likely getting ready to kill me—but something prevented him from doing it.

Maybe my kids.

Jessica rushes across the room and hunches over. “What happened?”

“I wasn’t sure at first but then I saw these.” I can’t move my head to look up, and I find that I can’t talk, so there will be no defending myself.

“Oh, my God.”

As my eyes start to close again, I hear Don say, “I think she was trying to commit suicide.”

Falling into an abyss, I try but fail to say a word to my beloved children. This will be the last thing they remember of me.

As the memory fades, I remember something else. Something dark. Don had his hands wrapped around my throat and was trying to either suffocate me or break my neck when the kids and Jessica came in from the garage. “You bastard. You were trying to kill me.”

That cold glare. What the hell did I ever do to him?

That’s the wrong question to ask myself, though. Instead, I need to be asking how the hell I can prove any of what I know now—because I’m back here where it all started for me and I don’t have much.

In fact, this could also be a ruse. I see how easily Joe lured me back into the garage. It would be so easy for them to just take me back and do whatever the hell they did to me the first time.

I jump out of the van and Joe comes out, joining me on the passenger side before I can figure out where to go, confirming my worst fears.

25

When Joe touches my arm, I jump back. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

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