Page 13 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“I don’t want to touch it,” I say as he takes the handgun out of the lockbox. He knows this because I said I would take a few lessons and learn how to use it for his peace of mind when he started night shifts, and I did that, with protective gear and an instructor. I’m not shooting cans off tree stumps in the woods behind the house. That’s what this is, and it’s not happening.

“Did you even know where the key to the lockbox is?” he asks.

“Clay, I remember how to use it.”

“How do I know that? How would you even get it if something happened? You insist on it not being in the house, but that doesn’t work. Starting now, it’s staying in our room.”

“Clay,” I start to protest, but he’s right. I hate guns; I hated learning how to shoot it. This stranger who took so much from me that night forced me to learn to use it, and now I get to feel so unsafe I keep a loaded gun in my bedroom.He sees my resolve weaken as my eyes flit from the gun to him, imagining how I’ll ever sleep again with this in the house.

“We’ll still keep it in the lockbox. And I need you to refresh your lessons,” he says. I know he’s trying to do something in this moment to make him feel like he has some control, rather than punching walls and going down to the Trout to drink.

“Fine,” I say softly.

“Let’s make sure you remember how to…” he starts to say as he takes it out of the box.

“No! I’m not fucking shooting that thing out here. The girls are inside.Goddamn it!” I scream which startles him. My voice shakes, my whole body trembles with cold, then the tears come and I start to panic again. He lays it down and wraps his arms around me and we just stand there in the silence—the distinct, eerie silence only the snow can create when it’s killed off every living, buzzing creature, and the night air rings in your ears.

“Okay,” he whispers, and I cry into his coat sleeve, thinking that if someone wants to kill me, I’m glad at least to have him by my side protecting me.

Inside, after I read the girls the wholeGrumpy Monkeybook twice and they’ve fallen asleep, I go into the bedroom and look inside the top drawer of the dresser where we decided the gun would stay. The key is taped to the top of the second drawer, and Clay has left for his night shift, so this should make me feel better, in theory. I have an alarm and a gun—two things you shouldn’t need living in rural Minnesota. It’s why we stayed when we found out about the twins. There was a long stretch of time when we thought kids wouldn’t happen, and we had begun making plans to start a new life in Milwaukee, but then we stayed because it’s so safe here. That’s what we said. That’s what we thought.

Maybe weshouldmove. Maybe that’s the solution; except Pops and Juju’s grandparents are here. Their friends, our friends,our business. Can I let him terrorize me out of my whole life? Maybe.

I go into the dim kitchen. I’m keeping the lights low so people can’t see inside the windows, just in case. I pour a glass of Malbec and sit on the ottoman in front of the fireplace to warm my hands. After an hour of staring into the glowing embers and going down my mental list of every person in my entire life I’ve ever known, I still can’t think of who I might have wronged to bring this all about. Who hated me this much, and why? But I’ve lived a pretty simple life in an equally simple town, and I can’t come up with any names. I never do come up with anything but a splitting headache and an anxiety attack. So I ease into the old recliner next to the fire and open a copy ofWuthering Heightsthat Mort insisted I read because he was personally offended that I never had, and I top off my wine and cozy in, attempting to relax at least a little bit.

The story is, frankly, boring me to death, but I try to scribble down a few talking points so I don’t disappoint him and hopefully make it seem like I’d read the whole thing. By half past eleven, I’m about to click off the lamp and head to bed when I hear a flicker, a pop, and then all of the lights in the house go dark. My heart pounds and I immediately look for my phone to turn the flashlight on, but I can’t find it. And now that I think about it, I haven’t used it since I ran back into the Oleander’s to call Clay. Did I leave it there? Drop it?

I run down the dark hallway, fumbling and feeling for walls, to check on the girls. I don’t want to start freaking out and wake them up. They’re still asleep. I take the pink heart reading light clipped to Juju’s bedside table and click it on, making my way back down the hall to search my purse and coat pockets for my phone. It’s not there.

There’s no way to call for help and my car is at the Oleander’s. I’m…trapped. Oh my God. My heart is beating wildly, and a cold sweat climbs my spine. And then there is a tap at the front door and I freeze,paralyzed in fear as I stare toward the door with my mouth agape, holding nothing but a child’s reading light for protection. I clutch my heart in the darkness and choke down a sob as I scream “Who’s there!” into the silence. There is no answer.

I hear footsteps crunching over snow, and another tap-tap at the kitchen window, and I’m shaking so violently I drop the light I’m holding and crouch to the floor, covering my mouth with both hands and trying to breathe.

“Who’s there?” I say again, but it comes out as a whimper. There is a hard knock at the front door, but nobody answers. “Who’s there?” I bark again, my voice cracking. Then I run to the bedroom for the gun.

7

MACK

“Who the fuckisthat?” The words reverberate in my mind still, later that night.

I pause the video at 10:31 p.m. and try to zoom in for the hundredth time, thinking something will spontaneously change, but it only shows a pixelated blur.

When Billy decided we needed a couple of Bloody Marys instead of coffee this morning upon seeing me suppress a panic attack while watching the surprise footage in his father’s office, he sat with me and showed me how to email myself the large video file in Dropbox. And now I sit at home in my bed, wrapped in an electric blanket with Linus and Nugget burrowed under with me, their little Chihuahua noses pressed against my legs as I rewind and replay the short clip over and over.

I called Shelby nine times trying to warn her that the footage exists and that Billy’s mother couldn’t hand it over to the news fast enough,relishing being part of the mystery and spreading the drama of it all. And now I’m not only obsessing over this useless clip, I’m worried about her and why she’s not answering.

I pick up my glass of wine from the nightstand and sip it, staring at the blur some more. I want to find something, anything in this footage, and when I do, I want it to make me certain it wasn’t Leo in that frozen frame. God, just give me that. Just give me peace that he wasn’t the monster I know people whisper about in this town. But I don’t get to have peace because it’s fuzzy and distant, and utterly stupid and pointless. And I can’t tell. It could be a woman, for all this footage gives me. Lou was right when he said he had nothing. There’s no value here. It could be anyone in the entire world. Then, when I replay again, I see the movement of something—the knitted end of a scarf it looks like—flitting into the edge of the frame. I was so focused on the figure, I hadn’t paid attention to the foreground.

Chills run up my arms as I wonder…is that just a passerby? Or at that time of night, with a storm raging and with the place closed, is this a second person involved?

Suddenly I leap out of bed, startled by the dogs clawing their way out from under the covers and barking wildly, flying down the hallway, going nuts over something. I pull on a robe and slip my feet into slippers because it’s freezing in here even though I keep inching up the thermostat. I assume they’re losing their mind over an Amazon delivery guy, but they stop at the door to the basement instead. They scratch and howl at the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. I try to pick up Linus, but he wiggles out of my arm and scratches at the door frame.

“What’s down there, guys?” I say mindlessly as I move to the kitchen for a wine refill, because they bark at everything that moves, and it’s always nothing more than the wind blowing usually, but then I stop in my tracks. Because shit…whatisdown there?

I stay frozen when I hear a rattling noise. I put my glass down and pluck a knife from the drawer and stand behind my dogs, looking at the basement door. The door itself is rattling slightly, not like someone is jiggling it because it’s not locked, but like the wind is shaking it.Wind.In the basement.

“Shit, shit, shit.” I keep the knife in hand and cover my head with the hood of my robe.

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