Page 2 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

I try to control it. I push away any thought of them waking up and trying to find me. I can’t bear to think about them at all in this moment or I’ll snap,and that will be the end of me. I’m not the one with the gun. I just have to make my mind a blank space and let this happen as quickly as possible.

I pull off my denim jacket and then, through uncontrollable tears and shaking hands, I pull my black sweater dress over my head and let it fall on the ground. He leans against the baking table, pushing aside Mack’s favorite blue mixing bowl, and watches; he doesn’t speak. When I leave my underwear on, he just waits me out. He still doesn’t say anything, which is becoming more unnerving, making him feel more dangerous and unpredictable to me. I can’t see his face. He doesn’t grab me or throw me down or anything else that I expect to happen at any second. He just stares until I slowly, painfully take off the rest of my clothes and stand in front of him naked, covering myself with my hands as much as possible, weeping and waiting for the worst.

He walks over to me slowly, looking me up and down. Should I try to fight? If I let it happen, I might see the girls. I might survive this. If I fight, he fights back and then… I might not. This question is on repeat in my mind, along with every possible outcome, and all the thoughts whirl in my head. But it’s only a matter of seconds and then he is right in front of me.

He still doesn’t grab for me or touch me. He picks my clothes up from the ground, and my head swirls with confusion. He takes a few steps back, and then he laughs. I don’t understand what’s happening.

He throws my clothes at me, hard, and shakes his head.

“Look at you,” he says. “Absolutely sickening. Pathetic. Put your clothes on. Jesus.” A stab of humiliation cuts through me—a shame so unexpected, yet so deep, it steals my breath for a moment. I hide myself behind my armful of discarded clothes and have no idea if I should run or scream or beg—what is happening? I have no idea what is happening.

“What do you want?” I ask again, my voice trembling.

“You weren’t supposed to be here, and you fucked up my plans,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Then just let me go. You can do whatever you—you can… I won’t even tell anyone I saw anything. So you can just let me go and…whatever your plans were, you can just…”

“I can’t have you reporting seeing someone here tonight.”

“I won’t. Ipromise.”

“Do you know who I am?” he asks, taking me by surprise. I stare again at his size and clothes, and try to discern his voice that’s so soft and muffled, it’s impossible to decipher.

“I… Leo?” I say again, tilting my head, staring as hard as I can through my tears and dizzying confusion, looking for anything about him that would give his identity away. But it can’t be Leo. It makes no earthly sense. He doesn’t answer, of course. If it’s not Leo, maybe this man will let me go now that he knows I’ll report to the police that it’s Leo I suspected. Unless it reallyishim, and he’s secretly turned into some sort of sick monster. God help me, I’m in a fucking nightmare.

“See, you fuck up the timeline if you report seeing someone here at this time looking through these records. And of course that’s what you’ll do. Don’t keep saying you won’t because you want me to let you go. Of course you will, and I’m sorry, but I need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“What? No…what do you mean, I…” I hold up my hands, because he still has the gun aimed at me.

“If you tell anyone I was here, I’ll…you know what, I won’t even kill you. I’ll just make everyone around you pay and make you watch. Ya got that?”

“But I won’t—I don’t even know who you are! Who would I even tell? I promise, I…”

“I think you know. If you just thought about it, you’d know who I am. You’d know why I’m here.” He stares at me, maybe looking for some spark of recognition in my eyes, but there is none, because I don’t know. “Fuck it, I can’t take that chance.”

“No, wait,” I whimper, and he picks up Bertha from the floor where I dropped her and looks at her face.

“This is what you came here for, a fuckin’ weasel, huh?” he asks, and I nod. And it’s stupid that I want to correct him that it’s a badger, not a weasel, and that a thought like that is even crossing my mind right now.

“That’s too bad. Shitty timing,” he says, and then he grabs me by the arm and pulls me to the back of the kitchen past towering rows of plates and wineglasses, past the pantry and the back delivery door with pallets of flour and cane sugar piled against it. I wonder, for a fleeting moment, if I could break away from him and run through it—just push out the back door to freedom in hopes he’s just a scared thief and not a murderer. And then I think of getting shot in the back in front of my kids in the car and I don’t run. I let him pull me until he stops, and when he does, my heart falls like a stone in my chest and the blood drains from my face, and all I hear is ringing in my ears.

“I’m sorry, but I need to make sure you don’t fuck up my plans. You were looking for this,” he holds up Bertha and tosses her into the walk-in freezer. “You found her in there when the doors snapped closed behind you. At least that’s what they’ll assume when they find you, I’m sure. And I was never here.”

He pushes me into a small room that’s stacked with icy shelves of packed chicken wings, and berries for pies, and ice cream buckets. I scream and try to rush to the door, but everything happens in a blink—in a blur—and I’m trapped before I even knew what was happening. It’s negative ten degrees, and he’s locked the door behind him.

I stand in shock for a few moments, and then my heart is racing so fast and I’m crying so hard, I can barely see through the tears to pull my clothes on. I shiver and shake violently from the cold as I dress. My feet are already freezing to the metal floor as I try to pull on stockings that will do nothing to protect me from the extreme cold. There is nowhere to hide, no way to escape,no window, no place to even sit and curl up, no one looking for me. Just a metal, airless icebox. I came in to get a stuffed animal. How is this happening?

I scream. I scream and wail, and beat at the door. I scream for so long and so hard that a spattering of blood from my battered throat mists the glossy metal door, but there is nobody to hear. After what seems like hours, but is maybe only minutes, the cold begins to turn my hands colors—a deep purple blue, and I can’t bend my fingers. The numbness starts to morph into an ache, a full body weakness, and I have to kneel on the frozen metal floor. I can’t pound on the door anymore because I don’t have any strength. It’s leaving my body.

He’s left me here to die, and I think about them. My babies, just outside, sleeping to the sounds of a cozy pumpkin pie story I put on YouTube, holding their new, fuzzy reindeer blankets to their chests, waiting for their mother to come back to them. I touch my fingers to the door.

“My babies,” I can barely whisper now, but I cry out to them until there is nothing left inside me. “My babies, my babies.” Everything goes dark.

2

MACK

When I drop Rowan off at Julia’s house for the night, I get out of the car and make a big production of hugging her goodbye. The two of them will drive all the way back East to school tomorrow and Julia will drop Row off at school on her way up to Syracuse, and I’ll find myself wishing we had a dozen more kids to fill the house in her absence. I’m happy Leo promised to be home with popcorn and a gin and tonic tonight, because he knows this is the hardest part: the many goodbyes I have to endure each time she goes, leaving hair bands and toast crumbs and threadbare slipper-socks in her wake for me to find over the coming days, like tiny cruel reminders that she’s all grown up and gone.

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