Page 14 of Caged Bird

An engine rumbled from somewhere outside, the first noise that had disturbed the peace since the night Eddie had been whisked away in an ambulance. I snapped my head up, peering through the windows at the front of the house. I didn’t recognize the shiny blue truck, or the driver with a baseball cap pulled low on his head, but dread filled my veins anyway. Eddie sat in the passenger seat.

Otis came running from the kitchen. His big brown eyes, that had sparkled with happiness for the first time this week, were back to the dull brown color I was used to, fear sitting behind them. “Should I go hide, Mommy?”

There wasn’t time. He couldn’t get into the box and close himself in without my help. I shook my head. I needed to get the safe put back where it had been, and to stash the tools I’d had Otis bring me from the shed. “Go outside and welcome your father home. He’ll expect that. Don’t stand too close. Say welcome home, and then nothing else unless he asks you a direct question. You hear me, Otis? Nothing else. Please.”

He nodded his little head quickly and then put his arms around me, squeezing me tight. “I know what to do, Mommy.”

I knew he did. He’d been trained, every day of his life, in how not to set Eddie off. It was the only way we’d survived.

I watched him run outside and stand at the side of the driveway, making sure he wasn’t too close to the car or its occupants.

“There he is! My boy. Come here, kid.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away, Eddie’s voice sending chills down my spine and confusion into my heart. He never greeted Otis like that. His friendliness was a ploy. A disguise for something more sinister. I just knew it. In a frantic hurry, I shoved the tools beneath the couch and fit the safe back where it had been in the wall. I cringed at the new scratches I’d put in the paint and prayed Eddie didn’t notice them.

But I already knew he would.

Eddie noticed everything.

Except perhaps how much I hated him.

Or more likely, he just didn’t care.

I brushed my hands off on my dress, tugging at the hem self-consciously. I was rarely out of the chains. Eddie didn’t trust me. Rightfully so. But normally he undid them long enough for me to shower and change clothes. While he watched every move I made, his leering gaze lingering on my breasts and the juncture of my thighs.

But I hadn’t had that luxury since he’d left.

Dirt and sweat clung to my skin.

I realized the men outside were silent and I hurried to the window, peeping out again with my heart thumping, gaze centering first on Otis, making sure he was okay.

He stood beside his father, Eddie’s heavy hand on his slim shoulder. I balked at his expression. It almost looked like pride.

I couldn’t see the stranger’s expression, but he stared at my son, his gaze finally jerking up to meet Eddie’s. “Where’s his mother?”

The stranger’s voice tickled something in the back of my mind. But if I knew the man, I couldn’t place him from his voice alone.

Eddie ignored his question. “Just wait here a minute. She’s picky about her house, and I didn’t tell her I was bringing a guest home. Just let me give her the heads-up and I’ll come back out for you.”

Confusion pulled my forehead into frown lines. Eddie had never given me a warning he had friends over. The house was always spotless, him being away hadn’t changed that. I still cleaned it religiously, knowing I’d be punished if he got home and anything was out of place.

The screen door opened with a protesting creak, and I plastered on a fake smile. The only kind I could ever muster when Eddie was around.

Just like I’d instructed Otis, I quietly murmured, “Welcome home.”

He hobbled through the door on crutches, not bothering to return the greeting. I kept one eye on the stranger outside, fear coiling around my insides over my child being out there alone with anyone Eddie deemed a friend. But the man had crouched to Otis’s height and was nodding at something Otis was explaining in a voice too low for me to hear.

I was so busy watching them I didn’t notice Eddie open the safe and pull the keys for my locks out until they hit me in the side of the face. I winced at the shot of pain, but Eddie didn’t apologize.

I would have been checking for flying pigs if he had.

I picked up the keys but then looked at him expectantly, not knowing what to do with them.

He glared at me. “Has my time away made you even more stupid than normal? Undo your locks.”

I knelt quickly, confused, but not as stupid as Eddie always told me I was. I didn’t understand why I was suddenly getting a reprieve, when Eddie having friends over had always meant quite the opposite. Eddie was always so paranoid I’d lure one of his friends into bed or trick them into taking me with them. Or one of his other deluded paranoias.

When it came to me, he’d always had many of them.

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