Page 2 of Husband Missing

Bug felt her mom’s sticky wet fingers jerk in her hand as they made their way along the side of the road. Hopefully they weregoing to where her mom had hidden their car. The heater didn’t work but it might be warmer than outside.

“Did you spill something?” Bug whispered.

“Shhh.” Her mom’s legs wobbled. She fell to one knee with a loud grunt. Still, their hands stayed locked, the weird goo holding them together. She’d seen her mom like this before, so she wasn’t all that worried.

Not until they got into the car and the sad, yellow light in the ceiling shone on her mom’s face. Or what used to be her mom’s face. Where her nose had been was something flat and crooked, leaking blood so thick it was almost black. Her bottom lip gaped open, split in two like a slingshot. One of her eyes looked gone, replaced by a big, purple ball. Above her other eye, the skin hung down like a flap, red and pink where her eyebrow had been.

Fear wasn’t a thousand spiders anymore. It was a million watcher birds pecking every inch of Bug’s skin and bone until there was nothing left and nowhere to hold the air in her body. Turning her hand back and forth, she saw her mom’s blood soaked into the folds of her knuckles. Sickness sprouted deep in her belly, like after the time she ate canned soup that turned out to be “expired.” A grown-up word for poison.

When she spoke, her voice sounded weird and quiet and shaky. “Mom?”

What happened in the magical house? she wanted to ask. There were so many questions, but she couldn’t make her mouth work.

The engine roared to life. “Lissen ah me.”

Bug really wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. Her mom’s lower lip flopped and dangled, revealing teeth that weren’t white anymore. Slowly, she reached into her coat pocket and brought out a little cloth bag. Bug wanted to ask what was in it but she couldn’t. Suddenly, her mom lunged toward her, making her heart do a little dance in her chest. Then she stuffed the bagdown Bug’s shirt. Hard little things pressed through the pouch and poked against Bug’s skin. There was a clinking sound, like metal.

She tried again to talk, to ask what was in the little bag and why her mom was giving it to her but her mom kept saying something. Two words. Except they didn’t sound like words because her mom’s face was not her face anymore. It took Bug some time to turn the sounds back into words in her own brain.

Keep. Hide.

Was it food? No, it didn’t feel or sound like food. Her stomach growled loudly but her mom didn’t notice. She was making more noises that Bug needed to change into regular words.

“We neber go to thah house again. Neber. Don’ talk ’bout it. Don’ go.”

We never go to that house again. Never. Don’t talk about it. Don’t go.

Bug’s voice came back, tinged with the tears that burned the backs of her eyes. “But we were gonna live there one day. In the magical house. You said?—”

Suddenly, her mom’s bloodied fingers dug into her cheeks so hard, the pain set Bug’s tears free. They rolled down her face.

“Wha’ I jus’ say? There is no mahhical house. Nah anmore.”

What did I just say? There is no magical house. Not anymore.

Bug didn’t dare ask why even though she really, really wanted to.

Their faces were so close that she could see into her mother’s remaining eye and what she saw there was scarier than a million spiders and a billion watcher birds. It was something she’d never, ever seen before. Her lungs stopped working. Her skin felt gross like she was dead and a bunch of creatures were crawling all over her.

The eye blinked slowly but the thing was still there, shining wetly like broken glass in moonlight.

Fear.

Her mother—who always had a plan, who stood up to people bigger and meaner than her all the time, who responded to bad things with raging fury—was afraid.

Very, very afraid.

ONE

PRESENT DAY

Josie Quinn steadied herself on the ladder and dipped her brush into the can of primer sitting on top of it. With a slow, careful stroke, she cut in from the ceiling, white barely covering the emerald green of the wall. From the floor her husband, Noah Fraley, used a roller to coat the part of the wall she’d already cut in. Music played from an app on Josie’s phone, which sat on a nearby windowsill. Noah hummed along with the current song while he worked. He wore jeans and a threadbare black T-shirt and naturally, he didn’t have a drop of primer on him. She had had a streak straight down her shirt and white flecks in her black hair within minutes of starting.

She should have let him cut in.

Reading her mind—which he seemed to do often and with ease—Noah said, “You should have let me cut in.”

Josie went to coat another section, but she was momentarily distracted by the way the muscles in his arms flexed when he leaned into the roller. “Why didn’t you say something?”

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