House of Glass (20 page)

“No, no, not that,” Ted said.

And then he proceeded to tell Evan the rest. How tight Jen could be with a nickel, how she’d blow a fortune getting her hair done and then throw a fit when he bought a single roll of paper towels instead of the multipack, because the per-roll price was higher. How she insisted on keeping a crazy amount of money in a money market, close to a hundred grand, so they’d have liquid assets that could be easily tapped in the event of some catastrophe even she couldn’t name.

Ted realized when he finished that he might have been insensitive, given the fact that Evan was forced to hire out as day labor to make ends meet, and by way of apology he swerved into a wandering account of when Jen had harangued him for days about misplacing the remote to her car before she found it in the bottom of a purse she wasn’t using.

But that just made it worse. He’d cast his wife as a shrew, the kind of wife men sought refuge from in exactly the sorts of places he’d been spending too much time himself. He could imagine him and Evan having this same conversation in the bar where he met his bookie, where the big-screen TV was the only fixture that had been changed in the past thirty years. Tired men, cheap drinks, the bar sticky and dirty, the floor worse. And the bitterness thick in the air.

Ted felt like he’d sold Jen out. He’d quit the gambling and supposedly he was rededicating himself to his family, and yet here he was criticizing his wife in front of a stranger.

“Thing is, she’s had a lot to deal with,” he said, the words coming out a little slurred. “My wife. Her dad just died, and she and her sister had to go up and see to his affairs. He was a son of a bitch, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Left the family when the girls were just kids. Went to live in a two-bit little town up north—you heard of Murdoch? After that he just messed around, didn’t work steady, never sent a dime to their mom. My wife grew up with nothing, lived over in Hastings—you know where the dollar store is now—back behind there used to be a dead-end road with a few shacks on it. Whole block got condemned ten, twelve years ago. Probably could have bulldozed the whole block with a rider mower.”

“That’s a tough break, man, kids growing up that way,” Evan said sorrowfully.

“Don’t I know it. Jen lived in her aunt’s basement for years, put herself through school working two jobs.” He shook his head morosely. “Now she and her sister are up there making sure her dad gets a decent burial. And the whole time he was alive their dad didn’t give a shit about them.”

“You hate to hear a story like that.”

“I’ll say.” Ted lifted his bottle in a toast. “Good woman. I don’t deserve her.”

After that, the mood seemed flattened, and they finished their beers in silence. The countertop was littered with bottles and frozen food boxes and crumpled paper towels when they made their unsteady way to collect their jackets. Ted drove Evan to the nearly deserted Home Depot parking lot, where his old Sentra looked especially pathetic parked near the far edge. They said an awkward goodbye, promising to stay in touch. Ted pulled out of the parking lot without looking back, driving slowly to make sure he didn’t attract the attention of the Calumet cops, given that he probably couldn’t pass a sobriety test.

When he got home, he turned off the lights downstairs, leaving the mess for the morning, and crawled into bed in his clothes, sighing deeply and throwing his arm over the place where Jen usually slept.

Right before he drifted off, he realized two disturbing things: he had completely forgotten to pay Evan—and he’d never gotten his last name.

* * *

Remembering that day now, Ted felt like crying, the pleasant sparkly blur wrecked and drained, because it was too late now, wasn’t it? Evan—Dan—whoever he was, he’d won. He’d come to take everything Ted had, and Ted had failed to stop him, and now Jen was going to have to take care of this mess without him. Because what was he going to do from here, without fingers, without toes, with his body floating away in the water that was going getting colder by the second?

Chapter Twenty-Six

Teddy searched for a long time in the dirt, but he didn’t find any worms. All he found were some roly-polies and a dead-looking beetle with long green wings folded up on its back. When Teddy reached for the beetle, it surprised him by jumping, but he caught it and put it in the worm house with the roly-polies. Teddy thought maybe the beetle would eat a roly-poly, but it only shivered its wings once and then went still again.

When darkness began to fall, Teddy began to get a little scared. He had been waiting a very long time, and now it seemed clear that Livvy had forgotten to tell their mom to come get him. He walked down the hill, holding the worm house carefully, but he couldn’t help shaking the cup, and the dirt jostled into his careful arrangement of sticks and grass. Teddy worried that getting shaken wasn’t good for his beetle, so he set the cup down on the picnic table. Someone would find it tomorrow and be very excited to see the good job he’d done with it.

He was still wearing the coat he had borrowed, but there wasn’t anyone left at the park so he knew it was all right if he kept wearing it. His mom could drive it back to the park tomorrow, after he got home and warmed up.

Teddy figured he might as well walk back home. He didn’t want to see the men, but surely by now they were gone. And if they weren’t, at least his mom would be home, and she would be glad to see him. Teddy had been walking for a while along the road that led away from the park, when he realized that it didn’t look familiar. There was a gas station on the corner that he thought he recognized, so he walked to it and stood on the corner, looking into the brightly lit shop, the racks full of snacks. The cashier was reading a magazine, looking bored. His mom sometimes bought him slushies here. The memory made him even more homesick, and he started walking again.

But in the dark it was hard to tell if he was on the right road. His stomach hurt from being hungry, and the cold reached in under the cuffs of his borrowed coat and made his fingers hurt. Cars went by, but none of them slowed down. Maybe they didn’t notice him standing there; his mom was always telling him to be careful because the cars couldn’t see him.

When he saw the Walgreens he knew where he was, on the edge of downtown, which was not the same direction as home. He didn’t know how to get home from here. He crossed the street at the corner where the light was green and walked to a restaurant he had been to with his family before. His stomach rumbled when he thought about the people inside eating dinner. He couldn’t go into the restaurant because he didn’t have any money, but he watched the people through the window. There was a family sitting in a booth, the two kids drawing on their place mats with crayons. The free crayons and puzzle place mats were Teddy’s favorite thing about this restaurant, and he wished his family would come so he could go inside.

Two girls came out of the Starbucks next door. Teddy recognized one of them; it was Livvy’s friend Kate. Both girls had long hair and puffy jackets, and they were talking and laughing, but they stopped when they saw him.

“Teddy, is that you?” Kate said. She was on the soccer team with Livvy, and sometimes she came over before games and she and Livvy braided each other’s hair with ribbons to match their team colors. Kate was bossy, and Teddy didn’t like her very much.

“This is Livvy’s little brother, Teddy. He doesn’t talk,” Kate said to the other girl in her bossy voice.

“Never?” the girl asked. She looked at him curiously. “Hi.”

“He won’t answer you. Teddy, is Livvy here somewhere? Is she in there?” She pointed in the restaurant window. “You can just nod or shake your head.”

Teddy shook his head no.

“Hey, are you crying?” Kate said, but Teddy was embarrassed, and he shook his head no again, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand.

“Well, where’s Livvy? Are your mom and dad here?”

If he said they weren’t here, then Kate would probably take him to a grown-up. Teddy didn’t want to go with Kate, but he really wanted to go home.

“You’re here by yourself?”

Teddy nodded. The other girl had her phone out and she was texting, not looking at them.

“Seriously? You’re not here with anyone? You didn’t walk here by yourself, did you?”

“Hey,” the other girl said. “Davis got our tickets. He says meet by the front. They’re waiting.”

“Okay, but Teddy’s lost. Are you lost?”

Teddy shook his head, because he wasn’t lost, he was downtown.

“We need to
go,
” the girl with the green jacket said.

Kate flicked her hair over her shoulder impatiently. “You sure you’re not lost?”

Teddy wasn’t sure what to do, because he didn’t want Kate to leave him alone. He didn’t want to go with her, either. Maybe she could call Livvy for him and tell her to come. He pointed to the other girl’s phone.

“You want Lauren’s phone? He wants to use your phone, Lauren,” Kate said. She laughed, even though it wasn’t funny.

The girl named Lauren kept texting. “Yeah, well, I’m using it. Seriously. Kate. Come
on.
”

Kate got out her own phone. Its cover was pink. “I’m going to text Livvy, okay, Teddy? You stay right here. Promise me you’re going to stay right here. I have to go, but I’m going to text her and tell her to come get you. You’re not going to go anywhere, right?”

Teddy shook his head. The other girl was already walking away, and Kate started texting while she walked fast to catch up. “See you soon,” she said, but she was looking at her phone and not at him.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“That’s better,” Ryan said, his voice going rough after Livvy turned the lights off.

She stood near the door, hand on the wall switch, shivering. She couldn’t believe Dan just
left
that way, left her here with him
alone.
Ryan was in charge, but how could that be? Ryan was just some nothing with a bad haircut, a guy she and her friends would never give a second look to, someone who you could tell right away wasn’t from Calumet and wasn’t from anywhere you needed to care about. If he knew Allie’s cousins, he had to be like some low-level guy, the one they gave the worst jobs to. She’d seen Allie’s cousins, they picked her up at school sometimes, leaning up against their SUV while they waited; their arms were thick with muscle and they wore shiny track pants and designer polo shirts and their expressions were unreadable. They were nothing like Ryan.

But after everything that had happened, it didn’t even matter anymore why Dan and Ryan were here. Whatever this had started out being, it had turned into something else, something much worse. If there had ever been a chance for them to get away fast and clean, that chance was long gone. Livvy understood what Ryan had done, leaving clues all over the house that the cops could use to identify Dan, but so what? They’d never catch him. If things went smoothly tomorrow, Dan and Ryan were leaving with their money and their cars and they weren’t ever coming back. Dan was going to Mexico, and Ryan was going on his own, and if he was smart they’d never find him, either. In six hours he could be over the border in Canada, and he’d have enough money to become somebody new.

But that was the
best-
case scenario. He wasn’t gone yet, and the longer he was here, things just kept getting worse.

There was a muffled sound like wood breaking coming from downstairs, and Livvy and Ryan both jumped from the surprise of it.

“Was that a gun?” Livvy demanded. “That was a gunshot, wasn’t it?”

“Naw,” Ryan drawled. “Probably someone knocked something over or slammed a door.”

“No it wasn’t.” Livvy’s voice went high with panic. “It was a
gun.
I know it.”

Ryan went over to the door. He put a hand on the knob and looked at her for a moment before he opened it. He leaned out into the hall as if testing the air, but after a second he closed the door again. Then he twisted the lock.

“If it was anything, Dan will take care of it,” he said. “Now get on over here.”

Livvy stood frozen in place, trying to make sense of what he’d said. If Dan had shot her mom or dad, there would be screaming or yelling, right? It was probably another warning, like when her dad tried to force open the door. But her dad was so messed up from his arm, half-unconscious or in shock, there was no way he would have tried anything. And her mom—would her mom have taken a risk like that? Especially when Livvy had come up here to call Jake on the walkie-talkie. It didn’t make sense.

“I said, get over here.” Ryan had gotten up on the bed,
her
bed with the deep purple comforter and the pillows her mom fluffed and put back in place every day while she was at school. Ryan patted the sides of the quilt. He wanted her to get on the bed with him. Livvy felt sick and exposed, like he could see under her clothes.

“I want to stay here,” she whispered.

“Well, I don’t want you to.” Ryan smiled, showing his teeth. The top ones were straight and white, but when he smiled like that, she could see that the bottom ones were crooked and one of them was gray.

While she was staring at his mouth, Ryan’s tongue came out, slowly, like a snake slithering out of a hole in the ground, and ran slowly around his lips. “Mmm, hmm,” he said. “I think you should get that sweet little ass of yours over here.”

Livvy whimpered and hugged herself, shifting from one foot to another. Ryan’s tongue was long and pink and had a pointy end, and his mouth glistened wet.

“I’ll scream,” she said.

Ryan laughed. “Yeah? Okay, I’ll scream, too. You think that’s gonna change anything? With these fancy windows your rich daddy put in? You don’t even have neighbors back there—there’s nobody to hear you. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead.”

Livvy bit her lip and stared at the floor. It was true—the only people who would hear were her parents and Dan. And her parents couldn’t do anything about it, and Dan wouldn’t, and it would just make things worse.

“I ain’t playing, Livvy,” Ryan said. A sharp tap made her look up: he had the gun held casually in one hand and was tapping it against her nightstand. “You can make this hard or you can make this easy. Hell, you might even like it.”

Livvy shuffled toward the bed, her feet dragging. She stopped a couple of feet away, and Ryan sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled her closer, making her stumble, until her thighs were touching his knees.

“Unbutton your shirt,” he said.

Livvy breathed through her mouth, short breaths that didn’t fill her lungs enough. She put her fingers on the top button, wiggled it a little. It was round and smooth, like a bead that had fallen off a broken necklace. Her mom bought her this shirt in the Denver airport last Thanksgiving when they’d gone to see her uncle Gar and his family. She got stuck babysitting her little cousins and Teddy, and she’d taken advantage of the fact that her mom felt bad about it and convinced her to buy her this shirt and a new set of earbuds that she ended up leaving on the plane.

“Damn, girl,” Ryan said, and he reached up and pushed her fingers out of the way, grabbed where the button was and yanked. Her neck snapped backward, but two of the buttons flew off the shirt. Livvy unbuttoned the last few herself. Ryan used the gun to push the shirt slowly open, sliding the end of the gun up over her breasts and hooking the collar to ease it off her shoulders one side at a time. The shirt got stuck at the wrists, but Livvy was afraid of being shot by accident and she wriggled the cuffs over her hands until the shirt fell to the floor.

She was wearing her pink bra. She’d put it on so long ago, Thursday morning—was that only yesterday?—along with the matching pink panties with the white trim. Was he going to make her strip to her panties?

“Show me.” He was breathing hard, staring at her breasts. “Take your hands away.”

She had her hands tightly crossed over herself and it was like she had to pry them off, like she was working against herself. Livvy didn’t like people looking at her; she never had. She shied away in the locker room before gym class, or when they were getting ready for a game, because she didn’t want anyone to see her. Some of the girls decorated their bras, they pinned on lucky ribbons and wrote with puffy fabric paint, and they chased each other around the locker room with bottles of Gatorade, calling each other by their team nicknames, and it was all in
good fun,
Livvy knew that, but she still hated it and she still changed as fast as she could, head down and a blush creeping across her face. At home she stared at herself, holding up the round mirror so she could see her back, the bumps of her spine, the birthmark, all the ugly details that didn’t add up to something she could stand to see. And Sean...after Sean it had been worse, because he had gotten so close, he made her almost believe it was all right, that she was pretty enough for him.

“Let me see,” Ryan said, his voice sounding half hungry and half angry, and then his hands were on her, on her breasts, under them, lifting and squeezing. She looked down and saw his thumbs making dents in the soft flesh, his thumbnails dirty and too long. He was fumbling at her bra clasp, but this clasp was tricky, you had to bend it a certain way and it snapped apart, and he was doing it wrong, getting frustrated.

“Get this fucking thing
off,
” he demanded just as her hands went to the clasp. As she opened it, he added, “Or I’ll rip it off you.”

Livvy squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to see any more, not wanting to see her breasts naked and exposed.

“Your pants,” he said. Abruptly he released her, and she staggered back a step. Her eyes opened, and she saw his hand go to his own zipper, tugging his shirt over his head, getting frustrated when the collar got stuck against his chin. He ripped it off and worked at his jeans, jamming them down over his narrow hips. He wore plaid that looked too small for him, that hugged against his white, hairless stomach. He looked younger than some of the boys in her class did, at the pool, but Livvy knew it was all an illusion, that he had done things and seen things and knew things that none of those boys did.

Because Ryan was
not
a boy; no matter what he looked like, he was a man. He was a dangerous man and he was going to do dangerous things to her and it would be nothing like it had been with Sean.

Ryan yanked at his boxer shorts and Livvy looked away; she didn’t want to see. She was backing toward the door, her hands scrabbling behind her for the desk, trying to remember what was on it, anything she could throw or hurt him with but all her seeking hands found was the chair. You couldn’t hurt anybody with a flat little chair cushion, that was for sure, and Ryan was making some weird sound in his throat and his hand reached inside his pants.

“You want a taste?” he asked, grinning. “You’ll like it. Got some sugar for you right here. Come get on your knees, girl, I’ll show you what to do.”

Livvy’s hands were behind her now, the back of her thighs pressed against the chair, her fingers skittering over pens, her chem book, the case that held the glasses she was supposed to wear for reading but never did. The case was hard plastic, and she thought about throwing it, but it was next to nothing; you couldn’t kill a bug with it.

Her fingertip nudged something cold and hard. The mug her friend Paige got her when Seether played Mill City, shiny black with the letters like they were made out of bones. Livvy kept her pens and pencils in it. She slipped her fingers into the handle and threw it as hard as she could, and it cracked against Ryan’s face.

The doorbell rang.

Ryan yelled
fuck
and stumbled sideways, his hands going to his forehead where the mug hit him. Livvy grabbed the doorknob and twisted the lock. Sometimes the door stuck, but not this time. It flew open and bounced against her dresser. She crashed into the edge of the door, hitting her ribs and knocking the breath from herself. If she’d opened the door with a little less force, she would have been out and down the hall and at the front door before anyone else could get there. But instead she had to grab the door frame to keep from falling down. She was halfway through the door and into the hall when Ryan grabbed her arm. He yanked it so hard she went down, skull bouncing off the door, hip hitting the edge.

“You bitch, you filthy fucking cunt,” he screamed while he yanked up his pants.

The doorbell rang again, and there was the sound of running, heavy steps on bare wood. Livvy could see Dan standing halfway up the stairs, his mouth open and panting.

Ryan had her by the hair; he was pulling her up with it. Livvy stumbled to her feet, covering her bare breasts. Ryan pushed her into the hall, not letting go.

“Dave!”
Dan said, in the very same tone her dad used on her when he was really angry. But who was Dave?

“I’m getting this door,” Dan growled. “Get that girl dressed and stay upstairs. I’m coming up after. You put one hand on her and I swear I’ll break your fucking neck.”

And to Livvy’s amazement, Ryan let go of her hair. Whatever was between them, whoever Dan was to Ryan, he was still a little afraid of him. The way he’d been in her room earlier, the underwear, the sneer on his face when he was threatening Dan, that’s who he was now, she could see that. Pure mean and pure bad and smarter than he looked.

Dan yelled at Ryan and hesitated just long enough to give Livvy one second. One second to run.

She took the stairs full speed, bracing herself with her hand on the banister, bare feet slapping on the wood. She came at Dan with her arms grabbing, pulling at him. She was naked on top but she didn’t care.

The ringing had turned to knocking, the brass ring against the door hollow and thunking. “Jen?” It was a thin voice—Aunt Tanya. Jake sent his mom. She hadn’t called the cops; she’d come by herself instead.

Dan lifted his hand, and for a second she thought he was going to smack her across the face but he just pushed it flat over her mouth. “Do not say one fucking word,” he muttered, quiet and furious. He started dragging her, one hand on her mouth and one on the back of her neck, down the hall toward the basement door. Livvy struggled against him, her feet slipping on the slick wood surface and her fingers clawing at his hand over her mouth, but he was much stronger than she would have thought, hands like iron for an old guy. He kept talking as they went, voice low and angry. “You stay down here and keep quiet. So fucking quiet, I don’t want to hear a word, not a sound. You hear me? Or I’ll give you right back to Ryan and tell him to do whatever he wants with you, you understand?”

Livvy was crying, snot dripping down onto Dan’s rough knuckled hand. She tried to nod but she couldn’t, not with the grip he had on her. “If you mess this up,” he continued, “I will come down the stairs and I will
hurt
your mother and then I will give you to Ryan. I have had just about enough of this, and I won’t have it. I won’t
have
it. I will wash my hands of you, every damn one of you.”

They had arrived at the door, and Dan took his hand off her face to turn the key. Even with only one hand Dan managed to keep her still and quiet, his fingers and thumb pinching into the back of her neck like it was nothing more than a rag, squeezing the tendons so she gasped. As he opened the door he gave an extra squeeze, and Livvy’s vision went gray and flickering, the air cut off to her brain, little choking sounds coming out of her.

He pushed her through the door. Hands grabbed her, and her mother’s frantic voice shouted “Livvy, Livvy” and then the door shut and the key twisted. Her mother wrapped her arms around her and Livvy hugged back hard, crying and gulping for air.