He glanced over his shoulder, then stepped outside, closing the door partway behind him. “If what’s me?”
Did Mr. McLaughlin already have a girl inside? Did he live with someone? Maybe his mother? It was clear that he was hiding me from someone. But I focused on my mission.
“I’m being harassed online,” I said. “I want to know if you’ve been—” I stopped short. Because I heard a baby cry.
A baby? Mr. McLaughlin didn’t have a family. He was a creepy predator who lived alone. He was obsessed with teenage students—like me, like Jordan Henry. But suddenly, a woman in a robe appeared in the gap behind him. “Ian? Is everything all right?”
“It’s fine, hon. I think.…” He scratched his head. “This is Tarryn. One of my students.”
The woman’s brow furrowed. She looked exhausted and concerned, but still very pretty. “Are you okay, Tarryn? Do you need to come in?”
“Yes. I mean, no.… I just—”
The baby squawked again, and Mr. McLaughlin turned to his partner. “Go check on Theo. I’ve got this.”
“Okay.” She gave me a sympathetic smile as she padded away.
My teacher turned back to me. “Have you been drinking, Tarryn?”
“A little.”
“Why don’t you come in?” He stepped back, holding the door open. “I’ll make you a cup of tea. You can tell me what’s bothering you. And then I’ll call your parents to come get you.”
“No!” I said, backing away in a panic. “I-I have my bike. I live really close. I’ll be fine.”
“Tarryn, I don’t think it’s safe—”
But I was already on the lawn, hopping on my bicycle, and speeding away.
Thomas
VIV LAY BESIDE me, completely still and silent. She’d taken a pill to help her sleep. For the past few weeks she’d tossed and turned, whimpering in her dreams. The exhaustion was wearing her down, making her tearful one moment, irritable the next. Viv didn’t like to take medication, but she needed the rest. Now she was so peaceful that I couldn’t even hear her breathe. She seemed dead. I leaned over and put my ear close to her mouth. Alive. Thank god.
Maybe I should have taken one of her tablets, but someone had to be alert, on guard. The house was a veritable fortress now, with cameras and lights, a professionally installed and monitored alarm system. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending disaster. Yesterday had been the deadline to pay Chanel, and I had officially missed it.
At Viv’s urging, I’d sent the preemptive e-mail to my entire contacts list. Of course, my inbox had been instantly flooded with responses.
If you would like to discuss this further, please reach out to me.
It was my own stupid fault.
Some people were concerned: my sister demanded that I call her immediately; my best friend from high school asked if I needed to borrow money. Others were judgmental. A client told me she’d been flirting with changing realtors and this was the final straw. But most of the responses expressed curiosity thinly veiled as concern—I’m here if you need to talk.… If you want to open up to someone.… Others didn’t try to mask their delight.
Whoa, buddy, Roger had said. Is this about the stripper? What did you DO?
Surprisingly, Leo Grass had not replied to my message. It was possible that he hadn’t read the e-mail yet, but his silence was suspicious. Did Leo know more about that night than he’d let on? Did he know Chanel? Were they in cahoots? But that was stupid. Leo had no need to extort money from me. My paranoia was getting the better of me.
“She can’t hurt you now,” Viv had assured me. But she was wrong. Chanel had already hurt me. My honor was in question, my reputation suspect. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire—that’s what people would think. And the kids… Eli had been aloof since the conversation I’d had with both of them, but Tarryn seemed downright disgusted.
I glanced at the digital clock on the bedside table: 3:42 A.M. Eli would be home from work by now. I hadn’t heard him come in, evidence that I must have dozed off for at least a few minutes. He’d been instructed to set the alarm once he was inside, but had he remembered? It was a new system, and he wasn’t in the habit. And Eli always seemed so far away, so in his head. Throwing off the blankets, I got up.
As predicted, he had forgotten to set the alarm. “It can’t protect us if you don’t turn it on,” I grumbled to myself. I’d give Eli a stern lecture on responsibility in the morning. I punched in the code—our birth months in order from oldest to youngest—arming the system. My family could sleep secure in the knowledge that I was here, on guard, protecting them. I paused in the living room. Moonlight slipped through the front blinds, giving the darkened space a faint glow. Everything was so silent, so peaceful. Viv talked about mindfulness, about the present moment, but I wasn’t into that stuff. Still, I drank in the stillness, the knowledge that, in this moment at least, there was nothing to fear. And then, my stomach growled.
I went to the kitchen and turned on the lights inset under the cupboards. They provided a gentle illumination; the overhead pot lights would have been too bright and jarring. I would make a sandwich, I decided. There was leftover chicken in the fridge. And a ripe avocado in the blue porcelain bowl Viv kept on the island. I would pile on the mayo. Viv scolded me, said it was bad for my cholesterol, but nothing was going to disturb her slumber tonight. I pulled open the door of our Thermador fridge.
The shriek that came out of me sounded feral, almost catlike. I had never made a sound like that before, but I had never seen anything like this before. Not in my home. Not in my fucking fridge! I slammed the door closed, pressing myself against the center island, letting my heart rate return to normal.
“Fuck,” I muttered to the empty room. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
After a few moments, I opened the fridge door again and looked at the offending object.
It was a dead rat, its entrails spilling out of its body and onto the white porcelain plate.
Eli
THE NOISE WOKE me up. I wasn’t sure what it was—a raccoon being hit by a car? A cat being attacked by a dog? The scream didn’t sound human. But the string of curse words that followed it did. It was my dad.
I sat up in bed, my heart hammering in my chest. I was about to go downstairs, to find out what had made him cry out like a small animal. But then I heard him slamming around, banging cupboard doors and the lid of the garbage can. His fear had morphed into annoyance. Clearly, there was nothing to worry about.
Lying back down, I tried to fall asleep, but the thumps, the muttered swearing continued. It was almost like Dad wanted to wake us all up. At the very least, he didn’t care if he did. I kept waiting for my mom’s voice. She was a light sleeper and would surely be woken up by the clatter downstairs. But I didn’t hear her. Somehow, she was sleeping through the whole thing. She’d been really exhausted from everything going on. I guess she was wiped out.
As it often did, my mind drifted back to Arianna. When I’d returned home from work, I’d gone straight to the shower, my mind stuck on that moment between us. Her body pressed against mine, the scent of her… it had been too much for me to take. And I hadn’t been with a girl in months. There had been a couple of hookups at college—okay, five hookups at college—but no one since the night of the hazing. And no one, ever, who compared to Arianna.
My chest constricted with a longing that was not just physical. I wanted to sleep with her, but I wanted more than that. I wanted to be with her again, like a couple. I wanted to open up to her, to tell her how alone I felt, how sick and afraid. And she wanted to be with me, too. In her heart, I knew she did. But she wouldn’t give me another chance because of my parents. They’d made her feel like she wasn’t good enough. They’d made her feel second-class.
But my parents didn’t know that their son was a piece of shit. That he’d stood by and watched a kid get raped with a wooden paddle. And now he was too much of a coward to do anything about it. Arianna would have tried to stop it. She wo
uld have gone to the college administration. She was a thousand times better a person than I was.
Folding my pillow over my head, I tried to block out the sound of my dad’s tantrum. It was only then that I realized my pillow was damp. With tears.
I was crying like a little kid.
Viv
THOMAS AND I sat at the table with our coffee cups, waiting for the police to arrive. It was seven thirty on a Saturday morning. The kids would be asleep for hours yet, but we kept our voices low.
“Who would do this?” I asked. “Who would break into our house?”
“It’s those fucking kids! They’re fearless. They know nothing’s going to happen to them. They know that Mommy and Daddy will protect them.”
I took a sip of coffee and shuddered. Thomas had been awake all night, so he’d made it far too strong. “Can you play the footage again?” I asked.
My husband had his iPad propped up on the table. He hit the security camera app and we leaned in, peering at the screen. At 1:28 A.M., three hooded figures appeared on the road in front of our home. They stood talking for a few moments before one of them darted to the right, disappearing off camera. The other two moved on and were soon out of view.
Our harassers knew the cameras’ blind spots by now, knew where to stand to avoid detection. And as usual, the three individuals were completely impossible to identify. The perpetrators could be any age, any gender, any height, any race. The cameras were useless, serving only to unnerve me with their creepy recordings.
“We need more cameras in the back,” Thomas said. “And I thought that window was secure. I’m sorry.”
The intruder had entered our home through the laundry room window. We’d found it slightly ajar; the locking mechanism that Thomas had installed to stop it from sliding wide open had fallen off the sill and down behind the washing machine.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “But maybe we should move Tarryn back upstairs?”
“Good idea.”
“Will you tell her?”
“She already hates me,” Thomas said. “I may as well.”
“Eli has to remember to set the alarm when he comes home late. It would have gone off and scared them away. The security company would have called the police.”
“He’s going to get an earful when he wakes up.”
“Don’t be too hard on him.” I pushed my cup away. “You know he’s sensitive.”
Thomas rolled his eyes slightly, but didn’t comment.
“What if…” I swallowed the thickness in my throat. “What if it wasn’t kids, this time?”
“It was, Viv. Who else would it be?”
“But this is next level. Breaking and entering? A mutilated rat?”
“They’re getting braver.”
I took a deep breath through my nose. “You missed the deadline to pay Chanel. And then a dead rat ended up in our fridge.”
“It’s a coincidence. She’s not going to go from sending e-mails to breaking into our house.”
My heart rate was escalating with dread, but I had to ask.… “You didn’t hurt her, did you? I need to know the truth.”
My husband’s face reddened. “Oh my god! You know I would never do that.”
“But you were so drunk. And she’s so angry. She’s trying to ruin you. If you didn’t hurt her, then why?”
“I don’t know why!” Thomas’s chair screeched across the floor as he stood up. “I’ve been up all night protecting this family. If you think I’m really capable of something like that…” He ran his hands roughly over his stubble. “I don’t fucking know, Viv. I just…”
He was on the verge of tears. Thomas never cried. He never broke down. Like many men his age, feelings of hurt, fear, or desolation manifested in anger.
“I’m sorry.” I stood and tried to go to him, but he was already moving away.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he said. “Let me know when the cops get here.”
Tarryn
MY MOUTH WAS furry and coated, my head pounding. I opened one sandy eye and saw the Mountain Dew bottle on the dresser, and the empty pickle jar on the floor. Oh god…
Last night’s events were hazy and unfocused, but I felt distinctly apprehensive, subtly ashamed: drinker’s remorse. What had I done? I didn’t want to think about it, not right now. I needed to go back to sleep for at least an hour, maybe two. Then I would feel human again. But the people whose voices I heard outside my window seemed to have different plans.
Rolling over, I opened my eyes and listened. Their words weren’t decipherable, but I recognized the authoritative hum of male voices, my mom’s shrill interjections. The police were here—again. This was becoming a regular occurrence. When the cops got dispatched to my house, they probably rolled their eyes. Not the Adlers again. Like people weren’t being robbed and raped and murdered all over the city. But my mom and dad insisted we needed law enforcement to deal with some stupid mischief.
What had happened now? It had to be worse than eggs or graffiti if the police were here. That meant it had something to do with my dad. If he really was a violent misogynist, if he really had hurt that woman, then he deserved all he got. The rest of us were just collateral damage.
But I was hungover, exhausted, and totally over it. I was done wondering who was behind it, done worrying what they’d do next. They could burn the house down with all of us in it, for all I cared. Because I was totally alone now. My friends had abandoned me to reach for the brass popularity ring; and my camming community, the place where I had felt adored, accepted, even worshipped, had evaporated. One by one, my viewers had disappeared.
Fuck them. Fuck everyone.
I snuggled deeper into my covers, reaching for sleep, when the events of last night snaked their way into my memory. “Oh no, no, no,” I groaned out loud, as I thought about what I had done. Mr. McLaughlin… I’d gone to his house. I’d met his wife. I’d heard his baby cry. What had I said to him? What had I accused him of? I’d gotten it all so wrong, and I was mortified.
Clearly, I was going to have to change schools. But that could wait until classes resumed in September. Right now, I only cared about one thing: finding out who had been watching me in real life, who had been sending me the messages online. It wasn’t my English teacher—I knew that now for certain—so there was only one other possibility: Bryce Ralston. And I was going to make him pay.
I pulled the covers over my head to drown out the voices and closed my eyes.
Thomas
I WAS JITTERY from lack of sleep, hopped up on caffeine and adrenaline as I maneuvered the BMW through traffic. It was a bit reckless, but I had an open house at eleven, and I wasn’t going to make it on time. The cops had arrived around nine thirty, had gone through the motions, inspecting the laundry room window, looking for footprints, dusting for fingerprints.…
I’d shown them the rat in the trash can.
“Looks like the work of a cat,” one of the officers said.
“Well, a cat didn’t put it in my fridge,” I’d retorted.
“Obviously not,” he’d replied calmly. “But there’s a significant difference between someone finding a dead rat that was killed by a cat and putting it in your fridge, and someone killing and mutilating that rat in order to put it in your fridge.”
“Right,” I said sheepishly. I supposed that was marginally less psychotic. The officers exchanged a look, then continued their superficial inspection.
They didn’t care, not really, and I couldn’t blame them. In the grand scheme of things, this was not a major crime. But to me, it was the ultimate violation. Someone had invaded my home, stalked through my sleeping house to leave a gory message for me. What if Viv had gone into the fridge before I had? She would have had a heart attack… literally. My wife was already struggling with anxiety and sleeplessness brought on by the lawsuit, the blackmail, the never-ending harassment.
What if it wasn’t kids this time?
I’d assured my wife that it had to
be. I’d become angry and defensive when she’d questioned me about Chanel. But I’d been trying to protect her. Viv was on edge, wasn’t sleeping without sedatives. I couldn’t admit that I agreed with her. An adult, someone who meant business, was out to get us now. I hadn’t heard a word from Chanel since I’d refused to pay. I’d been naïve to think she’d just go away. She was showing me that she could get to me. And to my family. I hadn’t choked or bitten her—I knew that for sure—but had I hurt her in some other way?
The night was still a blank, but I simply wasn’t capable. I’d been blackout drunk in college a couple of times, and no one had ever accused me of violence. I’d been stupid, a buffoon, but totally benign. If Chanel wanted to hurt me, she had. She’d humiliated me. My daughter hated me. I’d already lost one client. But… what if that wasn’t enough for her?
“Hey, Siri,” I said. “Call Emma.”
The phone rang several times. It was Saturday—Emma didn’t officially work Saturdays, but she’d usually help us out in a pinch. She’d been a bit cool toward me lately, ever since I sold the Hancock place. Maybe I should have given her a bonus out of my commission. Her staging had been instrumental, after all. But that money was now earmarked for the lawsuit. Like everyone in my universe, Emma had received the e-mail about the blackmail. She might be too disgusted to work for me anymore.
“Hey, Thomas.” Her greeting was cold, but at least she’d answered.
“Hi, Emma, sorry to disturb you on the weekend, but I need your help.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to make it to the open house on Webber Street by eleven. Could you open up for me? I’ll be there by noon at the latest.”
“I have plans with my fiancé.”
“I know it’s a lot to ask. I just…” My voice cracked. “It’s urgent, Emma. There’s some serious shit going on in my personal life.”
There was a long pause while she debated bailing me out of yet another mess. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m leaving at noon.”
The Perfect Family Page 18