My Darling Husband

by Kimberly Belle

  “Because the Ring is a separate app.”

  The only problem—and it’s a big one—is that the Ring app is saved on the third page. If I direct him there, he’ll spot all the other apps, including the one stupidly labeled “iSpy.” Footage from three hidden nanny cams, providing full-color, high-definition, 110-degree views of the playroom upstairs. Undeniable, irrefutable proof that I looked this man in the eyes just now and lied.

  “If you swipe down on the screen, you can search for it.”

  “I know how to work an iPhone, Jade.”

  His sarcasm gets zero reaction from me. I hold my breath and sit stock-still as he drags a finger down the screen, the movement slow and obstinate, like Baxter when I remind him to wash behind his ears. But the man doesn’t go flipping around the pages, doesn’t go searching for the app himself. When he ticks in those four little letters in the search bar, my lungs release in a soft whoosh.

  “Why are there so many people on your street? One, two, three, four, five, six—no, seven bodies that I can see. And what the heck are your neighbors doing? How many kids do they have?”

  Five, but they live part-time with their dad. I always know when it’s Tanya’s turn because she lets them run off steam in the yard.

  I stare at the countertop, silent.

  Except for an occasional burst of angry breath, Beatrix is silent, too, the sounds much like the ones she makes whenever Cam or I discipline her. Beatrix’s quick mind rarely needs me to explain things. She understands, as I do, that silence is a weapon of control—our only one in this horror show.

  Baxter twists on my lap, blinking his big blue eyes at mine. “But, Mommy, what about the Santa cams?”

  Sweet, sweet Baxter. This is why he will never know about the nanny cams, and why we hid them in places neither child would ever think to look: in the speaker hanging from a wall, behind a fake clock on the shelf, in a dummy fire alarm anchored to the ceiling. Because Baxter is the sweetest, most trusting, blabbermouth on the planet.

  Behind the black knit of the mask, the man’s eyes go small and squinty. “What Santa cams?”

  I gesture to a square, white device in the keeping room behind me, wedged in the corner of the ceiling. It picks up on my movement, and a red light winks. “The motion sensors have a direct line to Santa’s workshop, but there’s no app on my phone. Santa is the only one who can see.”

  The man’s lips spread in a smile so wide, the corners disappear behind the fabric. “That’s... I have to give it to you, Jade, that’s pretty near genius. No joke. So dang clever I wish I’d thought of it myself. Not that my house is anywhere near as fancy as this one is, but that’s some real smart parenting right there. Really, really good job.”

  What am I supposed to say—thank you? Please don’t tell my kids there’s no Santa?

  But I also don’t miss the information he slipped in there, maybe on purpose, maybe by accident. That his house is not as nice as mine. The implication that he’s a parent. The kids might not have noticed, but I did, and it thrills me. It tells me if I’m patient enough, he might just blurt out more.

  “But I guess that’s bad news for me, though, huh? Means I’m on the naughty list.”

  Baxter gasps. Beatrix doesn’t respond.

  The man wriggles a grape off the stem and pops it in his mouth. “But okay, kids, this is another teachable moment, so listen up. Let’s talk about the lesson here. When I asked your mom about the sixth camera, what did she do?” He surveys the kids while chewing another grape.

  No one responds.

  Baxter wriggles around to face him. The talk of Santa has perked him up some.

  The man cups a palm around the lump that is his right ear. “What’s that, Beatrix? You said she didn’t lie?” He leans back and grins some more. “Smart girl. Your mom didn’t make up some story or try to trick me with the Ring. She passed the test. When I confronted her with the discrepancy, she told me the truth. And do you know why she did that?”

  The mask is making him hard to read. Animated eyes, smiling mouth chomping away at a mouthful of grapes—but none of it’s real. This man is a performer, shrugging in and out of character faster than I can keep up, switching up his demeanor like a summer storm, light to dark then back again. I have zero idea what he’s thinking.

  Baxter, though, is warming up to him. This man’s tone, his campy grin—Baxter only sees what he sees: a smiling adult in our house, cracking jokes and eating our food. So what if he’s wearing a mask? Spider-Man wears a mask. Batman and the Ninja Turtles wear masks. In all our talks about stranger danger, we’ve never covered what happens if the stranger comes into the house. He only knows that home is a safe place, where the adults are both authorities and protectors. In his six-year-old brain, none of this makes any sense.

  He sits up straighter on my lap. “No. How come?”

  It’s like he didn’t speak. The man stares at Beatrix, who is not fooled like her little brother. She glares across the counter at the masked man, and the air around her charges.

  “Leave her alone,” I say, on high alert. “This has nothing to do with Beatrix.”

  The man’s showman smile vanishes. “Yes, it does. This has everything to do with her. If the four of us are going to get through this afternoon in one piece, I need all of you to understand that you have to be truthful. I need to know that she’s not going to be constantly trying to slip something by me. Something like...oh, I don’t know, sneaking a cell phone from her mama’s bag when she thinks I’m not looking.”

  First of all, get through the afternoon...what does that even mean? Cam doesn’t get home until well past midnight. This situation can’t possibly sustain itself until then.

  I straighten up. Level my gaze at him. Wrap my arm around my daughter like a seat belt.

  “She understands, okay? She gets it.” My voice is loud and strong, surprisingly fierce in the quiet kitchen. It’s stupid, I know, to use this tone with a masked man wielding a gun, but my sole priority here is my children. Their safety. Their mental well-being—assuming we make it out of here alive. Hearing the steady calm in my voice will keep them centered. “Please just...just talk to me. Leave the kids out of it.”

  The man plunks an elbow on the counter and leans in. “I’d love to do that, but you know as well as I do that children need boundaries. They need to learn that for every action, there is a consequence. Do you understand what I’m saying here?”

  “I understand,” I say, but it’s not my answer he’s looking for.

  It’s Beatrix’s.

  The man stands there, waiting, while in my mind I tick off the sharpest, most deadly weapons in the house. The knives, the cast-iron pans in the drawer, the tools hanging from Cam’s workbench downstairs. Even if I could somehow manage to get to one, can it go up against a gun? I’d have to catch this guy off guard, sink the blade in the fleshy part of his throat or an eyeball, bury it deep before he even noticed it was coming—a challenge with a man so big, so broad, his eyes ever watching from behind the mask. The timing would have to be perfect, my attack smooth and without hesitation. Not exactly a master plan.

  And then something else occurs to me, something that sends up a sour, bitter wave.

  If I get myself killed, who will watch out for my children?

  “Beatrix,” the man says, leveling his gaze on my daughter. “I asked you a question. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Answer him, baby. Nod. Let him know you understand.

  Beatrix’s chin quivers, but she doesn’t otherwise move. She stares straight ahead, breathing hard.

  Frustration mixes with fear mixes with pride. Beatrix is stubborn, just like her father. She has been since the second she came screaming into the world, fists slinging. Just last month, she went through a phase where she existed on saltines and air, where no matter how much I begged or prodded or threatened or coaxed or
cried, she refused to take so much as a single bite of anything else. A chef’s daughter, and the pickiest eater ever. She wore me down, every single night. The calories in a pack of saltines may be empty, but at least they’re calories.

  And now...

  Now I recognize that look on her face—the squinty eyes, the puckered mouth—and it terrifies me because I know what it means.

  “So you’re one of those, huh?”

  Beatrix frowns. Her expression says, One of what? but she’s too proud to say the words out loud. Her left-hand fingers are going nuts, tapping out a silent melody against her thigh—something she does when she’s bored or nervous or uncomfortable.

  The man knocks his skull with a knuckle, then leans with both arms onto the counter. “A hard nut to crack.” His arms are crossed at the wrist, the gun held casually in a fist. It jiggles as he talks, and the positioning is purposeful. “Obstinate. Headstrong. Admirable traits when they come in small doses, but beware, young lady. They can also be your downfall.”

  I stare at the gun, tracing a line between the muzzle and a freckle just above Beatrix’s left brow. One tweak to the trigger and there’s a hole in my daughter’s head. The thought snags on repeat through my brain and echoes.

  If this man shoots my daughter, I will murder him.

  “So now I am gonna need an answer. A clear yes or no. I need to know you heard what I was saying just now about rules and boundaries. I need to know that I can count on you to follow them. Can I do that, Beatrix? Can I trust you not to do anything crazy?”

  “The phone’s mine,” I say, tensing up on my chair. “Whatever you need to say, leave her out—”

  “Shh.” The man punctuates the hiss with a flick of the gun in my direction. The laughing, chummy jokester from a few minutes ago is long gone, discarded like a crumpled napkin. The bastard aims the gun at my daughter’s head, and I brace, half expecting the pop of a gunshot, the gritty smell of gunpowder.

  But there’s nothing, only horrible quiet.

  I breathe through a flash of scalding panic.

  “Answer the question, Beatrix. Can I trust you or not?”

  I nudge Beatrix’s chest with my elbow. Give her knee a painful squeeze. The tapping stops, and her fingers freeze, then stiffen on her thigh.

  Beatrix, for the love of God. Say yes to the man with the gun. Answer him.

  Beatrix’s chest heaves. Her hands ball into tight fists, her silent struggle obvious. This is Beatrix arming for combat. Planting her flag, sticking to her guns. The seconds stretch, swelling with a torturous silence. Even Bax leans across me to prod her with a finger in the arm.

  “Beatrix, please,” I whisper. “Please.”

  “Yeah.” She frowns at the cheese sticks sweating on the paper towels, the bunches of untouched grapes, and sighs. “You can trust me.” The I guess is silent but unmistakable.

  The man straightens. Nods. Eats another grape, and that’s that.

  I wilt with relief, even though I know my daughter, and I know she doesn’t mean a single word.

  S E B A S T I A N

  3:39 p.m.

  That Beatrix kid is a trip. Sneaking the phone out of her mama’s bag, slipping it into those ruffly denim shorts. Like I wouldn’t notice the iPhone-sized lump in her pocket, or the way her freckles lit up like stars when she passed the thing to Jade. I’m not blind. I saw her hand move to her mama’s lap, how when it landed, Jade jerked to attention in her chair. I saw every bit of it.

  Then her face when I asked if I could trust her. Even with the gun I’ve been waving around like a stick of dynamite, this old Beretta Cougar I dug out of storage especially for today, the kid just sat there. Clamping down on her molars, cussing me out with her eyes, looking for all the world like she’d swallowed her tongue just to spite me. My Gigi used to look at me like that, too, when she was about Beatrix’s age. I looked at her and I saw my daughter’s face and, damn, it was hard to keep mine straight.

  But what Beatrix hasn’t quite figured out yet is that stubborn streak of hers? It’s not a strength but a weakness. It makes her predictable. Easy to manipulate, like kid-shaped putty in my hands. These next few hours are going to be a lot of fun pulling that kid’s strings.

  “Let’s go.” I direct the words to Jade, but it’s Beatrix I’m looking at, and not just from the corner of my eye. She’s the one I’ll be keeping my eye on.

  Jade’s arm tightens around the little guy on her lap. Baxter—what kind of sissy name is that for a boy? Poor kid probably gets the shit beat out of him on the playground. Beatrix, too, though she seems like the nerdy type, an awkward loner who reads a book while all the other kids play. Her gaze sticks to me like a shadow.

  Jade frowns. “Go where? Where are we going?”

  She looks nothing like she did the first time I met her, at the opening for Cam’s restaurant on the West Side. That night she looked like she’d stepped out of a magazine, all glossy hair and glittery makeup and this complicated silver dress that had to cost more than what a normal person pays for a month’s rent. She shook my hand, and even with all the people and the commotion, I heard those diamond bracelets rattling. I remember thinking she’d better be careful on the way to her car. A good $50K on that one arm alone. Prime mugging material.

  Now, though, in those workout clothes, I barely recognize her. Her hair is loose and wild around her head, her face bare but for two pink spots high on her cheeks. The jewelry is gone, too—only a watch, a diamond wedding band and a honker of a stud perched on each ear. Worlds apart from that flouncy Barbie I saw hanging from Cam’s arm. Prettier, too. For a fleeting second, I wonder if I misjudged her.

  I gesture to the snacks spread across the bar. “Aren’t y’all going to eat?”

  “My husband will be home soon,” she says, ignoring the food, my question. “He’s home for dinner every night. Take whatever you want and leave, and I’ll forget you were ever here.”

  I lean an elbow on the bar, gesturing with the gun. “And here we were doing so well just now. Your husband doesn’t come home for dinner, ever. Don’t lie to me. Your children understand this. Why can’t you?”

  She presses her lips into a straight line, and I squint, studying her face. Does she recognize me?

  I’m pretty sure the answer is no, though it’s not for lack of trying. Her eyes have followed me since the second she saw me in the garage. I’ve seen the way she’s examined my build, clocking the shape of my eyes and my lips and skin and whatever else she can see of my face. I saw her ticking off my features one by one, searching her memory banks for a match. Jade’s one of those people whose every thought plays out on her face, which means that so far, she hasn’t made the connection.

  I straighten, and my gaze sweeps the windows on the back side of the house, checking the view onto the driveway and fenced-in backyard—both deserted. Nothing out there but some squirrels and that big-ass pool, the water like shimmering black glass. It’s the front of the house I have to worry about—a solid wall of windows and glass doors.

  “Now come on. We need to get our asses upstairs.”

  Jade frowns, her pretty forehead crumpling. “Why...why do you want to go upstairs?”

  “What do you think your neighbors will say when they see a guy in a ski mask marching through your living room? We’re okay here, but the rest of this place is like a fish tank.”

  That’s what a couple million bucks in this town will get you—a palace high on a hill where every space winds into the next through mammoth, open doorways. Only three rooms on this level provide any sort of privacy: the master on the back end, the TV room behind Jade and the kids, and the kitchen I’ve parked us in. Other than that, it’s a straight shot for anyone outside looking in, up the yard and through the windows into the library, the dining room, the foyer and living room beyond. Fifty solid feet of unobstructed visibility from the street.

 
And I’ve cased this house often enough to know who’s out there. Bikers. Runners. Neighbors walking their prissy dogs.

  I point to the ceiling. “What’s up there, bedrooms?”

  I know what’s up there. I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t be here without having done my homework. Three giant bedrooms, three full baths lined with marble and tile, ten times more closet space than I ever had even in my nicest house, and along the entire back side of the house, a mack daddy home theater stocked with toys. Blackout curtains, reclinable theater seating, soundproofing in the floor and walls and ceiling. That’s where we’re going.

  At the last word—bedrooms—Jade’s eyes go big and wide, darting from her kids to the stairs on the other side of the wall. She can’t stop touching the kids—shielding them with an arm, hugging them to her chest. “Why...why do you want to take us upstairs?”

  I roll my eyes, curl my lips in exaggerated disgust just so we’re clear. Jade may be easy on the eyes, but she’s not my type, and only a real sicko would touch a child that way. “Get your mind out of the gutter, lady, and answer the question.”

  “The kids’ rooms are upstairs. A guest room. The media and playroom.” Her voice is thin and shaky, her muscles twitching under her skin like a horse, flicking away flies. She doesn’t understand what’s happening here—not yet. But she will.

  “Any alarm pads up there?”

  She shakes her head. “I just told you there are only two, both downstairs.”

  Staring down a gun and she can still summon up some sass. Any other time I might appreciate Jade’s spunk, but not today. Today I can’t get distracted by anything trivial.

  “And cameras?”

  She points to her cell phone, black against the bright white marble. “You already saw the camera feeds on my phone. All six of them.”

  “Answer the question.” I slow down my words, wrap my lips and tongue around them and let them fly like poison darts. “Are there. Any more. Cameras?”