“Aaron, stop!” I said, pulling on his arm. “Stop this!”
When Olive sank to her knees, he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her across the floor and into the kitchen. Olive shrieked in pain. From my arms, Evie echoed her, crying out in fear.
“What are you doing?” I cried. “Aaron, let her go!”
I quickly put Evie in her high chair and tried to yank Aaron’s arm, to loosen his hold on Olive. But he easily lifted Olive by the arm and dragged her over to the pantry door under the stairs. He opened it, saw nothing but boxes of cereal, dried beans and pearl barley, and closed it again. He lugged Olive over to the laundry room door and opened it.
“What’s this?” he shouted over the girls’ screams.
“Just the laundry room,” I said. “There’s nothing there.”
He pulled Olive inside the room and tapped a foot on the trapdoor in the floor. The door to the cellar comprised part of the laundry room floor, but knowing that dark hole lay beneath it, I wouldn’t stand on it any more than I would stand on a person’s grave. An impressively large spider crawled up from under it.
“What’s under this?” Aaron asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “The old cistern.”
“That’ll do.”
“No!” Olive screamed, writhing in his grip to escape. “Dad, please, no!”
“Aaron, for god’s sake, stop it!” I took his arm again, but he shoved me against the wall, winding me. I sank to the floor as I tried to catch my breath.
Still holding Olive’s arm tightly with one hand, Aaron bent down and pulled up the trapdoor to reveal the short flight of stairs. “Go on,” he said, pushing Olive toward them.
“Please!” I said, standing. “Aaron, stop it!”
He gave Olive another push and she stumbled toward the stairs, putting a hand on the wall to stop herself from falling.
“Either you walk down,” Aaron said, “or I force you down.”
“Aaron,” I said, raising my voice over Olive’s sobs and Evie’s screams, “don’t do this.”
Aaron didn’t answer. He all but lifted Olive by the arm and walked her down the steps. When she resisted, crying out, he pushed her down the remaining stairs. She landed in a heap on the cellar floor, her shoulder hitting the packed soil, and grunted in pain.
“Aaron, what are you doing?” I cried.
“You’re not thinking straight,” Aaron told Olive. “You need a time-out to think about things, about what’s best for you. Living with Madison is not what’s best for you. When you understand that, and stop all this nonsense, you can come out.”
“I understand now,” she said, starting to climb the stairs, her voice rising in desperation. “I won’t live with Madison. I know she’s a crazy bitch.”
Crazy bitch. My god. I saw my tween self within Olive, desperate to please my mother, calling my father an asshole and offering her stories of how idiotic he had acted on a visit, to avoid her rage. But it wasn’t working for Olive any more than it had for me. Aaron pulled Olive by the arm down the stairs again, then jogged back up.
Olive looked up at me, her face red and tear-streaked, her eyes yellowed and wild in confusion, as if she was snared within a night terror. “Kira, please help—”
But Aaron slammed the door down with a bang, trapping her.
30
As Olive screamed below us, I tried to pull up the trapdoor, but Aaron pushed me out of the way. The door dropped from my hand, sending up plumes of dust and, wafting from below, the sickly sweet smell of something dead, likely the desiccated body of a mouse that had stumbled on the rodent poison Nathan left out in the cellar.
“Aaron, for god’s sake! Let Olive out. She’s terrified.”
“She threatened to leave me, to live with Madison.”
Jesus, he was pouting. I studied his face. It was like I was talking to another personality within Aaron, someone I’d never met before, a child. A sulking, dangerous child.
I flung a hand toward the door at our feet. “So you hit her? You drag her across the floor? You throw her in the cellar?”
Olive’s whimpers rose from below us.
“She needs to understand,” he said. “She can’t leave me.” He waved a hand before continuing. “Anyway, once you talk to her and to the social workers and help me straighten things out, it’ll be fine. And when custody is all ironed out, we can get married. Then it will just be the four of us. Me and my girls.”
He was delusional. How had I never seen it before?
“We’re done, Aaron,” I said, more to myself than to him. “We are so done.”
“No,” he said. “No. We have our lives ahead of us.” He smiled strangely, vacantly, his eyes a little lost, like a person with dementia. “We’re going to get married.”
I laughed at that, and his smile fell. “You’re exactly the man Madison said you were,” I said. “I can’t believe I bought into all your bullshit.”
He gripped my arm. “It appears you need a little persuading,” he said. He forced me back into the kitchen, but stopped short when he saw Nathan standing there, his hand protectively on Evie’s crown.
I felt an overwhelming sense of relief on seeing him. Nathan must have been over at Teresa’s, or hiding in between our two houses, listening in, and heard Olive’s screams. If you need me, I’ll be here, he’d said. He never had any intention of leaving me alone with Aaron.
“Let go of her,” he said now, gritting his teeth.
“Fuck off.” Aaron’s hold on me only got stronger. “This is none of your business.”
“This is everyone’s business,” Nathan said. He shoved Aaron’s shoulder. “Take your hands off her.”
“Get out of this house,” Aaron commanded.
Nathan took another swaggering step toward Aaron so they were standing nearly chest to chest. “I said, let go of her!”
When I tried ducking away to get to Evie, Aaron hauled me back and thrust me down into a kitchen chair hard enough that I nearly fell over. From her high chair, Evie cried out.
Nathan didn’t hesitate. He took a swing at Aaron, landing a fist to his jaw, and for that instant everything went slow-mo, like those ugly replays of a boxer getting punched. Aaron’s face was all bent out of shape, spittle flying, his face turned by the blow. And then time sped up again as Aaron took Nathan by the shoulders and, throwing his body weight against him, bashed the back of Nathan’s skull against the wall. Nathan fell on all fours, dazed.
Jesus. “I’m phoning the cops,” I said, grabbing my phone from my bag, forgetting for the moment that there was no reception here.
“Oh, no, you’re not.” Aaron gripped my hand, squeezing until it hurt, and I let the phone drop to the floor. Then he stomped on my cell twice, cracking the casing.
I nursed my bruised hand as I picked up the heavy black receiver of the old rotary phone. Aaron seized the cradle, yanking it until the cord pulled out of the wall, then, seeing Nathan attempting to stand, swung it at him hard. I heard a sickening thud as the phone’s base smacked the back of Nathan’s head. He collapsed onto the floor, face first.
Aaron slammed the phone back on the gossip table.
When I scrambled to plug the cord back into the wall jack and started dialing, my fingers fumbling in the rotary dial, Aaron picked up Evie from the high chair and carried her over to the old farmhouse sink, turned on the faucet and put in the plug. Water quickly began collecting.
I put the receiver back in its cradle. “Aaron, what are you doing?”
“Persuading you to stay—to cooperate.”
“Evie doesn’t need a bath,” I said, keeping my voice level, trying to inject sanity into the situation. I glanced at Nathan, unconscious but breathing on the floor. A welt had begun to form on the back of his head. “Teresa bathed her last night before bed. Let me have her, please.”
When I reached for her, Aaron turned his back on me as he tested the temperature of the water with his wrist, like a good father would. Evie sobbed in his arms.
“For god’s sake, Aaron,” I said. “Aaron, stop!”
“You’re not going to phone the police,” he said, like I was being silly. He lay Evie on the kitchen table and smiled as he spoke calmly and assuredly, as if brokering a business deal. “And I know you don’t want to leave me.”
“You’re insane,” I said.
“Not insane,” he said, pulling off Evie’s underpants and diaper. “I’m just a family man who will do whatever it takes to keep his family together.” He lifted my baby, naked, to his chest.
I started for the door. “I’m getting my neighbors.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, carrying Evie to the sink.
“I won’t be bullied into staying with you,” I said. “Not like Olive.” Not like Madison or Sarah.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Kira, I’m not bullying you,” Aaron said. “I’m simply giving my baby a bath, to calm her down.”
“Aaron, please—” I reached for Evie, but Aaron blocked my way with his body. He sank her lovingly into the water, as he had so many times in the past, careful to support her neck and cooing to her as he did so, only this time he allowed her head to submerge much more fully. The water ringed around her tiny face.
“Now,” he said. “You don’t really want to leave me, do you?”
Over his shoulder, I watched the water wash over Evie’s face, and she looked up at me, wide-eyed, from beneath the surface.
31
As Aaron held Evie under the water, her little arms flailed as she tried to right herself, to find breath. “Aaron!” I cried, clutching his arm, trying desperately to get to my baby, to stop him. “You’ll drown her.”
Olive, hearing us from below, screamed out. “Daddy, don’t hurt Evie!”
“Please,” I said. “Please don’t kill her.”
“Only if you promise to stay,” he said. “If you leave, there’s nothing for me. I won’t lose my family again. I can’t lose my family. Not a fourth time.”
A fourth time? He was thinking not just of Sarah, Madison and me, but of the mother who had left him.
“I’ll stay!” I cried. “I’ll stay with you. Olive and I will both stay with you. Just stop!”
“You’ll help me convince Olive? You’ll support me in court?”
“Yes, yes, of course. Always.”
“Because if you don’t—”
“Daddy!” Olive cried out again from below, and Aaron lifted Evie’s head gently from the water as if the whole thing had been an accident. She sputtered and coughed.
I uttered a sob of relief, my heart slamming against my rib cage.
“She’s fine,” Aaron said. He smiled down at Evie. “You were born for water, weren’t you, sweetpea?”
Evie, catching her breath now, slapped the water as she did when we dunked under at our mom and baby swim sessions at the pool.
“That’s my Evie,” he said. “She’ll be a swimmer, a triathlete. I bet she does the Ironman. Get her a towel, will you?”
I stood there staring at Evie in the sink, shaking, not quite taking everything in.
“A towel,” Aaron said sharply, and I ran to the bathroom.
When I returned, I held the towel open for Evie. “Please let me take her,” I begged.
“Of course,” he said.
I wrapped the towel around her and held her close. And then I burst into tears.
When Aaron put a hand on my shoulder, I startled.
“It’s okay,” he said soothingly. “I’m not going to hurt you, or Evie. I just need you to understand. Come sit.” He took my hand and led me back to the kitchen table. I sat with Evie wrapped in my arms. From the cellar below, as if she too were submerged underwater, I heard Olive’s muted sobs and pleas to be let out.
“I regret our argument,” Aaron said, as if we had only had a lover’s spat. “Let’s put this to bed, all right? No more tears.”
I glanced at Nathan, still unconscious on the floor. Aaron, following my gaze, dismissed Nathan’s prone body with a wave of his hand. “I’ll say he broke in, accosted me in a jealous rage, and I had to defend myself, and you. You’ll confirm my story, of course.” When I didn’t immediately respond, his voice grew sharp. “You will confirm my story.”
I held Evie closer and nodded. “Yes,” I whispered.
“What was that?”
“Yes,” I said.
He reached over and tickled Evie until he got a smile out of her. “I can make you happy, Kira,” he said. “I have made you happy.”
Yes. Yes, he had. Even as he had lied to me and to his daughter about Madison and Sarah, as he had hidden his violent nature from us. He had made me happy even as some part of me must have known there was something deeply wrong with him. What was wrong with me?
“Let’s make this work,” he said. He held out a hand. Was I supposed to shake it, sealing a deal? For Evie, I would. To save Evie, I would. I took his hand and he squeezed it, then swung it as if we were skipping along a beach. “Good.” He stood and held out his arms. “Put Evie down,” he said.
I shook my head a little, staring at his feet. I wouldn’t let her go.
“I said, put Evie down!” he shouted.
I winced and put her on the floor. She left the towel behind and squealed in delight at going unclothed, slapping manically as she crawled across the kitchen floor. She stopped to pat Nathan’s head, as if to wake him, then, getting no response, pulled herself to standing at the gossip table and stuck her fingers in the dial of the phone.
Aaron yanked me up and to his chest, so close that I struggled to breathe. I squirmed, but he only held me tighter. He whispered in my ear. “We’ll all be happy together, Kira, if you stay.” He kissed the top of my head. “But if you don’t, we won’t be happy.”
As he held me, I stared past his shoulder, first at Nathan unconscious on the floor, then at Evie playing with the old rotary phone. When I was a child, I had imagined I could have conversations on it with people from the past, the dead.
Aaron kissed me again, on the lips this time, and I responded like I wanted it, putting on a good show. Fucking psycho, I thought. I kissed him long and lovingly while thinking, Fucking asshole. My passion for Aaron had once washed over me, a tsunami, when he arrived home from one of his trips and kissed me like that. Now his kiss made me feel sick with rage. When he stepped back, I wiped my mouth.
“That’s worth sticking around for, isn’t it?” he asked. He begged.
I nodded. But of course, I wasn’t planning on sticking around for his kisses. I was just keeping him onside long enough to figure out how we could escape safely, all of us. Evie was so little and trusting, and Olive was the opposite, so sure now of everything she knew and unwilling to play along. How could I get us all out of this house to safety without Aaron hurting anyone again?
Aaron stepped back, releasing me, and smiled that lovely, disarming smile, and there he was again, my Aaron, the one I thought I’d known. One of his nostrils was bigger than the other, and his long nose was just slightly bent to one side. Little imperfections that had made him easier to love somehow. I remembered thinking I would do anything—anything—to keep him smiling at me like that, to keep his attention focused on me. But now, in this moment, my only thought was how nicely my hands would fit around his slender neck.
32
There was a loud knock on the kitchen door, and then Teresa’s worried voice. “Kira?”
In the cellar below us, Olive’s pleas for help rose in volume when she heard Teresa.
“Kira, are you all right? Is Nathan still there?”
“Who’s that?” Aaron asked.
“Teresa, my neighbor.”
“Ah, the babysitter.”
“Kira?” Teresa called again, knocking harder this time. “Nathan and I heard screams and yelling. He was coming over to check on you. Is everything okay?”
“Get rid of her,” Aaron hissed. When I hesitated, he picked up Evie, wrapped the towel around her and carried h
er back over to the kitchen sink. “I said, get rid of her!”
I held out both hands. “Okay, okay.” Then, wiping the tears from my face as I turned to the door, I called, “Coming!” I opened the door, but just a crack, so that Teresa couldn’t see her son lying behind me.
Teresa was wearing a blue bathrobe and slippers, a set I recognized as a Mother’s Day gift from Nathan, her face puffy and creased from her pillow.
“Teresa,” I said wearily, “this isn’t a good time.”
She took in my tear-stained face. “I can see that.” Then she peered past me at Aaron. “What’s going on? Where’s Nathan? Do you need help?” From the concerned, determined expression on her face, I knew she meant, Should I phone the police?
“Everything’s fine,” I said quickly. “Nathan came by to check on us, but I convinced him to go home.”
“But he didn’t come back to my place for Buddy.”
“I imagine he forgot,” I said.
“He would never forget Buddy.”
I knew that. Nathan and that dog were inseparable. He even took Buddy to the construction sites he worked on.
I shrugged. “He said something about going home to see Ashley. Maybe he planned to come right back.”
She pursed her lips as we both listened to Olive’s cries for help beneath us. I could tell her to phone for help right now, but then what would Aaron do to Evie before the cops arrived? He was standing right there with her, beside the kitchen sink full of water. I thought of bears in that moment: on finding a female with a cub that wasn’t his, a male bear would kill the cub.
“The kids are overtired and wound up from last night,” I said. “As you can see, Aaron just gave Evie a bath to calm her down.”
“Did he now?” Teresa gripped her bathrobe at the neck to close it. “And the girl? Kira, I can hear her screaming for help.”
Aaron cleared his throat, reminding me to be careful about what I said next.
“Olive is having something of a temper tantrum,” I told Teresa. “Aaron is just giving her a time-out until she cools down.”
“A tantrum? At her age? She’s, what, thirteen?”
The Almost Wife Page 18