House of Glass

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Oh.” Jen tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. Why were they still in her home? “Maybe they’re just waiting until everyone’s in for the night, so they don’t call attention to themselves.”

  “Maybe. Though pulling up a car late at night has its own risks, if someone sees them. They’d be more likely to notice a strange car at three in the morning.”

  “Who’s up at three in the morning?” Jen demanded, and then wished she hadn’t, because the look Ted gave her conveyed what they both knew: that she was up at that hour as often as not. Lately, sleeping through the night had been nearly impossible for her; her doctor said it might be from perimenopause.

  “I think we need to prepare for the possibility that we might be stuck here overnight,” Ted said.

  “Oh, my God—there’s no way. They can’t just leave us down here—”

  Ted reached for her, gently pushing the hair from her eyes, tilting up her face to look at him. “I know, sweetheart, I know.” His voice was heavy with emotion. “But maybe the kids can get some rest, if we just try to make it seem as normal as possible.”

  “There’s nothing normal about this!” Jen felt the panic nipping at her. She wasn’t sure she could keep acting like nothing was wrong—pretending even for a few minutes with Teddy had exhausted her.

  “We can do this,” Ted said as though sensing what she was feeling. “Together. We’ll stay busy and keep our minds off it, okay? And you’re right—they could leave at any time. And meanwhile we can move stuff around to make it comfortable down here for the kids. We can set it up kind of like it used to be upstairs.”

  Jen looked around her at the crowded shelves, the furniture stacked up near the wall. When they’d bought the new living room furniture a couple years ago, Ted decided to sell the old stuff on Craigslist and dragged it all down to the basement, where it sat gathering dust. It had been one of their first arguments after he was laid off: Jen asked if he couldn’t finally get rid of all that junk now that he had time on his hands.

  “Okay,” she whispered, because she couldn’t think of anything better to do, especially since Livvy and Teddy were occupied with the play set, and she didn’t want to interrupt and risk upsetting them.

  First they took down the old dining room chairs, fussy dark walnut things with uncomfortable thin red damask cushions, and lined them up along the basement wall. The love seat was heavy and narrowly missed crushing Jen’s toe as it slid to the floor. They lifted the old coffee table down and set it next to the kids on the carpet.

  Ted searched the shelves for the nonperishable food he thought he’d stored during his emergency preparedness phase, and Jen dug out the old quilts her grandmother had made. She found them packed in a box on a high shelf, and laid them out on the sofa. Livvy looked up from the floor.

  “We’re going to sleep down here?” she asked, and then before Jen could answer, “What’s Daddy doing?”

  Jen followed her gaze. Ted was at the top of the stairs with a flashlight and a screwdriver. Little light carried up the stairs, and his face was shadowed as he poked around at the knob.

  Fear constricted Jen’s throat. If Ted managed to get the door open, he could get himself shot—or even worse, he might enrage the men upstairs, and invite their wrath on all of them. Before she could react, the door crashed open, sending Ted scrambling. The flashlight and screwdriver clattered down the wooden steps, and Ted cursed, falling a few steps until he was able to right himself by grabbing the handrail.

  The door banged against the wall and swung back. A man stood in the door frame, but Jen couldn’t tell if it was Dan or Ryan. Something glinted dully, but Jen didn’t realize it was a gun until it had gone off, the report echoing dully. The man disappeared back into the hall, slamming the door shut behind him.

  Jen raced up the steps. She heard Livvy screaming and the sound of the key turning on the other side of the door. Ted was holding his shin, muttering. Blood trickled down his forearm.

  “What happened? Are you hurt?” Jen heard the panic in her own voice and knew the kids could hear it, too. She forced herself to stay calm.

  “I’m fine.”

  “But the gun—he shot—”

  “Didn’t hit me. This is just from running into the handrail. I think he was just aiming for the wall.” Ted grimaced, wiping at the blood with the tail of his shirt. In the poor light Jen couldn’t see how bad it was. “Trying to make a point, I guess.”

  “Daddy, come down here!” Livvy wailed frantically, and behind her, Teddy started to cry.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ted said, getting up painfully and holding on to the handrail. Jen did her best to help him down the steps, as he favored his bruised hip. In the light she could see that the gash on his forearm wasn’t bad.

  Livvy seized her father’s good arm. “Daddy, you can’t go up there! They could have killed you!”

  “No, that was just...laying out the rules,” Ted said, managing a tight smile. “They never meant to hurt me. They’re not killers.”

  “How do you know that?” Livvy demanded as Jen went to Teddy, lifting him into her arms.

  “They’re just not.” Jen knew Ted was trying to reassure Livvy, to convince her they were safe. But even if the men fired this time as a warning, how could he be sure that next time they wouldn’t shoot to kill? “I don’t know what they want, but if they were going to hurt us they would have done it already. They’re probably just trying to figure out what’s worth taking.”

  Teddy whimpered against Jen’s neck, and she rocked him, trying to calm him, feeling guilty about the lie she’d told him.

  “That was scary, wasn’t it?” she asked quietly. “I don’t think I like this game anymore, do you?”

  Teddy shook his head against her neck. She felt the dampness of his tears against her skin. Looking around the room for something to distract him with, she had an idea.

  “Let’s do the wash, okay?” she said. “Do you want to help?”

  Teddy stopped snuffling and allowed her to put him down. “Laundry baseball,” he said, running for the basket of soiled towels.

  Laundry baseball was a game Jen had invented to keep Teddy occupied. She tossed items from the dirty laundry pile to him, and he batted them with a hollow plastic bat, sorting them into dark and light piles. She always had to sort them again afterward, but the sound of his laughter more than made up for the extra effort.

  Teddy found his bat under the folding table and swung it. Jen tossed the washcloths to him, and he batted them to the ground. She poured the detergent into the plastic cup and picked him up so he could empty it into the receptacle. They put the towels in together, and Jen held him so he could press the start button, and he watched as the water began to spray against the convex round window.

  She backed away cautiously, making sure he was truly distracted. He’d often stay rapt through most of the cycle when she let him, watching the slap of the drenched towels, the sloshing of the suds and waves of water.

  Ted and Livvy were picking the toys up off the floor and putting them back into the box, both looking dazed. Jen crouched next to Livvy and touched her shoulder, making her jump. “You’re doing fine, sweetheart,” she murmured. “You’re so good with Teddy. I’m so glad you’re here for him.”

  Livvy picked up the toys one at a time and tossed them into the box, her lips moving slightly, as if she were talking to herself.

  “Let’s let Livvy finish this up,” Jen said pointedly. Ted straightened up and they went back to the corner of the basement.

  “What were you thinking?” Jen hissed, the moment she judged herself out of range of Livvy hearing. “That was a crazy chance to take, Ted. You could have—”

  Ted held up his hands to stop her. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. It was...” He swallowed, looked away. “I thought maybe I could... I thought if so
mething happened, I could at least hold them off long enough, and you and the kids—” He slammed his fist into the sleeping bags stored on the shelf, making the shelves shake.

  “Ted, don’t!” But Livvy hadn’t looked up. She had slumped against the coffee table, and she was trying to untangle a length of string that was attached to a toy spacecraft. “Please. I need you to keep it together. All right. I understand, you wanted to do something—”

  “To stop them. To protect my family.”

  “And instead, now Livvy’s twice as scared.”

  “I didn’t know they were going to shoot—”

  “You didn’t know? Two guys come in our house with guns and you didn’t know it was a possibility? And then telling her that they’re not going to hurt us, practically guaranteeing it, how can she trust you? She’s not stupid, Ted, she has to know how bad this is, and lying to her isn’t going to help.”

  “I wasn’t lying, Jen, I just really didn’t think—don’t think—they have any intention of hurting us. If they got caught, that would make the charges against them so much worse. They know that. They aren’t some out-of-control tweakers looking for their next fix. They’ve got to have a plan.”

  “Maybe, or maybe it’s like you said—they saw the house and looked it up on the phone and came in here just to take whatever they could find. I don’t think we can assume they’ve got a plan at all.” There was something off about Ryan, a crazy burning intensity in his eyes. “They don’t seem...stable.”

  Ted frowned and rubbed a hand over his face. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and the day’s growth shadowed his face, making him look older. “Look, what do you want me to say here? I’m trying to stay positive. For you, for the kids. It isn’t going to do anyone any good if we start going to worst-case scenarios.”

  Jen knew he was right. Someone had to keep the kids’ spirits up; someone had to make sure Livvy didn’t get hysterical. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. It was just, the moment and the gun and then when you fell...”

  Ted took her into his arms. “You’re shaking,” he murmured, his face against her hair. “Sweetheart. It’s going to be okay. Come on now.”

  Jen closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the feel of his hands against her back, holding her, supporting her. She hadn’t known she was trembling until he held her, but now she felt the zigzag racing of her heart, the throbbing of her pulse in her temples, the weakness in her limbs.

  But she couldn’t give in, couldn’t let herself fall apart in his arms. For one thing, she knew that Livvy saw everything, even when she pretended not to. And for another, it wasn’t fair to Ted. It wasn’t fair to expect him to be the strong one, the only one to hold them all up.

  “I’m okay,” she said, gently pushing him away. She took a breath and pushed her hair away from her face. “I’m good. Really. Look, let’s try again. There’s got to be some—some sort of clue we’ve missed. About what they want. I mean, why not just take what they want and go, now that we’re stuck down here? What are they doing up there?”

  “Look at it the other way—now that we’re stuck down here, why hurry? Why not take their time and make sure they get what they came for?”

  “But leaving us in the basement for so long, that’s a risk, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. There’s only the one door and now we know they’re keeping an eye on it. And if they’re looking for big-ticket stuff, they might just be trying to break us down, make us less likely to resist when they come looking for it.”

  “But they can just take whatever they want. We can’t stop them.”

  “They don’t know where we keep things...so once they take the obvious stuff, the electronics and art, they’ll come down here and want to know what we have hidden away.”

  “But what are we going to tell them?”

  “Whatever they want to know. It’s all insured. We tell them where the silver is, your jewelry, everything. Hell, we’ll tell them where the suitcases are and they can pack it all up. We cooperate, that is the important thing. Make it easy for them to get the job done.”

  “Okay,” Jen said, nodding reluctantly. “I just, I guess I’m worried it won’t be enough.”

  “Honey,” Ted said, taking her hand. “I know it’s hard, but you need to just stay calm and assume these guys are pros. Hell, for all we know they’ve done this before. There might have been a whole string of robberies around here. I mean, think about it, it’s not bad for one night’s work, right?”

  “What, you think they’ve been breaking into houses all over Calumet? We would have heard about it.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be just Calumet,” Ted said. “They could go all over the Twin Cities.”

  “But, Ted, it would be in all the papers. The news would be all over it!”

  A sound behind her caught Jen short.

  “Stop it,” Livvy whispered. She was standing a few feet away, her arms hugging herself; she’d approached so quietly that they hadn’t heard her. “Please. Stop talking about it.”

  Jen pulled her into her arms, shushing her, smoothing her hair. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Daddy and I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Just do what they want,” Livvy pleaded. “Don’t let Daddy try to fight with them.”

  As Jen comforted her, she thought she heard voices up above and felt the vibrations of footsteps through the basement floor. It had to be her mind playing tricks on her. In the moments since she first saw the strangers standing in her bedroom door, it was as though the edges of her mind were disintegrating, like a tablet dissolving in water. The core was still there—her rational mind, her focus on her family—but how long could she sustain it?

  And in a way, it hadn’t started upstairs, today, with the arrival of this threat. Sid’s death. Sarah’s note. Ted’s evasiveness. And even before that—his job loss, Livvy’s hostility...what had happened to her perfect family, the beautiful home she had created so carefully for all of them? What had she done to invite all these destructive forces in?

  She was doing her best, trying to be strong, but she was beginning to imagine the walls cracking, the house bearing down on them, old sins from the past clamoring to come back.

  Chapter Seven

  Livvy fell asleep first. Jen figured it was her body’s way of shutting down in the face of her terror. Jen covered her with one of the quilts and turned her attention to Teddy, who had finally gotten bored with the laundry when the wash cycle ended.

  It had to be past his bedtime. Jen tried to get him to lie down on the couch, but he kept sitting up and fussing with his covers. Jen stroked his soft, downy hair and sang to him, and eventually his hand fell against his chest and his breathing grew steady and slow. She covered him with a second quilt, butterflies appliqued onto its square blocks, the colors faded to the palest greens and oranges and pinks. She had a vague memory of the quilt from her childhood, a time when her mother had used it for her own bed, after Sid left.

  Ted was sitting in one of the old dining room chairs holding a spool of copper wire. Jen remembered seeing the wire in one of the jumbled bins of hardware and tools on the shelves above the workbench. The wire had become loose and slipped off the spool in tangled coils, and Ted was methodically working out the knots, rewinding it carefully around the spool.

  Jen watched him for a few moments, feeling her gut contract and her breath go shallow until finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What in heaven’s name are you doing?”

  Ted didn’t answer her for a moment. He wrapped a few more coils around the spool, then set it carefully—gently, as though it were something precious—on the coffee table. He didn’t look at her, pulling at a loose thread in the seam of his pants and clearing his throat. “Jen, there’s something I need to tell you—”

  The door opened at the top of the stairs. “Oh, God,” Jen wh
ispered. She accidentally dragged the quilt halfway off Teddy as she scrambled off the couch. He mumbled in his sleep.

  “Don’t move.” Dan descended the stairs, slowly, holding a garbage bag in one hand and his gun in the other. When he reached the base of the stairs, he looked around the room, then let the bag drop to the floor with a muffled thud. “Here’s food. And I threw a few of the kid’s toys in, too.”

  “Wait,” Jen said. She searched Dan’s face. His beard grew in unevenly, with a few bare patches that looked like he’d taken an indifferent swipe with a razor before giving up, more pepper than salt. Her father had that look, when he first came back from Alaska. He never made much of an effort at grooming. “Couldn’t you just let the kids go? They won’t say anything, they’re—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “Not going to happen, okay, so let it fucking drop. Trust me, it’ll go easier.”

  He backed slowly up the stairs, one hand on the rail, finding his footing a little clumsily, moving with the bearing of a middle-aged man who got too little exercise. Then he was gone, the door closing behind him.

  Jen stood motionless for a moment before bending to pick up the trash bag. It was one of the black lawn bags, the good ones. She upended it carefully on the rug, and four water bottles rolled out. Jen set them on the coffee table and shook out the rest of the food. Juice boxes, half a dozen of the little ones Jen sent to preschool with Teddy. A box of Triscuits. Another, half-full of cheddar goldfish. A mesh bag of those little round wax-covered cheese wheels, still cold from the fridge. Bruised fruit—a couple of bananas and three pears.

  Jen picked up a pear, remembering choosing it from the bin at Whole Foods—was it just yesterday? She’d chosen the Bosc because the other ones were so hard and green, like they’d never ripen, and she’d come home and arranged them in the white ceramic bowl on the counter.

  “You hungry?” Ted picked up the Triscuits, tore open the box.