“If the funds clear by 1:00 p.m. tomorrow, you can withdraw them after that. We’re open until 5:30 p.m.”
Terrence busied himself with the paperwork. While Jen waited, she stared at his nameplate, reading the letters of his name over and over. She tried to ignore Dan, to pretend she was alone here, doing some routine transaction on an ordinary day.
It seemed to take forever, but finally Terrence excused himself for a moment and returned with the check, which he slipped into an envelope.
“May I help you with anything else today?” he asked, handing the envelope to Jen.
“No, thank you, that will be all,” Jen said, standing and offering him her hand.
“All right. Thank you, Mrs. Glass. Mr. Glass. Have a great day.”
As Dan shook Terrence’s hand, Jen was already walking unsteadily toward the door, suddenly desperate for fresh air. On the sidewalk next to her car she paused, and Dan almost ran into her.
“What the fuck—” he started, but she held up her hand to silence him.
His face was inches from hers. Half a dozen black hairs protruded from his nostrils. He had a mole on his eyelid and flecks of gold sparked in his otherwise unremarkable brown eyes.
“How did you know how much money was in the account?” she demanded.
He was already shaking his head before she got the words out. “None of your fucking business. Give me the check.”
She handed it to him, and he folded the envelope and put it in his pocket without looking at it. “Okay. That’s a down payment. Now all you need to concern yourself with is getting the rest of it to me.”
“All right. I’ll get it. I just need to make a few calls. I have to transfer the funds.”
Dan’s face was mottled red with anger. “Do it now.”
“I would, if I could, I swear to you. But it takes a day to wire the funds. There’s no way to get it today, by law.”
Dan turned away from her, his fists clenched, and for a moment Jen thought he was going to hit the parking meter. Instead he seized her upper arm and dragged her to the passenger door. “Get in.”
Jen did, barely managing to get her legs in before he slammed her door. By the time he came around and got in the driver’s side, he was breathing hard. He sat rigidly for a moment and then slammed the steering wheel with his hand. The car shook from the impact.
“Goddamn it. The price just went up. Double. I want a hundred fifty.”
“I’m not sure if I can—”
“Call them. Now.” He had the gun in his hand; he must have gotten it out of his jacket when he got in the car.
Jen didn’t believe he would shoot her in the car, in the middle of the day, right here in depressing downtown Hastings, but she wasn’t about to test him. When he handed her his phone she was shaking so badly she nearly dropped it. It was warm from his pocket, the screen blurred with a greasy smudge.
She found the phone number on the internet and dialed, staring at the console between them, not wanting to see the gun he was holding in his lap.
An assistant answered. That was a stroke of luck; Jen wasn’t sure she could have pulled off the transaction if her broker had answered, with his friendly inquiries about Ted and the kids, questions that Jen doubted she could have managed in her current state.
But the young woman who took the call sounded bored as she went through the authentication and the details of the transaction. Jen could hear her fingers on the keyboard as she keyed in the amounts.
“The funds will wire by eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you.”
“Thank you for your business today, Mrs. Glass, and I hope I have provided you with excellent service. Have a great day.” She hung up before Jen could respond.
“So?” Dan asked impatiently.
Jen stared at the phone, the number disappearing from the caller ID. “It’s taken care of. They’re wiring it in the morning. We can pick it up tomorrow afternoon.”
Dan nodded curtly and started the car, saying nothing. He let it idle for a moment before backing out of the parking space. He made the turn at the next stoplight, but instead of going around the block and heading back the way they’d come, he drove straight through the heart of town.
They passed vacant department stores and shuttered shop windows. At a green light, they had to wait while a group of young men in enormous puffy coats and sneakers took their time ambling across the street. A plastic bag rode a wind current and rested for a moment against the windshield before drifting away.
Jen wondered if Dan was lost, if she should tell him he was going the wrong way. If he was her father’s crony, if he lived up in Murdoch, he wouldn’t know his way around. He might have memorized the route to the bank, but not the reverse directions.
She was about to say something when it suddenly occurred to her where Dan was going. Surely not...there wasn’t any way he could know. Was there? She waited, holding her breath, thinking that at any moment he’d take another turn and start heading back west.
But no. They passed the Kmart, the outer limit of Jen’s childhood, the farthest she was allowed to ride her bike alone. Down Lowry Street, past the narrow wedge of a public park, where even in the middle of the day, in the biting cold, she could see a few homeless men sleeping on the benches. Past the turnoff to the elementary school, where her mother—in a brief happy phase when she’d had the occasional weekday off—had once been a playground monitor.
“This isn’t the way,” Jen finally blurted, when they were almost to her old street. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. But Dan slowed, until the car was barely doing twenty in the rightmost lane. A car honked and passed them on the left.
“It’s not even there anymore,” he said irritably as though it was her idea to come here. “It’s nothing but a parking lot now. A shitty one.”
He turned on Russell. That’s what the road used to be called, anyway, before they bulldozed the half dozen run-down little houses arranged in a crooked loop off what used to be the route to the paper mill. The mill had been shuttered a long time ago, and now there was a shabby strip mall anchored by a dollar store and a Pet Express. Not even a quarter of the parking lot was full.
Jen had been here exactly once in the past decade, propelled by curiosity and the wistful mood that used to accompany the anniversary of her mother’s death. Tanya had told her the old house was gone, but she still wasn’t prepared for the way the parking lot obliterated even the contours of the old neighborhood. She’d driven slowly along the Dumpsters and loading bays in the back of the mall, looking for proof that what was once Russell Street lay beneath the asphalt. Finally she’d managed to find the approximate spot by looking out into the field beyond and lining up landmarks with her memory—the barn that still stood next to a clump of black walnut trees, the stagnant drainage pond. Development, it seemed, had not reached very far into the outer edge of Hastings.
No one could argue that the demolishing of those houses was any great loss. So Jen hadn’t been prepared for the emotional turmoil that visit invited. She’d ended up having to pull over near what was once the far end of Russell Road, where a long-ago neighbor kept a pair of mangy dogs on wire leads tied to trees, and vomit onto the pavement. She’d wiped her mouth off and driven home, and never mentioned the trip to anyone.
Dan drove past the parking lot, where the road dead-ended at the gravel turnaround in front of a cattle guard. Jen doubted that anyone grazed cattle here anymore. It was only a matter of time until the field ended up being studded with cheap little tract homes. She hoped Dan would just turn around and head back, but he pulled the car up so close that the front fender was almost touching the gate and the tires rested on the bars of the cattle guard, and let the engine idle.
“Why are we stopping?” Jen asked.
“Did my dad tell you we used to live here?” Jen’s teeth were chattering, even though the interior of the car was still warm. “Did he tell you he abandoned us? Took off and never sent any child support? That when my mom got sick, all he ever cared about was whether he could get his hands on her money?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Dan said. “I don’t give a shit about your dad. Just you. I just want you to see that I know you’re nothing. And you screw up and don’t get my money, you’ll end up worse off than if you still lived here. I’ll make sure of it.”
“I won’t screw up. I promise.”
“You think I’m some dumbass who can’t count,” Dan continued, as though she hadn’t even spoken. “You think I don’t have what it takes to pull something like this off, that I’ll settle for a few bucks when I know you’ve got a lot more stashed away. You’re wrong. Dead wrong,” he repeated as he finally put the car in Reverse and started backing into a turn.
Neither he nor Jen spoke as he drove back the way he’d come, past the Kmart and gas stations, back down Lowry and over the bridge on 17th.
The farther they got from what had once been Jen’s home, the more the panic receded. She still didn’t know how he knew: Sid, maybe, but maybe there was a much simpler explanation. One of those online search services—they could have found out all kinds of things about her background. For fifty bucks he could have had all her prior addresses.
By the time they crossed the ravine, heading back into Calumet, Jen had managed to convince herself that Dan was just trying to push her buttons, using whatever thin threads he’d been able to discover in a basic exploration of her history. She didn’t have to react. She didn’t have to let paranoia and fear take over. She should be grateful that at least they hadn’t raised suspicion at the bank. She should reassure Dan that everything was taken care of.
Maybe she’d been forced to endure one too many spikes in her adrenaline, one too many rushes of pure terror, because deep inside her, the fear was beginning to harden into something else. Being forced to leave her family behind in the home she loved, at the mercy of an armed psycho, had altered something inside Jen. She had no idea how Dan had known about the account. No idea if her father had planted the seed that led to this disaster. No idea what Ted had done with the money. And suddenly, those things didn’t matter.
At the edge of her mind were the things she could not think about—her children in the basement, her husband with his secrets, the life she had worked so hard for, that she had convinced herself could change things. Things, she now saw, that could never be changed. She would never be able to shed her past.
But now all the cards were on the table, and she had nothing else to lose. And the realization brought a simmering, dangerous rage.
Chapter Twelve
Ryan was in their kitchen making Stouffer’s French Bread Pizzas. Livvy recognized the smell even all the way down in the basement because it was her favorite after-school snack, and because whenever the little bits of cheese got on the pan they burned and made the whole house smell.
She was never going to eat one of those pizzas again, if she ever got out of here.
All morning she had been trying to decide if she should tell her parents about the text, but then her mom left with Dan and her dad was losing it, she could tell. He kept picking Teddy up and putting him down, and then he’d come over and tell her everything was going to be just fine, with this horrible fake smile on his face that told her he was really scared. So it didn’t seem right to say anything, especially since there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
The only person who could have done anything about it was her, but now it was too late. Allie was one crazy, unpredictable bitch—everyone said so, and besides, once her cousins got involved that was a whole other thing. They were supposedly in a gang. Livvy didn’t know anything about it except for the rumors, which she didn’t believe half of, but she also figured some of it was probably true.
Monday when she got to school there had been a shirt hanging out of her locker. Poked through the vent slit, only part of it hung free, and since Livvy had an A period and got to school early, she didn’t think anyone saw it but her. It was a gym shirt, a dirty one, gray, with CALUMET PHYS ED on the front. Under that someone had written Whore in red lipstick. Bright red, like blood.
The shirt wasn’t any mystery—anyone could steal them out of the PE lost and found. Livvy stuffed it in the trash, her face burning with shame. When she saw Allie across the cafeteria at lunch, Allie smirked at her and gave her the finger, her hand half-hidden under the tray.
Livvy figured that was the end of it. She didn’t tell anyone, not even Paige. Allie was constantly getting into trouble at school, and if Livvy went to the counselor she was pretty sure they’d take it seriously, call Allie in, maybe suspend her again. But then Sean would find out. And he would...she wasn’t sure what he would do, because she didn’t know what he thought about her now, if he ever thought of her at all. But maybe he’d be angry, maybe he’d hate her, and while that shouldn’t matter, because she was so much better off without him and he had never been good enough for her in the first place, she still hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him, remembering all the times they’d been together. Wishing. Missing him.
Allie knew it, too. Somehow she knew how bad it hurt, because when she passed Livvy in the hall on Wednesday, she pretended to drop something in front of her so Livvy had to stop walking and then Allie stood up and said, real quiet, “He told me everything. He told me you didn’t even know what to do. When you were together. He fucked you as a favor.” She smiled, revealing her sharp little teeth with the gap between. Livvy was close enough to see her eyelashes clotted with mascara, to smell her perfume.
Livvy had gone through the day numb, hardly even hearing anything the teachers said. Paige asked her if she was sick. She looked for Sean after Spanish and saw him heading into the robotics lab, high-fiving Mr. Jenkins, and he was so much like he used to be with her, funny and kind of silly and smart; he always did well in the classes he liked, it was just the ones where he was bored that he had trouble. And it was more than Livvy could stand. She just had to know if it was true. What Sean really thought. If he ever thought of her at all.
She waited for him near his locker, pretending to text, her face flaming. “Livvy,” he’d said, sounding surprised, sounding maybe a little glad she was there, and she’d tried to say what she’d rehearsed, but it didn’t come out. She would have gotten around to it, she was working up to it and Sean was sort of half smiling, letting his backpack slide down to the floor, putting his hand on the locker next to her so she was between him and the locker.
Then Allie showed up. She didn’t say anything, just slid her hand into Sean’s back pocket and moved her body in front of him, edging Livvy out of the way. She kissed him on the lips and put her arms around him so his face was in her neck, and Livvy backed away. The look Allie gave her was pure hate, and when Livvy got off the bus, she had a text from a number she didn’t know.
You will pay for that I told you to stay away from him youll be sorry
Well, she was sorry now, really sorry, because all Allie would have had to do was tell her cousins to send someone, to take care of it. There were rumors her cousins had killed someone who was going to testify against them, that one of them had killed another prisoner at Hennepin County jail, so sending someone to rob Livvy’s house would have been nothing to them. Ryan was probably in the gang with them, and Dan...well, Livvy didn’t know how that worked, how he fit in, but now he was off with her mom doing God knew what.
Which she couldn’t think about. Because that was her fault, too.
The basement door opened and Ryan came down the stairs. Teddy was sitting next to her on the couch playing with the paper from an origami set that she had never used, folding the pretty colored squares into random shapes. Livvy had tried to teach him how to fold a fortune-teller, but he was too little still, he couldn’t do it, so Livvy just let him do whatever he wanted with the paper. Her dad had been sitting next to them looking at nothing. Every once in a while he would reach over and pat Livvy’s knee, very gently, like he was afraid he might hurt her. Like he was making sure she was still there. But when Ryan started coming down the stairs, her dad threw his arm in front of her and Teddy the same way he did when they were driving and he had to put on the brakes suddenly, his big arm pushing them back against the couch cushions.
As if that would help anything. As if he could stop anything.
Ryan stood in front of them with one hand resting on the gun he kept in his pants. He had something on his face, a fleck of white that it took Livvy a minute to figure out was shaving cream. Ryan had shaved in her house—he had used her dad’s stuff. She felt like she was going to throw up.
“I made lunch. Livvy, you come up and eat and then you can bring the rest down here for them.”
“Absolutely not.” Her dad stood up. He was taller than Ryan, though not by much. Ryan stepped back and raised the gun and pointed it right at his chest.
“Back off,” Ryan said.
Her dad raised his hands halfway, but he didn’t sit back down. “You won’t take her upstairs alone.” He wasn’t scared, not for himself.
“What are you going to do about it?” Ryan demanded.
“You try to take my daughter up there with you, and I’m coming after you. You can shoot me if you want, but you’d better be damn sure you stop me with one shot.”
“That’s all it would take, man.”
House of Glass Page 9