House of Glass

by Sophie Littlefield

“Maybe.” Her dad stayed calm. “Maybe not. You shoot me, you got a whole other set of problems on your hands. Just go back upstairs, and leave us alone down here. We have food. We’re fine.”

  Ryan’s mouth twitched at the corner. She could tell he was trying to decide what to do.

  For a minute they glared at each other, and then Ryan laughed. Teddy had put down the paper squares and crawled into Livvy’s lap, and she wrapped her arms around him.

  “Whatever. You can all come up. Make the kid go first, then her, then you. Go straight to the kitchen table.”

  Livvy couldn’t believe he was going to let them upstairs while Dan was gone, but she didn’t have to be told twice. She picked up Teddy and started up the stairs, pretending not to be scared. Her dad was right behind her. At the top she put her hand on the doorknob and imagined slamming it into the wall so hard it wouldn’t lock again, taking a hammer to it, the old ax her dad kept in the shed. Something, anything. But instead she just opened the door and went into the hall. She carried Teddy to his chair. Her dad sat in the one he always did.

  “Hurry up,” Ryan said, even though she was going as fast as she could. But Teddy was fighting her, wiggling to avoid getting in the chair. Livvy thought she knew what the problem was.

  “He has to go to the bathroom.”

  “Oh, Christ, tell him to hold it. He can go after lunch.”

  “Kids can’t hold it,” Livvy said, not even trying to keep herself from sounding like she thought he was an idiot. “Besides, he always washes his hands before we eat.”

  “Well, then take him.” He waved his gun at the powder room across from the kitchen. “But the food’s going to get cold.”

  Only then did she notice that he had laid out lunch on the counter: two plates with pizza on them, two glasses of milk. Two napkins folded in half. He’d gotten it all ready for the two of them, had planned it out. Livvy shivered with revulsion.

  “We’re fine, Daddy,” she said, making her voice sound upbeat, knowing he could see the two plates, too. She carried Teddy into the bathroom and locked the door behind her and turned on the fan.

  Teddy got the step stool and scrambled up on the toilet. It always took him a while, and he often sang or tried to whistle while he sat and waited. Livvy got on her knees in front of him. “Listen to me, Teddy,” she said, suddenly sure of what had to happen next. She couldn’t take back what had happened already, but at least she could help Teddy get away. “This is really important, okay?”

  Teddy looked at her skeptically, his face twisted in concentration. She knew he wouldn’t talk now, not even with the door closed and locked. Not while there was a stranger in the house.

  “When we go out of the bathroom, I’m going to go in the kitchen and make a lot of noise. And you are going to run to the front door and unlock the lock, as fast as you can, and then run to the Sterns’ house, okay? Run as fast as you can, because Mark is waiting for you to come over for your playdate. You don’t want to be late, do you?”

  Teddy thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

  “Listen to me really carefully, Teddy. No matter what happens...” She stopped, trying to think of what to say that wouldn’t scare him. “I’m going to pretend to get mad at Daddy and Ryan. But it’s just a game, okay? I’m tricking them. But I’m going to yell and it might be loud, but you just have to go as fast as you can and don’t turn around. Don’t come back, no matter what. You have to run to Mark’s.”

  Teddy said nothing. He closed his eyes and his urine finally trickled into the bowl. Livvy waited, her heart pounding with each passing second. When he was finished, she repeated the plan as he got down from the toilet.

  “You remember how to turn the lock?” she asked as she ran water and helped him wash his hands. “Grab the lock and make it go this way.” She took his right hand in hers and made the twisting motion. “Just like this. Remember? Then grab the door and open it and run.”

  Now, suddenly, she was really scared. But she couldn’t let him see. “Teddy, you can do this. Promise me, you’re going to go as fast as you can. Run to the door, do the lock, open it and go. No matter what you hear. No matter if you feel scared. No one is going to be mad, I promise. Mom’s going to be really proud of you when I tell her.”

  She was messing this up. She had told him it was a game, but she could see that she was scaring him now. She rinsed his hands and he dried them on the hand towel and she knelt before him. She made herself smile and she kissed his cheek, the skin that was softer than anything she had ever touched, softer than her mom’s, softer than her own. “You ready?”

  After a moment, Teddy nodded.

  “I love you,” she whispered, and he nodded again.

  She took a deep breath and opened the door. She gave Teddy a shove down the hall, and he ran, his shoes slapping on the wood, and he didn’t look back, just like she told him. But she had to turn away from him; she had to run into the kitchen and pick up the coffeepot—it was sitting right there on the kitchen island. And even though Ryan was already moving toward her, running, yelling something, she managed to crash it against his shoulder. She saw her dad rising from the table, but it was all so slow, too slow. Her arm hurt from the impact of the pot against Ryan’s shoulder, but she hadn’t even managed to stop him.

  The pot clattered to the floor, and her dad tripped on it as Ryan fired the first shot, and Livvy waited for her body to register where she had been hit. She grabbed for the pan on the stove, the pizzas sliding to the counter, the metal still hot in her hand. She hit Ryan with the pan, but it was too light to hurt him and it just bounced off him. Her dad was on his knees, tackling Ryan around the legs, and she threw herself at Ryan, too, trying to grab for his gun hand, but he bucked her off and she slammed into the cabinets, hitting the back of her head on the knob. Someone grunted, and she couldn’t tell if it was Ryan or her dad, but her dad was reaching for Ryan’s throat, and she knew if he could just get his hand around it he would crush the life from it, her strong and fearless father, but the gun went off a second time and her dad fell against the cabinet, spraying red against the white paint.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Neither of them spoke as Dan pulled into Crabapple Court.

  Dan and Ryan would have their money by tomorrow afternoon, and this nightmare would be over. Jen thought she could detect the effects of stress on Dan—the sallowness of his skin, the depth of the lines on his face. The past twenty-four hours had cost him.

  Her home appeared eerily unchanged on the outside. There was no hint of the terror that was taking place inside, nothing out of place to indicate that the Glass family was under siege. Peeking from the snow was one of Teddy’s toys, a bright blue plastic boomerang he must have been playing with before the last snowstorm. Other than that flash of color, their house was like every other house on the block: tasteful if a little ostentatious, a suburban stronghold.

  After he parked, Dan pulled his gloves back on. Jen wondered what he planned to do about the prints on the steering wheel. She guessed that Ted had been right—they were going to take the cars when they left.

  She followed Dan into the house, wiping her feet on the mat from habit. But two steps inside the mudroom, she went still. Something was wrong. The interior of the house had been altered in her absence. Some faintly unpleasant smell tainted the air, and the silence was edged with tension.

  Surely it was just her imagination, the physical embodiment of her fear. Jen steadied herself, putting a hand to the wall, brushing against Ted’s parka that hung there. She steeled herself to walk into the kitchen when she heard what sounded like a moan coming from upstairs.

  “What was that?”

  Jen hesitated for only a second before sprinting toward the living room. She felt Dan grab at her and miss. But she knew this house like the back of her own hand. She grabbed the door frame for balance
and slid around the corner on the polished floors, catapulted into the living room and skidded. There was Ryan, stretched out on the sofa with his feet up on the ottoman.

  “What happened?” she demanded, her voice rising.

  Dan caught up with Jen and seized her shirt in his fist, yanking her backward. “Settle down,” he snapped, wrapping his elbow around her neck and cutting off her air. Only when she went limp and stopped fighting him did he ease up the pressure on her throat.

  “What was that noise upstairs?” she gasped.

  “Nothing. Things...well, things kind of happened while you were gone.” Ryan lifted his hand and let it drop, an oh-well-what-can-you-do gesture.

  “What do you mean? Is everyone all right?”

  “Well...that.” Ryan sighed. “Some shit went down, see? It was totally not my fault. Suddenly people want to mess with the plan, they get what they have coming.”

  Jen wrenched herself free of Dan’s grasp, crashing against the coffee table and rebounding off the sofa. By the time she got her balance, Ryan had his gun out and resting casually on his lap. Jen held up her hands and stayed where she was.

  “Where is my husband?”

  Dan pushed between her and Ryan, forcing her to sit down on the sofa. He sat down with her, wedging her into the corner, trapping her there. The look on his face was clouded with uncertainty. Because he didn’t know the answer to Jen’s question. He didn’t know what had happened while he and Jen had been gone. He’d lost control, he’d left Ryan in charge, and now even he looked like he was afraid of the answer.

  “Ted’s just having a little rest upstairs.” Ryan sounded weary and irritated. “He got in the way of a bullet.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Once Teddy had pulled the heavy door open and run out into the freezing gray afternoon, he remembered that he didn’t have a coat, and wondered why Livvy would send him outside without it. She had never spoken to him the way she did in the bathroom, and he was trying to make sense of what was happening. Livvy said that he had to run fast, and he did, not even going slow on the steps the way mom always insisted, because there could be ice.

  Halfway across the yard he heard Livvy scream, and he almost turned around. But she had said not to. She said no matter what happened, he had to go to the Sterns’ and to run as fast as he could and so that’s what he did.

  Teddy ran on the edges of the lawns along the street, where the snow had melted and frozen again, leaving the dead grass stiff and crunchy under his feet. He had learned the hard way that running on the sidewalk in the winter, even when the snow had mostly melted, often ended up with a hard fall on the concrete. He pumped his fists and kept his eyes on the stop sign, pushing himself to go faster and faster, just like he did when they had races at Blue Devils summer camp.

  When he got to the stop sign, Teddy looked back to see if Livvy was coming after him, but the street was empty. Nobody at all was outside, no moms or kids or the mailman or delivery guys. The front door of their house was closed, and Teddy wondered if Livvy or his dad had closed it—or if it had been the stranger called Ryan. Teddy didn’t like thinking of the strangers, whose presence in his house was yet another confusing and frightening thing. He was pretty sure his parents were afraid of the two men, something that struck him as astonishing—that they, especially his father, could be afraid of other grown-ups.

  Teddy started running again, though not as fast, partly because he was breathing hard and partly because he was beginning to think that leaving had been a bad choice. Maybe Livvy made a mistake. His mom always took him to Mark Stern’s house, but she was gone on her errand.

  Once, when his mom wasn’t feeling well, Mrs. Stern had come to pick him up, and she had even brought him a muffin. Teddy brightened at the memory. Maybe Mrs. Stern was on her way, and would see him and pull over in her red minivan and he could ride back with her and Mark. Mark had K’Nex, too, and they had built a tower last time that was very tall, and maybe this time they could make one that was even taller.

  A car drove by, but it wasn’t Mrs. Stern, and Teddy kept going.

  The cold was making him shiver. The tips of his fingers were getting achy and his nose was crusty. Wiping his nose on his sleeve only made it sore. Teddy looked in the windows of the houses he passed, wondering if other people had visitors like theirs, strangers who stayed overnight and used their things and used mad voices. Teddy had liked sleeping in the basement, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to sleep there again tonight. What he most wanted was for the strangers to leave, and to sleep in his own bed.

  At the next corner, Teddy stood for a long time trying to remember which direction Mark’s house was. Nothing looked the same with snow. You couldn’t see anyone’s grass or flowers, and there were cars that still had snow on top of them even though it had been a long time since the snowstorm. After a while, Teddy decided to go left, partly because the sidewalk looked less icy in that direction and he especially didn’t want to fall down now because he had started to cry a little. If he fell, someone might think he was crying because of the fall, which wasn’t the case at all. Teddy was brave about things like falls. His mom said he was brave all the time, in fact.

  He was only crying because Livvy had spoken to him in that way that frightened him, and because he was cold and because he wasn’t sure where the Sterns’ house was. And, maybe a little, because he was afraid the stranger named Ryan would be the one who would come find him and take him back.

  When they came yesterday, Teddy had been looking for a Lego piece that went under the couch, part of his Imperial V-Wing Starfighter. When Livvy went to answer the knock at the front door, Teddy had had spotted the little red piece just beyond his reach and was straining to get his fingers around it, so he didn’t see the strangers until they had already come into the living room.

  “Teddy,” Livvy had said, “get up from there.” He didn’t like abandoning the Lego piece, and he was planning to ask Livvy to push the couch over for him, when he saw the strangers’ legs on either side of Livvy’s. He stood up and looked the visitors over. One was old like his dad, and the other one was younger, with a smile that wasn’t friendly.

  “Hey, kid,” the older one said. He had his hand behind Livvy’s back, and she didn’t seem very happy about it. In fact, she looked scared, so Teddy was scared, too, and his voice disappeared all the way inside him.

  Livvy started to pick him up, but the older one said “no.” She put her hands on Teddy’s shoulders, squeezing too hard. Teddy waited for her to explain who the men were, but she didn’t.

  “I’ll get him,” the old one said and then he picked Teddy up himself. His fingers felt hard and unfamiliar under Teddy’s arms, digging into his ribs, and Teddy wiggled to get down. The man just held on tighter and squeezed Teddy against his chest. It didn’t hurt until Teddy accidentally hit the man in the chin as he was trying to wriggle free. The man grabbed his arm and twisted it and said, “Cut that shit out.”

  Teddy knew that grown-ups weren’t supposed to say “shit,” that they had to remind each other sometimes, but no one told the stranger not to talk that way in front of him. So that was also strange and worrisome.

  Teddy stopped struggling. The curse word was worse than the twisted arm. Teddy didn’t know what the man would do next, but he felt certain that it wouldn’t be good, and he began to cry a little. As the man carried him up the stairs, Teddy watched the walls go by, the pictures he rarely looked at because they were hung high above his eye level. Pictures of his parents, then his parents with Livvy when she was little, and finally his favorite, the large one of all four of them, dressed in white shirts and pressed close together, smiling. Teddy remembered that day, how they practiced pressing together and smiling over and over while the photographer took their picture, how he could smell his mother’s perfume and his father’s shirt, the dry cleaner smell.

  The s
tranger carried him down the hall to his parents’ room, with the other stranger and Livvy behind them. The older one knocked on the door, and his parents were surprised to see the men’s guns. Teddy’s father took him away from the older one, and Teddy was so relieved that he burrowed as close to his dad as he could and stopped paying attention to what they were saying. Everyone seemed angry. Teddy hoped his father would tell the strangers to leave, but they all went down in the basement instead.

  It was nice once the strangers went upstairs and left them alone, and his dad put the furniture together like it was a living room instead of a basement. Teddy wasn’t sure why they had the sleepover in the basement, but his father explained that it was like camping, that they were practicing for a trip to Moose Lake. In the morning Teddy felt better. His mother let him help with the laundry until she had to go on her errand, but his father didn’t feel well, and had to rest up on the couch. Livvy played with him though, and usually she was too busy to play for very long, so that was fun. Everything had been fine until lunchtime, when his mom still hadn’t come back so the stranger named Ryan had to make lunch. Teddy had to go to the bathroom, and that was when Livvy told him that he had to run out the door and keep going.

  Teddy felt like he had been walking for a very long time, but he didn’t see the Sterns’ house, and he was starting to worry that he was lost. But then he took another turn and realized where he was: across the street was his second-favorite park. It would have been more fun if Mark had been there, too, because there was a wooden bridge that was fun to jump on if you had two people. Maybe Mrs. Stern would bring Mark to the park. Maybe they were on their way.

  Teddy decided to wait in the little playhouse at the top of the climbing structure, where he had a clear view of the parking lot. Also, the wind couldn’t get inside the house so it was warmer in there. He tucked his knees under his chin and blew on his fingers and the cold-ache went away a little. In the field, a woman with a ponytail threw a ball for her dog, and Teddy watched the dog run and jump into the air to catch the ball in its jaws. Good boy, Teddy said each time, though he said it on the inside, with words that only he could hear.