by D. J. Palmer
She awoke with a start to find it was still dark outside. The clock on the cable box read 5:30, thirty minutes before her alarm would sound. She leaned over to see Simon sleeping peacefully beside her. But why had she awoken so suddenly, pained by a gnawing anxiousness? Then it came to her: Simon was asleep, but had he been the whole night? Was there any chance he might have snuck downstairs, opened the laptop, and launched a browser window? If he did, he might have been in for quite the surprise. In her distracted state, Nina had forgotten the one thing she had meant to do before returning to bed.
She’d forgotten to clear the browser history.
CHAPTER 37
Don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t cooperate, and watch your children die.
That was the message drilled into Glen’s head time and time again. But it wasn’t only threats that had made Glen obedient. There were the beatings. Though they had lessened over time, the irregularity of them had Glen always on edge.
They came and went with Simon’s mood, like he was the weather, stormy or calm, hard to predict. He used Glen like a punching bag to take out his frustrations. They were near constant in the initial months. Simon had wanted to be with Nina and the children the same day he took Glen, but at some level he understood feelings would have to develop somewhat naturally.
There was punishment for fighting back. One effective counterstrike would quickly get Simon to break off his attack and move to the safe zone outside the box. Once there, he’d hit Glen with a police-grade Taser capable of shooting upwards of thirty feet away. Glen had received enough jolts to zap the fight out of him, literally. His conditioned strategy to any acts of violence was to shield himself as best he could from the blows while waiting for Simon’s storm to pass.
As Simon grew more complacent in his new life with Nina, the beatings became less frequent, until they stopped altogether. But when the door to the box flew open, Glen knew something terrible was coming his way.
He had been enjoying a dreamless sleep, so much easier than the other kind. The basement lights were on, so he could see Simon’s face as he neared. Fear bubbled in Glen’s gut. He recognized the familiar look in Simon’s eyes.
The blackness was back. The darkness. The rage.
Cocking his fist, Simon threw a punch that connected hard with Glen’s face, just below the right orbital socket. It was a solid strike, though Glen was sure Simon pulled back a bit. For obvious reasons, he couldn’t bring Glen to a hospital.
Simon threw another punch to the head, but this blow Glen deflected. Instead of fighting back, Glen’s Pavlovian response kicked in. Box. Taser. Defend only. Wait it out. For the next volley, instead of going high, Simon went low. Glen had no idea what was coming. He went to the ground, moving his hands up to cover his face a split second before Simon’s kick sank into the fleshiest part of his abdomen. Glen gasped as air sprang from his lungs. He rolled to avoid Simon’s next attack, but couldn’t roll far enough and was kicked twice in the back. The sudden movement pulled on his ankle restraint, gouging out a chunk of his flesh.
Blood seeped from an open wound to Glen’s lower leg, setting a dark stain against his gray sweatpants. To avoid the next volley, Glen rolled onto his stomach, but Simon straddled him and threw more punches to the back of Glen’s head, grunting like a rabid animal as he landed blow after blow. Glen bucked and squirmed beneath Simon, trying desperately to worm his way out.
“Simon! Simon!” Glen said, pleading. “Stop! Please! Stop! What’s wrong? Talk to me. I can help.”
Simon panted, and his fist went back yet again, but this time, he didn’t throw the punch.
“You can’t help,” Simon said, softly and dejectedly. The fight was out of him. The storm had passed, or so Glen thought.
Simon stomped out of the box and over to the television. He hoisted up the TV, unmindful of the cord plugged into the wall, and with a grunt, lifted it over his head, his face clenched in anger. Glen cowered, shielding himself with his arms, afraid the appliance would become a projectile.
Simon had highlighted how this particular TV was glass-fronted, as if it were a selling point. Glen pictured shards of broken glass gouging out an eye as it crashed down on his head, but instead Simon brought his arms forward slowly, and set the television down gently. There was an audible exhale as Glen let go of his breath.
“You can’t help,” Simon said, crumpling to the floor, hiding his face in his hands.
Glen tried to clear away the blood pouring from his nose, managing only to smear it all over his face like war paint.
“Get me some bandages,” Glen said, lying facedown, panting hard. He used his stained mattress to soak up some blood. “Get me some bandages, and let’s talk. Let me help you figure it out, whatever it is.”
Simon went upstairs and returned with a first-aid kit, along with a paper cup of water. He spent several minutes cleaning Glen’s many wounds and applying bandages to all the injuries, including the gash to the ankle and a cut to his chin. The beard caught more of the blow flow, so Simon crumpled up the soiled bandage that wasn’t sticking anyway and tossed it aside. He gave Glen the cup of water. Sitting cross-legged on his blood-soaked mattress, sipping the water, Glen watched as Simon surveyed his handiwork.
“I’m sorry I went off on you like that. It was uncalled-for,” said Simon, slumping on the floor nearby.
Glen gingerly rubbed the back of his head, feeling the tender lumps that had formed. “Why did you attack me?”
“I was angry. Needed a release.”
The weather …
“What happened?”
“I’m not going to say.”
“Is it Nina?” Glen sounded panicky. “Is she all right? Maggie? Connor? Are they okay?”
“Yeah. They’re fine, Glen. Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt them.”
Glen considered Simon almost impassively. “You know I don’t believe that’s true,” he said. “You can’t control yourself. Look at what you did to me.” He pointed to his numerous injuries. “You’re a sick man. You need help.”
For a moment there, Simon looked like he was about to agree. “Nina’s seeing a therapist,” he said in a low voice.
Glen was taken aback. He had expected so much worse. “What’s wrong with that? She’s been through a lot.”
“No, you don’t get it. She’s talking about me. I know it. She’s talking about me and she’s going to leave me.”
Glen understood that would be the worst decision for everyone. It was strange for him to want Simon with his wife, sleeping in his bed, to be a part of his children’s lives, because the alternative was too horrible to consider.
“You don’t know that for a fact.”
“I do. She’s looking into my life, searching Emma’s name. She’ll figure it out. It’s that damn therapist. She’s making her doubt me.”
Glen closed his eyes, thinking. When he opened them, he fixed Simon with a pointed stare, his expression serious and reserved. Now was the moment to make his request, and Glen thought: NICE GUY, a secret message, hope.
“Let me talk to Maggie. By phone this time,” Glen said. “Listen to me, Simon, this therapist business is about Maggie. Your plan to use her to make Nina quit her job is causing the problem. I know Nina better than you. Trust me. If we can get Maggie on your side, Nina won’t have any reason to see her therapist anymore. We’ll come up with another way to get Nina to quit working if we have to.”
Simon mulled this over.
“Why would you want to do that?” Simon sounded skeptical. “Why help me?”
“You know the answer.” Glen understood it was a risk to suggest he could coerce Nina through a proxy, but he had to make his case; he had to convince Simon to trust him, to follow his lead. “I’ll do anything to protect my family, and you told me you wouldn’t hesitate, not one second, to harm them if Nina rejects you, or loses interest. Tell me it’s not true.”
Simon couldn’t deny it.
“Look, I’m trying to save their lives.�
� Desperation leaked into Glen’s voice. “You can do away with me. I don’t care anymore. Kill me if that’s what has to happen. But I can’t let anything happen to my family.”
A thoughtful look came to Simon’s face, but the darkness in his eyes lingered.
“So admirable,” he said. “Such conviction. Nina’s told me time and time again how you were unavailable to the kids, how you were so work-obsessed. I don’t get it. How do you stay so strong for them?”
“They’re my children.” Glen’s voice was shaky.
“You have regrets, right?” Simon’s expression brightened. He loved feeling superior to Glen.
“Who doesn’t?”
This seemed to interest Simon, and Glen sensed his opportunity.
“Tell me about them,” Simon insisted. “I can’t make the same mistakes.”
All this time together they had talked about what Glen did right and wrong in his marriage to Nina, but the conversation never went much deeper, and seldom focused on the children. The truth was Glen wanted to share. He was hungrier for conversation, for human contact, companionship—even from his captor and abuser—than he was for food. That’s the mind for you. Adapt, or die. But Glen knew also that sharing might give him what he was after, so he spoke the truth.
“I have a lot of regrets,” he said.
Simon looked intrigued. “Go on.”
“Nina and I, we had this dance we did,” Glen said, sounding a wistful note. “The more she focused on the kids, the more I retreated into my work, because I didn’t feel needed at home. I became a provider instead of a father.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, I took my children’s childhood for granted.” A lump sprang to Glen’s throat. “I could have been more hands-on, more involved. Instead, I was the guy who never played with them enough. But I didn’t know how to play cars or dolls, and I was never comfortable with babies. And it wasn’t like Nina was asking me to do more. No, she was perfectly happy to take on all the responsibility. She made it seem like she was doing me a favor, but in reality, I think it might have been the other way around.”
Glen took a moment to put pressure on the cut to his lip and apply another layer of gauze on the cut to his ankle.
This was good. Simon was being attentive, listening and interested.
“Anyway, the kids grew, cats in the cradle, got older, more independent, all that, but my habits didn’t change. I was in the stands watching them play sports, sometimes helping with homework, but I was always distracted—on my phone, checking emails, putting out fires at the bank that I could have let burn. I focused on my work because that was the role I had carved out for myself. By that point, I didn’t know my kids all that well. It was Nina who knew what stuffed animals to bring on vacation, what food they’d like, what activities they’d want to do. Me? I existed in the background.”
Simon closed his eyes, as if picturing Glen’s life in vivid detail, zooming by with the speed of a bullet train, regrets piling up with the miles.
“Your honesty is really touching,” said Simon.
“When Maggie turned ten,” Glen continued, “I made a promise to myself to get more involved in her life, but I didn’t even know how to begin. I started reading to her at night, and that became our big father-daughter time. Just a book. The last one we were reading was A Wrinkle in Time.”
That one hurt. Glen needed a moment to regain his composure.
“I tried to get Connor into fishing because that’s what I liked to do, but he didn’t take to it at all, and I didn’t try to find something else for us to do together. I just threw up my hands as if it wasn’t meant to be. Instead of working harder to fix it or talking it out with Nina, I slipped back into my familiar role.”
“The worker bee.” Simon’s smile was almost a sneer.
“Work was my identity. It always had been.”
Until it was gone, Glen thought. And he could never get it back.
“So you of all people understand why Nina has to quit her job,” Simon said.
Work. What was it with Simon and Nina’s job? What was it triggering for him?
Glen decided now was the time to ask again.
“What you’re doing to Nina and Maggie,” he said, “playing mind games, making Maggie insecure and suspicious, that’s the wrong way to go. I know Nina. She’ll think it’s the relationship that’s causing all the problems, and she’ll leave you before she leaves her job. Maggie and Connor, that’s her identity.”
“She loves me too much,” Simon said dismissively.
“I’m telling you, you’re wrong,” Glen said. “You’ve believed what I told you all the other times. Why not now? Let me talk to Maggie by phone. I’ll fix it, even if it means Nina staying with a monster like you. I can’t let you hurt my family, Simon. I can’t let it happen.”
Glen knew he was pushing his luck calling Simon a monster, but the physical restraint he’d endured over the years had yielded to an imperative to strike back, even if only verbally. He expected some retaliation for the invective, but instead, the darkness in Simon’s eyes left in a rush as a dim light slowly rolled in.
“A monster…” he said, talking softly to himself, as if an idea were coming to him. “That’s it. That’s perfect. It’s exactly what I’ll do. Good, good thinking, Glen. Maggie might not be enough to get Nina to quit. What we may need is a real monster to push her over the edge. Okay, we’ll make that call together. Not yet—but soon.”
Panic gripped Glen. He had miscalculated. Simon didn’t care if Maggie embraced him or not. He didn’t believe Nina would ever leave him, not when he had his insurance policy chained inside a box to help smooth things over. But somehow, in the course of this conversation, Glen had given Simon a new idea to coerce Nina into doing his bidding. He was going to create a monster—though what that entailed exactly, Glen couldn’t say.
At least he had agreed to a phone call.
It was something.
It was hope.
Simon extended his hand. Glen took it and sealed the deal.
CHAPTER 38
That week and into the next was an especially busy time at The Davis Family Center. Oddly enough, given all the human drama Nina dealt with, it was something of a respite from her battles on the home front. Simon explained he had bruised his knuckles in a fall at school, but secretly Nina wondered if he had punched a wall in frustration. Maggie had decided to give Simon the silent treatment; a consequence, she explained to her mother, of her continued belief that he was to blame for the missing lab report—refusing to take any responsibility of her own. It was no surprise when, once again, Simon used Maggie’s behavior as proof this was not the best time for Nina to devote herself to work outside the home.
Something else about Maggie had been troubling Nina of late, and her motherly instinct told her it had nothing to do with Simon. It was normal, expected, for her daughter to pull away at this age, but for some reason, the distance felt different. When pressed, Maggie said it was nothing, but she couldn’t deliver the rebuttal with eye contact, and Nina could hear the strain in her daughter’s voice. There was something Maggie was holding back, Nina felt sure of it.
Either way, she was ready to move on with Simon while continuing to help her daughter adjust. She was equally ready to forget all about Hugh Dolan, who had stopped messaging when it became clear that she would not pay him a dime.
Now more than ever, Nina was sure the whole thing had been nothing but a scare tactic on his part, a way of drumming up money for his habit. He had seen an opportunity and taken advantage of it, nothing more. As for Nina’s investigation into Simon’s past, that was over and done with as well, erased like the browser history she had taken care of before Simon had woken up that day. She had felt foolish for thinking he might have snuck downstairs while she slept to check up on her activities, but regardless, she had to get rid of the evidence.
All this nonsense and noise was in her head. Nina credited the work she’d been doing with Dr. Wi
lcox for her renewed determination to jettison the baggage she’d been lugging around, to give in completely to Simon and trust his love.
At her therapy appointment Nina wasn’t sure where to begin. Should she talk about seeing Teresa again after all this time, and what she had revealed, as well as her lingering doubts about the extent of the affair? She hadn’t told Simon about Teresa, in part because it would have required a lengthy explanation as to why she went looking, not to mention the possibility of revealing her deception on the night she visited Carson.
What about Hugh? Or maybe the focus should be on Maggie’s latest accusations that Simon had stolen her homework (reason unknown). Perhaps it was best to discuss the pressures of her new job. But of all the people and things she could have discussed, it was Connor’s face that flashed in Nina’s mind, specifically his broad grin as he’d showed off the Bowflex machine he had helped put together. So that’s where she began.
“How did the gift make you feel?” Dr. Wilcox asked after Nina explained Simon’s big surprise.
“Well, part of me, of course, thought it was quite sweet of him.”
Dr. Wilcox keyed in on Nina’s hesitation. “And the other part?”
“I hate to use the word.”
“It’s fine to say, I promise.”
“I guess…” Nina cleared her throat. “I guess the word that came to mind was ‘controlling.’”
Dr. Wilcox’s brow furrowed. “In what way?”
Nina explained how Simon had been deeply disappointed that she chose to go out with her girlfriends rather than work on the lawn as he had wished.
“In fact, my friends want us to work out together this coming Saturday, but it doesn’t feel right or fair to leave Simon alone with Maggie on the weekend, especially now that I have a home gym to get my sweat on. So I backed out, disappointed them, again.”
“Why do you think he bought you that equipment?”