by Paul Curtin
Andrew switched on the weak flashlight, illuminating the space at the far end of the closet. The clothes and shoes had been pushed to the other end, leaving him modest room to stretch out. The closet opened with two sliding doors that ran along a metal track embedded in the carpet. They had jammed the glide on his side of the closet with a broken toothbrush. Only the other door would open. So if someone entered the room, Andrew could slip through a small door leading to Aidan’s closet, concealed by a dense layer of hanging clothes and shoes.
He opened a book he had read before and would have to read again. Garbage chick-lit Molly had around. The protagonist was a capricious ass who bought a house hoping he would get his former girlfriend to return. When she did, though she was engaged, they slept together because it was “true love.” It pissed him off. The girl’s fiancé was a good guy too—even accepted her back when he found out she had cheated. He put it down. Molly insisted her dad might notice if she took a thriller from downstairs. What a shame.
He rested his head against the wall. Molly spent a lot of time with him, so he didn’t have to occupy himself for too long. When she wasn’t around, and he couldn’t distract himself with crappy fiction, his thoughts drifted to his mom and little sister. The day it all started, he woke up in Molly’s bed and saw the ash outside. He called his house’s landline and his dad’s cell—his mom wasn’t allowed to have a phone because his dad said she was a whore who’d cheat on him the moment she got one—but nobody picked up. He left before Molly boarded up the windows, a scarf wrapped around his head. Told her he had to do it. He trudged through the gray to his dirt bike only a half mile away. But Andrew’s house was empty, and the family pickup was gone. His dad probably left with a spring in his step. No more worrying about feeding his son, not that he ever did.
Molly had it good even though she didn’t see it. Both her parents loved her, especially her dad. She would always say he didn’t give her space, but Andrew saw a man who cared about his daughter. A man who cared for his children. What an idea.
Since he didn’t know what happened to his mom and sister, he spent a lot of time imagining where they were. He liked to think they made it somewhere south. Somewhere safe and warm.
Right now, Molly was getting supplies. It made him feel like he was taking advantage of her. She denied she was depriving herself for his sake. Every night she brought back a quarter plate of prepared food, Molly telling him she just served herself extra, but each week her ribs seemed to grow more defined. She shouldn’t be shrinking, but she was.
The door creaked. “It’s me,” she said, and it clicked closed.
Her voice was quiet. They had to speak in a constant whisper, so much so he had almost forgotten the sound of her full voice. Andrew pushed the clothes aside and pulled the other sliding door toward himself. She stood there in skinny jeans and a brown hoodie, cans and jars resting in the front pouch. “I almost had to abandon the trip,” she said. “I heard people upstairs and freaked out. Then my aunt and brother were reading on the couch.”
She tipped her shirt to the side so that the contents spilled out onto her bed. He emerged from the closet and looked over the bounty she had brought—a couple cans of black beans, green beans, canned soup, and a big jar of beets. “I love me some beets,” he said, licking his lips.
She smacked his arm. “I tried to grab something nutritious. The basement freaks me out.”
“There’s nothing down there.”
“It’s not that,” she said, but no more.
He picked up one jar and looked at the distorted image through the glass. “We have to come clean eventually,” he said.
Molly’s jaw tightened. “They can’t know.”
“Why not?”
“It would break his heart.”
“This isn’t easy for me either.” Frankly, he was tired of sponge bathing, tired of pissing and shitting into a Tupperware container.
“I know, sweetie.”
He set the jar down. “He won’t disown you.”
“He would hurt you.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know,” she said, trying to smile. “I don’t know.”
He lowered his voice even though they were already whispering. “There’s only so much time before we have to tell them. Before they figure it out.”
She looked down at the food and nodded, leaning toward him, brushing her lips against his unshaven cheek, and then pressing them against his lips. His heart exploded with joy. There was nothing better—nothing that could make him forget about everything else—than a kiss from her. His lust roared into overdrive, and he drew her in deeper, nudging her closer to the bed. When her legs hit the side, she fell backward onto the mattress, and he landed over her.
“Ouch,” she said, scrunching her face.
Andrew pulled back. “What?”
“Something’s digging into my back.” She bit her bottom lip and reached under herself. A second later, she came up, giggling, with a can of beans. “There it is,” she said and tossed it to the other side of the mattress.
He kissed her neck, Molly closing her eyes, Andrew reaching under her sweatshirt.
“Whoa there, buddy,” she said.
“Cold hands?”
“Freezing.”
He rubbed them together and grabbed the edge of her hoodie, pushing the fabric until he exposed her midriff. She looked down at him with her beautiful brown eyes, tears there, smiling. He kissed her navel and her bony hips and nestled his head against her stomach as if he could hear a secret message inside.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love—”
A blood-curdling scream downstairs. Molly sat up. Andrew dropped to his knees and stared at the door.
“Get back to the closet,” Molly said, jumping up and pulling down her hoodie.
“It wasn’t just someone freaked out by a spider, right?”
“Did it sound like it?”
It didn’t. She grabbed the doorknob and glared back at him. “Go,” she said.
“The food.”
“Crap.” She kneeled in front of the bed and tossed the cans and jars under the bed skirt. He hurried into the closet, closed the sliding door, and soon heard the bedroom door open and slam shut. He climbed through the mess of clothes and shoes back into his spot. His mind wandered downstairs to whoever was screaming. He wasn’t religious, but he prayed that everything was okay.
And he wished he could join them. No longer hidden.
The door opened, then shut, and he heard the distinct compression and release of the bed springs as Molly’s weight settled onto the mattress. He pushed the clothes to the side and slid open the closet door. She lay on her stomach, head buried into a pillow. He stayed back for a second. “What happened?”
She kept her face down for a few more seconds before turning over, her eyelids puffy, cheeks flushed. She curled into a ball.
Andrew sat next to her. He rubbed her back, and she turned around and latched onto his hips, resting her head on his lap.
“What happened?” Andrew said.
“Aidan had a seizure. A bad one.”
“Is he okay?”
“Mom and I just put him to bed.”
“Who was screaming?”
“My aunt.” A beat. “I don’t want to talk right now, okay?”
“Sure.” He lay down, and she cozied up next to him, resting her head into the curve between his chest and shoulder. He closed his eyes, smiling.
Drifted into sleep.
It sounded like thunder.
His eyes shot open, and he looked down at Molly to see if it had wakened her. Her breathing hadn’t changed, and her eyes were shut. Something rumbled downstairs like an approaching stampede. “Molly,” he whispered.
Then came the yelling. It was faint at first, but the voices cam
e closer along with the thunder. “Molly,” he said, shaking her.
She roused and grunted. “What?”
The second her eyes opened, she knew what was happening, and panic spread onto her face.
“You have no right to tell me how I need to be in my own home,” Sean yelled from down the hallway.
“Shit, shit,” she said and jumped up from the bed.
The footsteps thumped closer to the room. “Please, calm down, babe,” Elise said. “Please. Stop.”
“Hide, hide!” Molly hissed.
Andrew sat immobile, his muscles not reacting. He looked at the door with its lock popped out—unlocked. One doorknob turn away from being exposed. He snapped into survival mode and darted for the closet, diving inside, crashing his shoulder against the wall as he went in. The bedroom door shook with one booming crack.
Molly looked at Andrew with a fear he had never seen.
“Open the door,” Sean yelled. “You have one second or I open it for you.”
She motioned for Andrew to shut the closet door, almost pleading with her eyes, so he closed it. The bedroom door clicked open a second later. Andrew froze. His feet tottered on a pile of shoes. Don’t move, don’t move. Don’t make a noise.
There was silence outside the closet. A shoe shifted under his foot, and he leaned back to offset his balance.
“I think you know why we’re here,” Sean said.
Footsteps. Someone walking further into the room. “Daddy, I don’t know—”
“Molls, don’t ‘daddy’ me right now.”
“Molly, please,” Elise said. “Please don’t fight us here.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Molly said.
They know. Andrew didn’t know how, but they had figured it out. He closed his eyes.
“Where is it?” Sean said.
It?
“I don’t know what—” Molly said.
“Cut the crap,” Sean said. “I’m already pissed off you would betray my trust like this. But you lying to me will only make it worse. Now tell me where all of it is.”
Where it is.
“Dad, I don’t know,” Molly said, blubbering.
There was a long pause; an intense silence like every molecule in the air was electrified. Andrew drew a breath as quietly as he could.
“Fine,” Sean said. “You want to play it like that, we’ll play it like that. I have a video camera in the basement.” Sean’s voice growing louder. “I just watched you take food off the shelves this morning. Stealing food.”
Molly sniffled, her breath stuttered.
Sean yelled, “You spend all day up here. You come out only to have meals with us. You don’t want to talk. You don’t want to listen. And now I watch my daughter—my own daughter—taking food from my reserves. You have betrayed all of our trust, you know that?”
“Daddy, I’m so sorry,” Molly sobbed.
“Then where’s the food? How much did you take?”
“Only a little.”
“How much did you take, Molly?”
“I didn’t think it would be that big a deal.”
“Not that big a deal? That is all we have to live on. It’s everything. When it’s gone, we have nothing. No more. You understand that?”
“Sean, I think she gets it,” Elise said.
“Apparently not, because if she did she wouldn’t have stolen from the only source of life we have in this house.”
“Please. Let’s talk about this when we all have cooler heads.”
“Elise,” he said and then paused. Andrew heard him growl over Molly’s sobbing, imagining his eyes piercing, his shoulders rising. God. “She is going to tell me where all the food is. All of it.”
“I didn’t mean it—” Molly cried.
“Where is it?” Sean said. A scrambling. Someone moving things around. “Where’re the cans, huh? Where are they? They in your drawers? Where are they?”
“You’re acting like a crazy person,” Elise shouted.
He heard a piece of furniture tip and then the distinct scraping of the wooden dresser drawers opening. Elise yelled something else and another male voice—Andrew thought it was Michael—tried to chime in, but the ruckus persisted. It sounded like he was removing the drawers one by one and dumping the contents on the floor. Molly only whimpered a few nonsensical words as he did it.
“Where’s the food?”
“I don’t know,” she screamed.
“Is it under the bed?” A thud reverberated through the floorboards. “There’s some.”
The room filled with the sound of cans rolling along the floor. He had discovered the stash under the bed. “This is unbelievable,” Sean said. “Unbelievable. Why’d you do this? What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know,” Molly said.
“You don’t know? How could you not know? You barely eat anything downstairs and then you steal more food from the reserves. Why didn’t you ask me? You think I would be mad if you asked for a little more every day?”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it? The hell are you doing taking food behind my back?”
“I didn’t want to make you mad.”
“You didn’t want to make me mad?” Sean said, his voice reaching a terrifying crescendo. “What do I look like now, Molly? Did you not think this would make me a little mad? What were you thinking? Putting everyone else at risk.”
“Stop it,” Elise yelled. “Sean, stop it. Please. Take the cans and we can talk about this later.”
“Will everyone stop telling me what I can do in my own house?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Molly said. “I’m sorry.”
“Is there more?”
She took too long to respond, because within another second the floorboards resounded, and he said, “Where’s the rest of it?”
“There isn’t any more. I swear.”
“Molly, I’ll only ask this once: do you have more?”
“No!”
“I don’t believe you. I’m sorry, I can’t believe you.”
“Daddy, please.”
“Why are you hiding this? What good is this doing right now?”
“I don’t have any more.”
“Is it in the closet?”
The air ruptured from Andrew’s lungs. His hands shook, then his legs, his feet shifting on the uneven surface. If Sean discovered Andrew, the way he was right now—game over. Andrew imagined Sean’s big hands wrapped around his throat, collapsing his windpipe, Andrew floundering, slamming his arms against the walls and floors and Sean’s forearms, struggling for air.
Only one choice: get to the other end of the closet and sneak into the crawlspace leading to the other room. But that required him to move the clothes and brush up against the metal closet doors. To make noise.
“Get out of the way,” Sean said.
“I gave you all the food, I swear,” Molly said.
“I won’t ask you again.”
“Daddy, please. There’s no more.”
He had to try to get out, so he shuffled further down the closet.
“If you have nothing to hide, then let me look.”
“There’s no more food, I swear. I swear.”
He took another few micro-steps across the closet, feeling his back scrape against the metal door.
“Get out of the way.”
Someone tugged hard on the closet door. The one side, jammed, lifted in the track and slammed back down. It sounded like someone had bashed sheet metal with a hammer, and Andrew felt his heart skip.
“What’s wrong with this thing?” Sean said and then tried to open the door again.
Andrew hurried as fast as he could, tripping over a pair of shoes. His first instinct was to reach out and balance himself on the door, but that would
cause a huge noise. Instead, he gripped the dowel rod holding the hanging clothes and hoped it would support his weight. It did. He finally reached his small cubby space and lowered himself to his knees. The doorway to Aidan’s closet was already open. So close. Just a few seconds and he was safe. He pulled himself forward into the crawlspace and popped his head into the other closet.
“I said get out of the way,” Sean said.
“Please don’t hurt him,” Molly yelled.
Andrew stopped. Touched his head to the floor.
“Don’t hurt who?” Sean said.
Seconds passed. Andrew sat upright and pressed his shoulders against the wall, his heart drumming so hard he could feel it in his throat. Then Sean hurled the closet door open.
Michael
Michael wasn’t about to be the one to tell Sean he was acting like an asshole. He had already tried. Sean would probably only tell him it was his house and that he had no right to talk.
Sean lambasted Molly with valid questions, sure, but they ripped into her harder than he seemed to understand. Michael could see the breakdown happening in her face, the tears flowing down her reddened cheeks. Each word Sean yelled seemed to reach into her soul, exposing something that was once protected and safe but now was left raw and vulnerable. He couldn’t watch. She had made a mistake, for whatever reason, but she didn’t deserve to have her father tear her to pieces.
“Where’s the food?”
“I don’t know,” she screamed.
“Is it under the bed?”
Sean dropped to his knees and lifted the bed skirt. He paused for a second, Michael watching, his view blocked but knowing Sean had found the stash. Sean tossed a can of beans backward followed by another.
Molly laced her fingers behind her head. There was something missing from the equation. She was a smart girl, and everyone understood her father’s propensity to treat the food like a sacred cow. She was skin and bones, not any bigger than Kelly, so she had no reason to steal food.
Her denial only made Sean angrier. The veins in his temples popped. His face, already a fierce red, grew stormier. Michael was sure that if this line of questioning persisted, his head might explode like a ripe watermelon stuffed with dynamite.