by Britney King
Naomi is treated with Dimercaprol, and the doctors say as long as she doesn’t have any adverse side effects she will be able to go home as early as tomorrow. Once she was settled on a floor, Greg sends me to pick up Blair. He’s staying overnight with Naomi so I can get some rest.
When Blair and I arrive home, the neighbor is sitting in our drive. He’s just seated there on the pavement, with his knees up to his chest, sort of rocking back and forth. When my headlights land on him, and thank God they do, he looks up and stares back at me wildly, like a frightened animal. And he seems surprised to see me.
Putting the car in park, I open my door and get out, using it as a sort of buffer between him and myself. “Are you okay?”
He shakes his head back and forth, the same way he had earlier. “How is she?”
“Lucy?” I really don’t want to have to break it to him that she probably isn’t going to make it through the night. But I suppose he knows that already. These days news travels fast.
His eyes shift, portraying confusion. “Naomi.”
It strikes me as odd that he knows my daughter’s name. But then, he lives next door. “She’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t have left the hospital if I weren’t,” I say, glancing back at the car. Blair, who was asleep in the backseat, has woken up and is staring at me wide-eyed and expectantly, as though she’s caught her second wind. “It’s late,” I tell Theo. “And you shouldn’t be out here. It’s cold.”
“My mother refuses to let me in the house. She’s going to send me back to that place.”
“What place?”
“Not the hospital,” Blair gasps. She has leaned her head out the door, and with a shy smile, she waves. “I’m sure she’s lying. Mommies always do that.”
“She’s not lying,” Theo says. “I’ve done something terrible.”
Blair looks at me and back at the neighbor. “It’s okay. I do lots of bad things.” She shrugs. “Daddy always says mommy is full of—”
“Empty threats,” I tell her. “Daddy says I am full of empty threats.”
“You really shouldn’t have repairmen coming and going when you’re not home. That’s what mother is mad about. She says it’s none of my business. She says I’m getting paranoid again. It’s the medication.”
“Repairmen? You mean the roofer?”
He looks away. Eye contact is not his favorite thing.
“Well, you guys have repairmen all the time. Since the fire…”
His voice changes. “We don’t have children.”
With resignation, I gather Blair from the car, cast and all, and we hobble to Mrs. Crump’s front door. “Mrs. Crump? It’s Amy Stone. From next door. Can you please open up? I need to talk to you.”
Blair looks at me. Theo waits on the steps. Somewhere around the fourth set of knocks, the old woman opens the door. “Hi. Good evening.” My voice comes out unnaturally high-pitched and nervous, as it strikes me I have no idea what I am going to say.
“What can I do for you?” she asks gruffly.
“Well,” I start, and then pause to gather my scattered wits. “You remember when I dashed in and saved your life?”
“I’ll never forget it.”
“Good—”
“But you should have just let me perish. Would have made for a better story.” She looks down at Blair. “And like they say, I’m old, and nothing good happens after fifty.”
My brow raises. “Great to know.” I’m in no mood for this tonight, so I don’t leave her room to get a word in edgewise. Once she gets wound up, it’s hard to get her to stop. “Anyway, the reason I’m here is—I found your son—” I glance over my shoulder. “I found Theo in my driveway.”
“Did he—”
“Anyway, he said you two had some sort of squabble, and being that it’s late, and it’s cold out, and it’s almost Christmas, and I’ve had a really shit couple of weeks—I was hoping that you could do the right thing and let him back inside.”
“He didn’t tell you what he did, did he?”
“Quite frankly, Mrs. Crump, I don’t give a damn.”
She looks at me, clearly taken aback, and opens the door. I gesture for Theo to cross the threshold. After he has, I hoist my daughter up. She wraps her legs around me, her cast digging into my hip, and we head home.
Mrs. Crump calls after me. “I bet you’d care if you knew what it was!”
Later, as I’m putting Blair to bed, she asks if I think Theo’s mommy is going to send him away.
“I don’t know.”
“I sure hope not. Theo is my best friend.”
“He can’t be your best friend, sweetheart. He’s a grown man.”
She shifts away from me. “He is!”
“What makes you say that? You hardly know him.”
She flops over and looks me up and down. She narrows her eyes as though to say I know nothing. “I do too!”
“Okay, then.” I pull the covers up to her chest and flip on the night light. I’m thinking about the gun, about going to get it. I’m thinking about sleeping with it under my pillow, just in case Mooney should try anything. Though, I doubt he’s in the best shape. “Whatever you say.”
“He talks to me every day. Through the fence.”
The next morning, Greg texts me that Naomi had a good night. I tell him that once I get Blair up and fed, we’ll head that way. Not long after, he texts again, saying that her blood work looks good and not to come. She is being released shortly. Too exhausted to type out a text, I pick up the phone and call him.
As he answers, a yawn overtakes me. “Sorry,” I say. “I hardly slept.”
In the background, I hear cartoons on the TV.
“They’re about to come in with discharge instructions. Can I call you back?”
“I need you to call the exterminator again. Preferably before they shut down for Christmas.”
“I know. You told me.”
“No, I mean again, again.”
“Huh?” There’s shuffling in the background. He sounds distant. “Okay.”
“The squirrels kept me up all night. Although…I don’t know…it could be raccoons. Whatever it is, they’re loud.” I sigh. “Maybe we should call a different company.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t fix the problem, obviously.”
“It’s been almost a year.”
“A year?”
“Something like that.”
“Did you have the roofer out?”
“What?”
“The roofer. Did you call them?”
“No…I told you we can’t afford the deductible right now.”
“That’s weird…the neighbor said he saw a repairman. In our garage.” I’m not certain he actually said in our garage. But it sounds right, so I go with it.
“What neighbor?”
“The kid next door.”
“Oh,” Greg replies. “Him? He’s not a kid.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, clearly he’s mistaken.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Theo thinks about the encounter earlier that afternoon. He thought about the look on the repairman’s face when he saw him watching. Most people that see Theo watching give him odd looks or turn away, but not this guy. Theo knows all about men like him. They were the kind of guys who knocked him to the ground in school, kicked him until he sometimes passed out. He’d awaken bloodied and having wet himself. That was always the worst of it—the humiliation. The second worst part was going without lunch when they stole his lunch money. It was never the physical pain that made Theo suffer; it was the relentless emotional scars, new ones inflicted before the old were able to heal.
Theo couldn’t wait to grow up. Until he did, and he realized it was worse. At the supermarket, customers, both men and women, often berated him as he scanned their groceries. No matter how hard he tried, he always managed to do something wrong. With people like that, the harder he tried,
the worse they treated him. It was as though they could sense his desperation, his need to please. He was an easy target. A human punching bag. Someone who couldn’t fight back.
Sometimes they said obscene things, but most were simply mean. At first it had bothered him. But then he saw those things on television, his mother’s shows, and the late-night infomercials, and he realized that he was not merely scanning people’s groceries. It was a service to the world. If he could take their anger, their wrath, their unhealed pain, then maybe the children and the animals wouldn’t have to.
The men at the hospital were the worst. Sometimes he wished he’d die, and sometimes he thought the waiting alone would kill him. It never did, though, and they never stopped sneaking into his room and asking him to do bad things.
The scariest monsters are those you can’t see. Invisible threats. That’s what the repairman felt like to Theo. Someone that stays just on the outskirts, looking in. Never quite touching the light, always hanging out on the fringe.
When he saw Theo watching, it did not surprise Theo that he set his tool bag down and walked over. It would surprise him more if he hadn’t.
“What’s your name?”
Theo didn’t answer. He memorized the man’s face and wondered what it would take to make him go away.
“What, cat got your tongue?”
“No. What’s yours?”
“Ah, so you do speak. I asked you first.”
“Robert,” Theo lied. He extended his hand, but the repairman just let it hang in the air.
“I’ve seen you around,” he said. “Always keeping an eye on things, no?”
Theo shuffled on his feet. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, only that he wanted to wrap them around the man’s neck. He wanted to walk over to the man’s tool belt, grab his hammer, and strike the man with it until he stopped talking. And so he’d never come back to the children’s house.
“I bet you really keep an eye on the missus, huh?” The repairman laughed. “Not that I can blame you. She’s got an ass on her, that one.”
Theo hates that kind of talk. He knew what the man was trying to do—trying to get him to say things that weren’t true, so that later he could use those things against him. He’d made that mistake many times, and he wasn’t going to make it again. “She’s nice.”
“Nah,” he said. “Not at her core, she isn’t. No woman is.”
Theo balled his fists and then shoved them in his pockets. He thought about the man’s pliers and considered whether they’d be sufficient to pull the repairman’s toenails out, one by one.
“Anyway,” he said. “I’ve got work to do, so whatever business you’ve got, you should probably get on with it.”
“You should probably get on with it,” Theo repeated. The repairman looked at him all funny like, and Theo smiled. He knew what the man was thinking. He was thinking he knows an easy target when he sees it.
Theo knew the repairman would be back. He didn’t know when, and he wasn’t sure it would be this soon, but he was glad it was. He was having a hard time staying awake. He didn’t want to fall asleep and miss something.
He felt guilty. He’d been so sure that his mother was going to tell the neighbors what he’d done. That he’d been spying on them. That he’d placed a camera in their home. That he’d been the one to upload that video to the neighborhood website.
Theo had only ever been in the Stones’ house once. Greg Stone had been out raking leaves and doing yard work. He’d left the garage door open, and Theo went in and placed the camera.
He was doing it for the children. He hadn’t known the video would be posted everywhere. He just wanted the police to see it. That way they could arrest the man next door, and he couldn’t hurt his wife anymore. Because Theo knew guys like that; they eventually moved onto the children. He was sorry that so many people had seen it, and more sorry that his mother had. He wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to do.
If he’d called the police when it was happening, he’d have to explain what he’d done. And it was illegal, and then everyone would know it was him. They’d say he was a pervert, just like all the other times he tried to save his friends at the hospital. He thought about making an anonymous call to the tip line, but he learned a long time ago that nothing is really anonymous anymore. He needed time and proper planning, which he hadn’t had. That was what had gotten him into trouble before.
Although, this time things would be different. This time he would be prepared.
Except that he wasn’t prepared.
He planned to kill Greg Stone himself. But as luck would have it, the repairman wanted to take care of it for him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Thursday, December 10th
11:01 p.m.
Theo failed on the first attempt. He had to turn away. He had seen a lot over the years, and he didn’t like to be reminded of the past. Theo peered through the Stones’ back door. His neighbor was on his knees, bent over the couch, his trousers down around his ankles. His hands were tied around his back with thick rope. The repairman stood behind him.
Theo could hear everything, and he could see everything. It was too much.
“Do you want to save your family?”
Theo listened to his neighbor’s cries. He heard his pleas. He watched as the repairman took the fire poker and shoved it in Greg Stone’s back. Not hard enough to pierce the skin, but hard enough that it hurt.
“I saw the video,” the repairman said. “You and I, it seems we have the same idea.”
Greg Stone pleads some more. “I gave you money.”
“Yeah—and you also had me beat to bloody hell. That character you sent…he was nothing. Nothing I haven’t seen before, anyway. I mean…what a joke. Couldn’t do your own dirty work, could you Stone?”
The repairman laughs. “Nah, I suppose your hands are too clean for that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Greg Stone stutters. “But I gave you the money and you said—”
“I lied. Remember what I told you? Money is nothing. What I want is to level the playing field.” He traced Greg Stone’s bare backside with the fire poker. “So now you have a choice. Which is it going to be—you or your wife?”
Theo bit his lip so hard it bled. He knows he should intervene, but he can’t. He hasn’t brought a weapon, and he doubts he can save the children with his bare hands. He’d intended to grab a carving knife from the Stones’ kitchen. He knew better than to take one from his own. His mother is very possessive with her kitchen utensils, and Theo doesn’t want to hear it when another one goes missing. But now he can’t get in without being seen, and now he has to watch this even though he’s seen enough crime shows to know how it ends.
The repairman will do unspeakable things to Greg Stone. Then he will turn his attention to the wife and the children. Theo can see it written on his neighbor’s face—he, too, knows this.
“Now, I know,” the repairman said as he wrung out his hands. “I know this is all your wife’s fault. But you see, Stone, the best way to make a person suffer is through someone they love.”
The repairman pushed Greg Stone’s face into the couch. He held it there for so long the fighting stopped, and Theo was certain his neighbor had suffocated.
Finally the repairman let up. He took a pistol from his waistband and held it against Greg Stone’s temple. “One wrong move and you’re dead.”
The violence caught Theo by surprise. Greg Stone opened his mouth to scream. The repairman hit him again, which stifled it. Then he removed his pants and stuffed them in Stone’s mouth. “Twitch and I blow your head off.”
Stone sunk forward onto the couch as the repairman positioned himself behind him. “The thing is…it’s not so bad so long as you’re not on the receiving end. You sort of get a taste for it, if you know what I mean. Much better than the other way around. Right? It’s not so bad. You could be any supermodel, Stone. Any old ex-girlfriend. But when you’re the one getting
fucked over, you see, it’s not so easy to pretend.”
Theo could see excruciating pain written across his neighbor’s face as the repairman entered him. And then everything shifted when he looked up and his eyes met Theo’s.
Thursday, December 10th
11:23 p.m.
He should turn around and go home. But he thinks of the children, and he can’t. He isn’t supposed to think of the children. As he creeps forward, sinking further into darkness, Theo is aware of the consequences. He doesn’t want to go to jail. He’s been there, done that. He has no intention of doing it again. Still, he puts one foot in front of the other, ambling forward. He cannot turn back now, any more than he could turn away at the start. He’d tried to do the right thing. Some lessons come wrapped in sandpaper, his mother likes to say. This must be what she means.
The alarm sounds loudly, causing that familiar dull ache deep in his skull, the one he’s never quite able to completely silence. Warning bells ring like fireworks on the Fourth of July. It’s all in his head, they say.
Theo knows it’s not all in his head. He knows that his mind isn’t playing tricks on him. He’s been watching nonstop, but he knew if he was going to make a difference he’d need a surprise attack. You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight, but that was all he had. And he had to go home to get it.
People are going to talk about you, his mother tells him. Give them good material. Theo turns the knob and walks over the threshold. What else is he supposed to do? He is a part of this now.
The smell, which he was not expecting, nearly folds him in two. Theo is not a weak man, despite what everyone says. The girls. Where are they?
If they’d listened to him, he wouldn’t be here putting his own life at risk. He tried to tell them. Little girls are fragile. They ought not be climbing trees, doing cartwheels, playing on monkey bars. They should be safe at home, not out in the world flinging themselves about. Now Theo realizes they weren’t safe, not even here.