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Chapter Thirty-two
Dani is sitting behind the wheelof her black Mercedes, its engine running, her windows open, the garage door closed.In a few minutes,she thinks,it could all be over.
She glances in the rearview mirror, pulling back the hair at the side of her face to reveal the golf ball–sized swelling that is the result of her husband’s most recent outburst. Her head is still pounding from when he reached across the kitchen table last night after dinner and grabbed a fistful of her hair, then slammed her head against the table with such force that it cracked the glass. A large jagged line now lies, like a scar, across the table’s surface.
“What happened to the table?” Tyler asked this morning when he came down for breakfast.
Dani pretended to notice the crack for the first time. “I don’t know,” she told him. “That’s weird.”
In truth, Dani knows exactly what set Nick off. He was annoyed because she’d forgotten to pick up his shirts from the cleaners, and when she casually suggested it might be a good idea for him to pick up his own shirts in the future—the words out of her mouth before she had time to weigh their consequences—he’d exploded.
Luckily, the boys were upstairs getting ready for bed, so they saw and heard nothing.
Nobody ever sees,she thinks.Nobody ever hears.
See no evil. Hear no evil.
“Better put some ice on that,” Nick told her as they were getting ready for bed. Minutes later, he was tenderly kissing her neck and climbing on top of her.
I’m so tired,Dani thinks now.Tired of having to weigh my words, of having to consider the consequences of even the most innocent of remarks, tired of walking on eggshells, of being afraid.
Of being ashamed.
She inhales, wondering how long it would take for the garage to fill with carbon monoxide, then watches the faces of her two sons take shape in the increasingly poisonous air. She pictures the bus bringing them home from camp at the end of the day, sees the looks of confusion on their faces when they get no answer to their repeated knocks on the door, their confusion turning to horror when their father informs them what their mother has done.
Could she really do this to them?
Could she leave them with a monster?
Ben might survive. He’s always been the tougher of her two boys. But Tyler…
Again, she feels them knocking on the door, the sound growing louder, more insistent. It takes several seconds for Dani to realize that the knocking is coming from outside her garage door and not from inside her head.
“Dani,” a voice calls out. “Dani, are you in there?”
Dani quickly shuts off the engine and presses the remote to open the garage door, exiting the car and stumbling into the fresh air.
Maggie stands before her. “My God!” she shouts, pulling Dani into the driveway. “What the hell happened?”
Dani coughs, trying to expel the fog from her brain and come up with a plausible explanation. “I don’t know,” she says, gasping for air. “I got in the car…there was somethin’ wrong with the radio…I kept tryin’ to fix it…I guess I forgot the garage door was still closed. And…” She realizes that Maggie has stopped listening to her and is staring at the bump on the side of her head. Her hand reaches up to touch it. “I got dizzy and must have banged my head on the steerin’ wheel,” she improvises. “How did you…?”
“I got home from taking Leo to camp and I heard a car running and thought I smelled gas,” Maggie explains. “We should probably get you to a doctor.”
“No. No, I’ll be fine. I wasn’t in there very long.”
“Long enough to get dizzy and hit your head.”
“I’m fine. I just need to sit down for a few shakes.”
Maggie gently lowers Dani to the curb, pulling out her cellphone as she sits down beside her. “At least let me call your husband.”
“No!” Dani says, with more force than she’d intended. “Please. I don’t want to worry him. He’s so busy. Please. Don’t call him.”
Maggie reluctantly returns the cellphone to her purse. It’s several seconds before she speaks. “What’s really going on here, Dani?”
“What do you mean?” Tears fill Dani’s eyes. “I told you.”
“You were trying to fix the radio…”
