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“Do you think they’ll just kill him once they hear that you’re bringing us back?” I asked.
“No. You’ve spent too many years escaping right after being caught. They won’t believe that I can do it either. They’ll keep him alive to be able to use him against you until the President has you himself.”
“Think it’ll work?” I asked and tried to hug my own body to prevent the goosebumps from spreading too far.
“Are you asking me for comfort? Or the truth?”
“The truth,” I lied.
“Fuck if I know,” he said and chuckled at himself. “We are four people up against an entire criminal organization that’s been operating successfully for decades.”
“Okay. So, if I wanted comfort?” I asked and swallowed the sob that wanted to escape.
“I’ll do everything I can to make sure it goes our way.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
jersey
THEN
I still hadn’t stopped smiling by the time I’d pulled the car back into the garage. Faith had no idea I was having Tigger tattooed on my arm when I left the house that morning. Her favorite game to play lately with my other tattoos was, “Daddy, wassat?” She wouldn’t need anyone anywhere to explain this to her. He was the only one done in color, and while my skin was still very much bright red all around it and not even the least bit healed yet, she’d know exactly what it was. And that it was just for her.
Screaming from inside the house the moment that I killed the engine had me nearly blowing the car door off to get out and then attempting to rip the door to the house off its hinges to get inside. They weren’t the kinds of screams that came when Faith was being chased or tickled. These came from fear, and they were also coming from my wife’s mouth. I hated myself for the twelve seconds that I’d allowed myself to be purely fucking terrified that maybe I shouldn’t have left Liz alone today, but she’d seemed better the last few days than she had been in months.
I toppled the little table that sat in the entryway from the garage to the house and I heard the plate and the lamp from it shatter when it all hit the floor, but I continued on my path through that house like a wrecking ball toward their screams. I found both girls in the kitchen. Faith was crying, huddled in one corner while Liz stood in the opposite corner holding a dustpan in one hand and a glass in the other. I couldn’t see blood anywhere. Liz was shaking, but she wasn’t crying. My eyes landed on the chair from our dining room table that was lying on its side in the middle of the kitchen floor.
“There was a spider,” Liz said, and laughed. I watched her shoulders relax and she dropped her arms down to her sides like she could finally breathe again now that I was in the house. Faith stopped screaming once she’d looked up to see me standing there too. She sprinted across the room and clung to my leg like a leech.
“A spider,” I repeated. “You’re both in here screaming like that because of a spider?”
“Up!” Faith screeched and pointed at the ceiling. Liz laughed again.
“It was on the ceiling. I had the flyswatter to just kill it, but Faith didn’t want me to,” Liz explained. “I thought I could just stand on the chair and nudge it into the glass then carry it outside to let it go. I just ended up knocking it off the ceiling, but then I didn’t see where it went or where it landed. I about fell off the chair trying to get away from wherever it might’ve been. Then I ran for my life.”
“For your life,” I repeated again. “From a spider, Liz.”
“It was huge, Van,” she said. “And I still haven’t found it.”
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind when I couldn’t contain the laughter any longer.
“Come here, Liz,” I said and motioned for her with my hand since the shaking toddler was still clinging to my leg. I laughed again when her eyes scanned the entire kitchen ceiling another time before she dared to leave the safety of her corner to slip under the protection of the arm that I was holding out toward her. I kissed the top of her head and breathed in the familiar coconut scent from her shampoo.
“Did you fall?” I asked. “You okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said and finally laughed too. “I really didn’t fall. I might hold a long jump record for the state of New Jersey now though.”
“What about you, sweetheart?” I asked and shook the leg that Faith was still wrapped around. I waited until I was looking down into my own blue eyes set so perfectly in her little round face. “You alright?”
“No kill it,” she whimpered and wiped her nose across my jeans.
“That’s why you’re crying? Because you don’t want me to kill it?”
I watched the most beautiful thing I’d ever created bob her head up and down before I looked at my wife again.
“Hey, I tried to catch the nasty thing,” she said. “You can see how well that worked out. It’s your turn now, Dada.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle when Liz placed the glass directly in my palm before she backed away with her hands in the air. I pried my daughter off my leg so I could kneel in front of her to ask if I really had to catch the damn thing rather than just find it and kill it. When her eyes landed on the orange ink now on my forearm, all thoughts of that spider vanished completely.
