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“Was it you?” she asks her husband who sits at the kitchen island, face glowing blue in the light of the screen. He glances over at her blankly.
“Huh?”
She reaches for the box, holds it up to him. “Was it you?”
“Me?No, no, no. I say let sleeping dogs lie.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just—you know.” He lifts his shoulders, shoots her an innocent look. “Don’t go looking for trouble?”
There’s something funny about the way he says it. She’s about to press.
“Give me a minute okay? I’m almost done here.”
When she gets up to turn in, Bruce still working, she takes a final bit of wrapping to the garbage. She digs in, looking for the box Liza threw away. It’s a waste to toss it, right? It’s expensive. Maybe if it was Mako’s gift, he can send it back. But she doesn’t find it.
The Origins box is gone.
She puzzles over this a moment, then she walks over to the front door. It’s locked. Bruce has set the alarm. She knows there’s a motion detector in the doorbell, that sets off a chime on her father’s phone when someone arrives there. There’s no way those gifts were delivered without his knowledge. There’s no way someone could get in now, while they were all sleeping.
They are safe. She’d always been concerned about that. Captain Safety was her family nickname growing up. Since motherhood, that quality (flaw?) has edged toward paranoia. She peers out onto the street and sees a black BMW parked there. There are other cars lining the street as well, people visiting for the holiday. The houses on the street are all decorated wildly for the holiday—blow-up Santas and lights in the palm trees, glittering reindeer on lawns. She watches for a moment. All is calm. All is bright.
Hannah moves over to her husband, and slips her arms around him, puts her lips to his neck. He shuts the laptop lid—a little too suddenly? She pretends not to notice. He spins around on the stool and she moves into him. He puts a hand to her cheek, leans to press his mouth to hers.
“Really?” he whispers, as her hands start to work at the buttons on his pants. “I thought you didn’t like to—you know—in your parents’ house.”
She doesn’t care tonight. Something about her brother, the Origins test, the wine she’s had, Liza, her mother, the tension of the holiday, of family. The sadness of a joyful moment passed. She wants to push that away. She wants to be with the person she chose in this life, her husband. She wants toshowhim what he means to her.
She drops to her knees.
“Hannah,” he says, voice just a moan. He glances uneasily in the direction of their bedroom. “Your parents.”
She gives him a wicked smile before she takes him in her mouth; he groans, grips the bar.
Discussion closed.
In her family, Hannah is always the good girl, the responsible one, the fixer, the mediator.
Sometimes, though, it feels so nice to be bad.
1
Hannah
June 2018
The night-light stars spun on the ceiling, and Hannah lay on the plush carpet watching them glimmer and turn. She listened to Gigi’s measured breathing. The baby—almost a toddler at fifteen months—had just,justdrifted off in her crib.
Hannah stayed still though her arm was falling asleep, tingling unpleasantly beneath her head. One wrong move and those angelic eyelids would pop open and Hannah would be on the floor for another half hour at least.
She breathed. Gigi breathed.
Outside the door, she could hear Bruce’s low, rumbling voice from his home office down the hall. He was on the phone, working too late as usual. Hannah pricked her hearing in his direction. Did his tone sound slightly off? Did he sound angry? Or was there something a little desperate, pleading there?
But then it was quiet again. After a few minutes, she heard him walk outside, the back door chiming as it did whenever it was opened.
She felt an unease that was becoming too common.
