BY RACHEL FEDER
Editor’s Note: This is part of a serial novel, THE TURN, which will be published in installments at Luna Luna. This is Part 10. Read the rest here.
25.
The downstairs hallway is still and quiet. Quinn’s white noise machine buzzes softly somewhere upstairs.
Am I really here? Was I ever really gone?
Thebes’s bedroom is undisturbed, the rocker still. I lean over his crib and let out all the air in my lungs.
He’s there. He’s here. Sleeping peacefully.
But he isn’t safe. I’m not safe.
I need to figure out what’s happening, but I can’t leave him alone.
I pick the baby up, nestling him against my neck and chest. He nuzzles into my clavicle, making a slight snoring sound, but doesn’t wake up.
A sharp tooth. A glow in the window. A light in the yard.
My ankle slides when my foot hits a plastic potato from Thebes’s play kitchen. I bite my lip to keep from screaming out in pain.
I need to talk to Alison.
Thebes in my arms, I walk upstairs, locking the back door as I pass it. Turn, turn, and I’m outside her room.
Knock, knock.
Surely I can trust Alison; after all, Thebes is her baby.
Knock, knock.
It’s awkward, but I’ve been an easy houseguest. I’ve been a fucking fabulous nanny. Besides, I wouldn’t be waking her up if it weren’t important.
If it weren’t—I shudder—a matter of life or death.
Steadying the baby against my chest with one arm, I open the door.
The room is empty.
Fluttering in my lungs, ice in my chest, ants in my spine.
Alison is gone.
A couple paces and I’m in Quinn’s room. Quinn is gone, too.
26.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. Think, Baxter.
Back in Thebes’s room, I change his diaper, then layer a jacket and hat over his fleece, footie pajamas. He screams with anger, then settles down and slips back into sleep in the baby carrier Alison hangs on the hook by the front door.
In the kitchen, I fill a canvas tote with two bottles of formula, a bag of cheerios, two granola bars. Shrug my winter coat over the sweatshirt. Curse my ankle, think about icing it, then decide there isn’t time.
I have no idea what the fuck is going on. All I know is that I’m not safe, and Thebes isn’t safe.
The baby was alone in the house. The door was unlocked.
I feel in my front sweatshirt pocket for the tooth but it’s gone. Retrace my steps and can’t find it anywhere.
I have an old beanie of Jack’s under my bed; it still smells like him. I pull it down over my ears, and pull my hair into a loose side braid.
I look at myself in the mirror. I look…
Thebes fusses, and I slip a bottle out of the bag, placing the nipple in his mouth. I need to get more formula, and then I need to get out of here before someone comes back.
I look like a mother. I mother walking into the dangerous unknown to protect her child.
27.
I leave the back door unlocked behind me. I’m not coming back.
The yard is so familiar. How many afternoons have I spent out here with the kids, whiling away the hours, watching the smoke collect in the distance, rushing inside as the ash began to fall?
Now the air is still and chill, the unseasonably warm day going cold on me. I can smell livestock to the north, odor of feces and animal gas pushing down the mountain range on the cold air.
The tree is gone—workers chopped it up and carried it away. Only the stump remains, loosed from its hold.
The door to the neighbor’s house is unlocked.