“WILL.”
The name passed over her lips with an aching familiarity as Maria pulled herself from the car. The boy standing before her had the same cobalt blue eyes she’d spent the past fifteen years gazing into, but when he smiled, it was the cordial smile of a stranger.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said, but Will only laughed. It was an uncomfortable, on-the-spot laugh that she’d never been audience to, and as they watched each other through the silence, it was clear that he wasn’t expecting her.
“Do we go to school together?” he said, but Maria just shook her head, unable to speak, for fear her words would reduce her to tears.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” she finally said, and Will hesitated before pointing to a row of trailers behind them.
“I have to take the mail home and drop off my backpack, but you can come with me if you want.”
Over the background noise of dribbling basketballs and screaming children, Maria walked by Will’s side, the urge to take his hand and touch his skin so great that she had to force her own hands into her pockets. She’d never imagined her husband as the boy who walked beside her now. He’d never told her about the earring that was poking out from his earlobe or the mop of hair that fell to his shoulders or the gold chain that hung around his neck. They were immaterial things, but pieces of a history she’d never been a part of. Was this what he wanted her to see? This version of him?
“So how do I know you if you’re not from here?” When he sneaked a sideways glance in Maria’s direction, she blushed under his gaze.
“We used to go to school together.”
Her words drifted away as they arrived at a weed-lined walkway that led to the front door of a run-down trailer. With tentative steps, she followed him past a lawn of thistles, where neglected and rusted-out toys from seasons past lay scattered like the bones of half-buried skeletons. They both ducked their heads beneath the shredded awning over the porch, where a pair of mismatched and corroded chairs were balanced beside each other. Maria was overwhelmed with guilt as she thought of the azaleas in her mother’s garden, and of the beautiful home she’d left just that morning, and of all the luxuries she’d been afforded in life. She’d never imagined her husband had grown up in a home with so few.
“You can come in,” he said, easing the front door open and casting a hesitant glance back at her before stepping through the doorway. “I don’t think anyone’s home.”
It was a cavernous box of a house, the inside blanketed by a darkness so thick that her movements were arduous and slow. It was no place for a child.
“Shut the damn door.”
The voice that rumbled from the man on the couch was coarse and gruff, and the baseball hat that covered his face was stained with sweat and dirt, but it was him. It was the stepfather she’d never met, the man who’d ruined her husband’s life, the man who’d been rotting in prison for almost a decade before she and Will met. Her mind was telling her to run, compelling her to make her escape, but she couldn’t seem to force her legs to move. Instead, she watched with a sick fascination as he slithered from the couch and slicked his grease-caked hair back.
“Well,” he said to Maria, sliding his cap onto his head. “Who do we have here?”
His breath was rancid and stale from the combination of cheap whiskey and cigarettes, and as she waited to be rescued from the man her husband had despised his entire adult life, reality delivered a blow she was ill-prepared to handle.
“Dad, this is…” Will’s words drifted away as he stared at Maria, not even knowing her name, ignorant of the fact that she was once his wife and the mother of his children and that they had once loved more deeply than most couples do in a lifetime.
“Maria,” she whispered. “I’m Maria.”
The sticky warmth of his stepfather’s hand as he pressed it into hers stirred up the memories of a nightmare that was now becoming her reality, and she couldn’t shake the image of the bruises that had covered Beth’s pallid skin. She glanced down at his hands, the same hands that had wrapped themselves around Beth’s neck as they stole her last breath.
“Maria’s a friend from school,” Will said.
“I see,” the man replied, squeezing her hand with a wink. “She’s prettier than the other one you’ve been bringing around.”
His eyes swept over her body like a predator sizing up his prey, and through her nausea, Maria forced herself to smile. She forced herself to pretend that she didn’t know what he was doing to his eight-year-old daughter behind the doors of that wretched trailer.
“It’s not like that, Dad. We’re just friends.” Will set the mail on the kitchen counter and dropped his backpack onto the floor, motioning for Maria to join him as he headed toward the door. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”
The screen door slammed behind them, and the glare of the sun burned into her eyes as they made their way across the porch. The pressure in her chest finally lifted, but nothing could quell the nausea in her gut. There was a monster in the trailer, and Maria would have to rely on him, that child molester and murderer, if she was to return to her husband and children.
“Can you wait for me here?” Will was standing at the edge of the stairs, checking his watch before glancing down the street. “I have to run to the bus stop, but I’ll be back in less than five minutes.”
Maria’s eyes flashed to the door separating her from the man inside, but she turned back just in time to see Will bounding down the stairs, two at a time, and abandoning her beside the rusted chairs on the front porch. His stepfather’s presence burned into her back like a searing flame, and she was almost too afraid to move. She stood motionless, like an awkward statue, her breaths shallow and her eyes unmoving as she struggled to blend in with the scenery around her. The psychiatrist in her yearned to know the hows and whys of that man’s actions, but the mother in her was far too angry to approach him rationally.
It could have been a minute or it could have been an hour before Will finally turned the corner at the end of the street. It took her a moment to recognize the little girl from the faded snapshot, skipping toward the trailer, edging closer to her destiny. Maria had never pictured her so alive. She’d never imagined that Beth would be so real, that her hair would bounce when she ran, or that she wouldn’t bother tying her shoelaces when they came undone. What would Will do if he knew the real danger his little sister was facing? Did he know that stumbling over untied shoelaces couldn’t compare to the horror lurking behind their door?
The stairs creaked as Maria took them one by one, watching the pair approach hand in hand. She met them at the edge of the ragged lawn and knelt down in front of the little girl, oblivious to the gravel that was driving into her knees. The cobalt eyes that stared back at her were more vibrant and alive than she ever could have imagined, and as she wrapped her arms around the little girl’s delicate shoulders, Beth leaned in with a hug that almost knocked her off balance. The scent of bubblegum shampoo wafted through the air around them as Maria pulled her close.
“Beth,” she said. “It’s so good to finally meet you.”
The little girl smiled up at her, her laughter floating through the air around them, and hugged her back as if she’d been waiting for her to show up, as if she’d known all along that Maria would never let her down.