Ryan was in a hurry that morning, even more than he typically was, racing down to the kitchen with his shirt half undone while he used the electric razor to get the spots he missed. He offered up a quick excuse—“Forgot I had an early meeting”—grabbed a granola bar from the basket on the counter, kissed both boys on the head and his wife on the cheek, and then, bang, he was out the door.
The boys, sitting at the kitchen table, stared at the door for a couple seconds before diverting their attention back to their tablets.
This was how the summer would go, she realized. Stacey Holbrook wasn’t going to offer to take her sons to the zoo every day. The boys may be out of school, but they wouldn’t do much more than play video games or mess around on their tablets.
Well, not if she had anything to say about it.
“All right, who wants to take the first shower?”
Neither boy volunteered.
She cleared her throat, loud and overdramatic, and the boys rolled their eyes at her.
Max said, “Where are we going?”
Matthew said, “Yeah, where are we going?”
She crossed her arms meaningfully, furrowed her brow to try to make herself look stern.
“Who says we’re going anywhere? Maybe we’ll stay home and clean.”
The boys looked stricken.
Matthew said, “Or … we could not.”
Max giggled and took the final swallow of his orange juice.
“Yeah, Mom, how about we go to the mall instead? Or the movies! The Rock has a new movie out, and Dad said he’d take us and that was weeks ago.”
The truth was Ryan had wanted to take the boys to the movies—take all of them, Tina included, the whole happy family—but they simply couldn’t afford it. Even the matinee tickets were expensive these days, and the boys would no doubt want snacks.
No, they ultimately decided, the money could be better spent elsewhere—like paying off one of their credit cards, or at the very least trying to get the balance down to a more respectable amount—but how does one explain such a thing to kids? They didn’t understand credit card debt or interest rates or credit scores. All they understood was The Rock had a new movie out that their friends had seen but which they still hadn’t.
Because Tina didn’t want to start an argument, she said, “We’ll see. Now, who’s showering first?”
Both boys looked at one another, and shrugged simultaneously.
Max said, “Why don’t you go first, Mom?”
She smiled and answered dryly.
“Why, aren’t you the thoughtful son.”
He beamed back at her but then immediately focused his attention on his tablet. So did Matthew.
She sighed.
“All right, you’ve forced my hand. We’ll let fate decide who goes first. Rock, Paper, Scissors.”
The boys groaned their annoyance, but they were grinning. They loved when decisions were made with the game.
Matthew and Max chimed in together—“Rock, Paper, Scissors, go!”—and Max ended up trumping Matthew’s rock with his paper.
Matthew blurted, “Best out of three!”
Tina laughed and shook her head.
“Oh, no. Fate has spoken. Go get yourself a shower.”
Matthew groaned again, only this time it wasn’t in as much jest. He grabbed his tablet and started out of the kitchen.
Tina said, “Tablet stays behind.”
“But—”
She cut him off.
“No buts, mister.”
Max giggled and shouted, “Mister No Butts!”
After some more whining on Matthew’s end, he finally gave up the tablet and sulked away. She would try to keep an ear out for the shower because there was a good chance Matthew would get distracted by the computer in his room. One thing that could be said about her boys, they were great procrastinators. They got that from Ryan’s side of the family.
A half hour later, Matthew thundered down the steps, his hair not totally dry, and he immediately grabbed his tablet and wandered off into the living room.
Tina called out, “Max, your turn!”
Max, playing video games in the living room, shouted, “I don’t need a shower!”
Tina closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Gave it a moment, and called out again.
“If you don’t head upstairs in the next five seconds, I’ll take every single video game in this house and throw them in the river.”
An idle threat, maybe, but her tone was severe enough, and in three seconds Max was running up the steps.
She had just heard the shower start when the doorbell started ringing. Not once or twice but several times.
Ding ding ding ding ding.
Matthew, in the living room, called, “I’ll get it!”
There was something about the incessant ringing, especially so early in the morning—in their neighborhood where soliciting was illegal—that caused a finger of dread to touch her spine.
She shouted, “Stay where you are!”
Matthew was already up, halfway to the door, but he sensed the urgency in his mother’s voice enough to turn and head back to the living room.
The doorbell had quieted, and now there came a banging at the door—bang bang bang bang bang—and her first thought was that it was somebody crazy outside, some whacko who might go away if ignored long enough, but then just as quickly she worried that if nobody answered, the person might never go away.
She peered through the window in the side. A man stood on the doorstep, a tall black man in his mid-twenties, wearing khakis and a black T-shirt, a man Tina had never seen before. He pounded his fist against the door as he kept looking back over his shoulder.
Tina shouted, “We’re not interested!”
The man paused, checked the street once more, then stepped back to address her.
“Please open the door. Your sister Holly sent me.”
Her dread instantly snapped into panic. She knew she should ask this man more questions—how did he know Holly? where was she?—but before she knew it she unlocked the door and pulled it open, and that was when she saw the gun in the man’s right hand, and her first thought was her sons, how all they wanted to do was see The Rock’s new movie, and now this man was going to kill them.
But the man didn’t raise the gun, didn’t point it at her, and instead spoke in a calm, measured voice.
“You and your boys need to come with me right now.”
She thought, How does he know about the boys?
But before she could voice the question, she heard the car coming their way, coming fast, coming too fast.
The man heard it, too. He turned his head to the street and the car coming their way. Not just down the street, but swerving toward the house.
The man lunged forward, pushing her back into the foyer, right as the car jumped the curb and tore over the lawn and crashed through the front door.