As Olive screamed below us, I tried to pull up the trapdoor, but Aaron pushed me out of the way. The door dropped from my hand, sending up plumes of dust and, wafting from below, the sickly sweet smell of something dead, likely the desiccated body of a mouse that had stumbled on the rodent poison Nathan left out in the cellar.
“Aaron, for god’s sake! Let Olive out. She’s terrified.”
“She threatened to leave me, to live with Madison.”
Jesus, he was pouting. I studied his face. It was like I was talking to another personality within Aaron, someone I’d never met before, a child. A sulking, dangerous child.
I flung a hand toward the door at our feet. “So you hit her? You drag her across the floor? You throw her in the cellar?”
Olive’s whimpers rose from below us.
“She needs to understand,” he said. “She can’t leave me.” He waved a hand before continuing. “Anyway, once you talk to her and to the social workers and help me straighten things out, it’ll be fine. And when custody is all ironed out, we can get married. Then it will just be the four of us. Me and my girls.”
He was delusional. How had I never seen it before?
“We’re done, Aaron,” I said, more to myself than to him. “We are so done.”
“No,” he said. “No. We have our lives ahead of us.” He smiled strangely, vacantly, his eyes a little lost, like a person with dementia. “We’re going to get married.”
I laughed at that, and his smile fell. “You’re exactly the man Madison said you were,” I said. “I can’t believe I bought into all your bullshit.”
He gripped my arm. “It appears you need a little persuading,” he said. He forced me back into the kitchen, but stopped short when he saw Nathan standing there, his hand protectively on Evie’s crown.
I felt an overwhelming sense of relief on seeing him. Nathan must have been over at Teresa’s, or hiding in between our two houses, listening in, and heard Olive’s screams. If you need me, I’ll be here, he’d said. He never had any intention of leaving me alone with Aaron.
“Let go of her,” he said now, gritting his teeth.
“Fuck off.” Aaron’s hold on me only got stronger. “This is none of your business.”
“This is everyone’s business,” Nathan said. He shoved Aaron’s shoulder. “Take your hands off her.”
“Get out of this house,” Aaron commanded.
Nathan took another swaggering step toward Aaron so they were standing nearly chest to chest. “I said, let go of her!”
When I tried ducking away to get to Evie, Aaron hauled me back and thrust me down into a kitchen chair hard enough that I nearly fell over. From her high chair, Evie cried out.
Nathan didn’t hesitate. He took a swing at Aaron, landing a fist to his jaw, and for that instant everything went slow-mo, like those ugly replays of a boxer getting punched. Aaron’s face was all bent out of shape, spittle flying, his face turned by the blow. And then time sped up again as Aaron took Nathan by the shoulders and, throwing his body weight against him, bashed the back of Nathan’s skull against the wall. Nathan fell on all fours, dazed.
Jesus. “I’m phoning the cops,” I said, grabbing my phone from my bag, forgetting for the moment that there was no reception here.
“Oh, no, you’re not.” Aaron gripped my hand, squeezing until it hurt, and I let the phone drop to the floor. Then he stomped on my cell twice, cracking the casing.
I nursed my bruised hand as I picked up the heavy black receiver of the old rotary phone. Aaron seized the cradle, yanking it until the cord pulled out of the wall, then, seeing Nathan attempting to stand, swung it at him hard. I heard a sickening thud as the phone’s base smacked the back of Nathan’s head. He collapsed onto the floor, face first.
Aaron slammed the phone back on the gossip table.
When I scrambled to plug the cord back into the wall jack and started dialing, my fingers fumbling in the rotary dial, Aaron picked up Evie from the high chair and carried her over to the old farmhouse sink, turned on the faucet and put in the plug. Water quickly began collecting.
I put the receiver back in its cradle. “Aaron, what are you doing?”
“Persuading you to stay—to cooperate.”
“Evie doesn’t need a bath,” I said, keeping my voice level, trying to inject sanity into the situation. I glanced at Nathan, unconscious but breathing on the floor. A welt had begun to form on the back of his head. “Teresa bathed her last night before bed. Let me have her, please.”
When I reached for her, Aaron turned his back on me as he tested the temperature of the water with his wrist, like a good father would. Evie sobbed in his arms.
“For god’s sake, Aaron,” I said. “Aaron, stop!”
“You’re not going to phone the police,” he said, like I was being silly. He lay Evie on the kitchen table and smiled as he spoke calmly and assuredly, as if brokering a business deal. “And I know you don’t want to leave me.”
“You’re insane,” I said.
“Not insane,” he said, pulling off Evie’s underpants and diaper. “I’m just a family man who will do whatever it takes to keep his family together.” He lifted my baby, naked, to his chest.
I started for the door. “I’m getting my neighbors.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, carrying Evie to the sink.
“I won’t be bullied into staying with you,” I said. “Not like Olive.” Not like Madison or Sarah.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Kira, I’m not bullying you,” Aaron said. “I’m simply giving my baby a bath, to calm her down.”
“Aaron, please—” I reached for Evie, but Aaron blocked my way with his body. He sank her lovingly into the water, as he had so many times in the past, careful to support her neck and cooing to her as he did so, only this time he allowed her head to submerge much more fully. The water ringed around her tiny face.
“Now,” he said. “You don’t really want to leave me, do you?”
Over his shoulder, I watched the water wash over Evie’s face, and she looked up at me, wide-eyed, from beneath the surface.