Marcy pokes her head into Caroline’s room. She came down for breakfast this morning, but she seemed more sullen than usual. Marcy tried to gently extract information, just something to tell her what was going on inside her daughter’s mind, but Caroline remained silently withdrawn. The moment she finished eating, Caroline left the table and went back upstairs. Marcy hadn’t seen or heard from her since.
Caroline is sitting under the window, her narrow shoulders slumped against the wall. In her hands is the little Barbie car she plays with so often. She’s spinning one wheel, round and round and round.
“Hey, honey, wha’cha doing?”
Nothing about Caroline’s appearance or affect indicates that she even heard Marcy, but Marcy knows better. She knows her daughter is smart and observant. She’s just struggling right now. Unfortunately, Marcy has no idea how to help her through whatever it is that’s happening to her. Or even if Caroline wants help. It’s not that she seems like a miserable child. She seems happy in her own little world. Well, maybe not happy, but certainly not miserable. She doesn’t cry or complain; she’s just…quiet.
“I’m going to the mailbox. Want to walk outside with me? It’s sunny and warm. The perfect summer day. We need to be out there enjoying it.”
Caroline makes no move to respond. She just spins the wheel over and over again.
Marcy tries not to let the pale skin and the thin frame of her daughter bother her. Kids who don’t play outside are pale. Of course they’re pale. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with her. The doctor gave her a clean bill of health. Other than that one unmentionable word. Marcy just needs to stop worrying. Caroline eats well and she never complains of anything hurting. Those are both good signs. Marcy reminds herself to focus on the positive.
“Come on. Come with me. You can bring your car out there and drive it around on the sidewalk. Cars run better when they get out of the garage, and this room is like a garage. You want it to work right, don’t you?”
At this, Caroline raises her shadowy eyes. Marcy smiles into them, nodding and encouraging. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”
She wants to say that maybe the neighbors will see them out and come out as well, but that would work more as a deterrent to Caroline than an incentive, so she keeps her mouth shut. Nevertheless, she herself holds onto that hope.
It’s been three days since she took waffles to Jill. She has neither seen nor heard from her since then. She hasn’t seen anyone come or go during that time either. Not that she watches the house like some sort of crazy stalker, but Marcy knows Jill’s schedule, roughly, and she hasn’t seen her at all. Maybe Mark left for a trip and Marcy missed his exit. Or maybe Jill has shifted her hours to work longer. And the nanny probably stays in for the most part. That’s the most logical explanation for the lack of activity. But Marcy’s brain doesn’t always yield to logic. The imagination wants what the imagination wants, she likes to say.
Slowly, Caroline levers herself up off the floor, her tiny fingers clutching the car like it’s a lifeline, and she shuffles her feet across the floor. She bypasses Marcy altogether and heads for the stairs. She stops at the front door, head slightly bowed toward the Barbie car, and waits for Marcy to unlock and open it. When she does, Caroline steps outside, walks a few feet off the porch and onto the sidewalk, then promptly sits down to play exactly as she does in her room—driving the sedan around and around. Aimlessly. Never going anywhere.
Marcy sometimes feels that’s how far she’s getting with Caroline’s condition—a whole lot of nowhere.
Stepping around her daughter as she descends the sidewalk, Marcy’s mind is still on Caroline when she reaches the mailbox. That’s why she doesn’t notice the damage sooner.
The black aluminum box, the one with the beautiful scrollwork along the top and bottom —the one Marcy had hand picked to replace the standard one that came with their house—is now a lump of bent and twisted metal. It’s leaning helplessly to one side, held on by one metal bracket that’s still intact. It’s hardly recognizable as a rectangle, much less a box. The sides are crushed in and the front is so smashed, the door is folded back into the inside. Marcy can’t even see enough of the inside to know if there’s mail in it or not.
The first emotion to surface is annoyance. “Damned teenagers!” she grumbles in angry indignation. “Smashing mailboxes is a federal offense, you little shits.”
But then something else occurs to her. She takes a step back, one hand rising to the thin gold chain around her neck. What if…what if this has something to do with the neighbor’s mail that’s been coming to their address by mistake? The first letter was undeniably threatening. Could this be the second step in some sort of plot to harass and torture that person’s tormentor, a.k.a. Mark Halpern?
“My God, Mark, what did you do?” Her voice is quiet, as though someone might hear her. Logic would tell her that’s impossible when no one is even around, but, again, Marcy doesn’t bother to consult logic. She only knows that she’s distinctly uncomfortable thinking about what could happen if Mark finds out that she knows.
Not that she really knows anything at all, but she knows he’s done something. Something bad enough to warrant a definitive—and, by the looks of the mailbox, violent—reaction from the victim.
Marcy starts backtracking her way down the driveway and onto the sidewalk where her daughter is playing. She tries to be circumspect about it, glancing left and right as she goes and staring at the neighbor’s house only a fraction of a second longer than she should.
Her instinct is to go inside, to hole up with her little girl and protect her. But she finally got Caroline outside, and she hates to cut the outing short. So, ever vigilant, Marcy takes a seat beside her daughter, putting her body between Caroline’s and the Halpern house. She doesn’t want Mark Halpern even looking at Caroline. Not until she can find out more about what the hell is going on with him. She hasn’t gotten very far yet, but she’s far from quitting. In fact, this has only served to ramp up her motivation. Marcy will find a way. She’s nothing if not persistent. And she’s been known to show considerable ingenuity when the occasion calls for it. She’ll think of a way, even if she has to break into the Halpern house when they’re gone. She’s not above a little criminal activity of her own when the situation demands it.
And this situation demands it.
Like cool breath on the back of her neck, Marcy gets the feeling someone is watching her. She glances over her shoulder, scanning the area for a figure. She doesn’t see anyone, but as she returns her eyes to Caroline, she catches movement in the upstairs window of Jill’s house.
The curtains are still fluttering, but whoever was watching Marcy is no longer there.