| |
––––––––
MORNINGS WERE RIDICULOUS. Alex was up at the crack of dawn and had showered and eaten and was out the door before the kids even woke up. By the time he left, the kids usually started waking up because of the movement in the house. Four kids, and none of them wanted to sleep in. Go figure.
From the moment the first one was up, it was chaos. Now, with baby Rosie in the house, Jamie tried to get her up before the others so that she could feed her in peace. Then she took Rosie in her carrier to the kitchen where she started making breakfast.
Depending on how crazy the kids were in the morning, breakfast was either pancakes or cereal.
Today was cereal. For some reason, Markie was on a high. It was great to see him in such a good mood, but he was screaming at the top of his lungs, banging his fists on the table, repeating a line from a cartoon he had watched over and over again, and giving Jamie a headache.
The twins were pouring their own milk and cereal and Benton spilled milk all over the place.
“Honey, get a towel from the rack and dry it up,” Jamie said to him, pointing. She tried to get cereal into Markie’s bowl, but he was fussing so much it was almost a juggling act.
Finally, the twins were eating, but Markie was playing with his food.
“Hurry, sweetheart, we don’t have all morning,” Jamie said.
Rosie started crying and Jamie turned to tend to her. As soon as she did, she heard the sound of shattering glass behind her and she froze, pulling up her shoulders against the sound. It only made Rosie cry and scream louder. When Jamie looked over her shoulder, Markie’s bowl was on the floor. He was still holding his spoon and looking up at her with a guilty expression.
“Oh, no,” Jamie said. “It’s okay, baby girl, it’s nothing serious.” She was trying to get her to stop crying.
“Whoever is done eating,” Jamie said over her shoulder, “get your shoes on. Whoever is left, finish up. We need to leave in ten minutes.”
Jamie heard a scramble behind her. She couldn’t expect Markie to handle the spilled milk and cereal with glass shards between them, so it would have to wait until later. Carefully, she stepped over the mess and put Rosie back in her carrier.
The twins already had their shoes on – it was getting easier with them getting older. It would be like that when Markie was two years older, too. And then, finally, Rosie. Sheesh, these mornings were crazy. Why had Jamie told Alex he could go to the office?
But as soon as she got them to school, it would be okay again. She just had to get through this part.
“I can’t get them on,” Markie said, sitting in the middle of the floor and trying to pull on his sneakers. Jamie put Rosie’s carrier on the floor next to him and knelt to help him.
“They’re on the wrong feet, sweetheart,” she said. She pulled the shoes off and swapped them around before he pulled them on again. “Better, right?”
He nodded and she made sure they were tied tightly before she straightened and picked Rosie up again. The twins were already at the door, waiting.
“Does everyone have a lunch bag?” Jamie asked before opening the door.
They all nodded. Jamie hated it when they forgot their food – she couldn’t stand the kids being hungry at school.
When she opened the door, the twins ran to the SUV. Markie followed. Jamie strapped Rosie into the car, the carrier clipping into the car seat, before she opened the SUV trunk and the kids loaded their bags in.
Markie climbed into his car seat next to Rosie, and the twins sat on their booster seats, seat belt clipped into place.
Jamie checked that everyone was strapped in safely before she slid the SUV door shut and climbed into the driver’s seat.
She let out a breath and blew out her cheeks.
“Are we ready to go?” she asked. “The moment I leave this driveway, we are not coming back for anything.”
The kids all confirmed that they had their things and Jamie reversed out of the driveway.
First, she dropped the twins off at school, getting out and kissing each of them. Then it was Markie at his playgroup, and finally, Jamie could head back home.
“My gosh! What a morning,” she said to Rosie, glancing in the rearview mirror. “I feel ready for a nap, and we haven’t even had our own breakfast yet.”
Rosie made cooing sounds from the back seat. Jamie smiled and turned into the next road, heading toward the grocery store. As much as she wanted to go home and have a nap after her crazy morning, she needed to do a grocery run and then go home to clean up the mess Markie had left behind.
By the time Jamie arrived at the grocery store, Rosie had nodded off. Jamie took out the carrier and carried Rosie into the grocery store, propping up the carrier on the shopping cart. She walked through the aisles, getting the things on her list and noting things she had forgotten to write down.
Her phone rang and Jamie grabbed it from her handbag, silencing it quickly so that it didn’t wake Rosie. She didn’t recognize the number. Frowning, she answered.
“Hello?” she asked.
The person on the other end of the line didn’t say anything, but Jamie could hear heavy breathing.
“Hello? Who is this?” Jamie asked.
When no one answered, she ended the call. Strange, but maybe it was a bad connection.
She switched the phone to silent and continued through the store, running her errands.
The phone rang once again, the same number. When Jamie tried to answer, the same thing happened.
She put her phone back into her handbag and ignored it.
By the time she got to the register, she had three missed more calls from the same number. Jamie frowned. It was probably a wrong number. Or a prankster.
After paying for her groceries, Jamie pushed the cart out to the parking lot. Rosie had woken up and she pulled faces at her, trying to get the little girl to smile.
She loaded the groceries into the trunk and went to the back door of the SUV to strap Rosie in. When she looked up from the car seat and the seat belts she was working with, she noticed something on the windshield. She frowned and finished up with Rosie, closing the door. She walked around the car and plucked the piece of paper off the glass. At first, she thought it was just pamphlet, those types that they always put on the cars in parking lots. But when she turned it over, it was a photo. Alex.
Her heart dropped. The photo was recent – it was the clothes he had worn that morning before he had left the house.
And it had been taken outside his office building.
Jamie’s stomach rolled over. She rushed to get inside the car and looked over her shoulder, scanning the parking lot to see if someone was watching her, too. When she pulled the door shut, she clicked down the lock immediately. She put her hands on the steering wheel. They were shaking, the knuckles turning white as she clutched it. Carefully, she scanned the rest of the parking lot. Suddenly, everyone walking past looked like a threat to her.
Jamie grabbed the seatbelt and pulled it across her chest, struggling twice to get it into the clip before she was strapped in. What the hell was going on? This couldn’t be happening. It was ridiculous.
She looked at the photo again. It was definitely a recent photo, one that had been taken this morning.
Why? Who would do this? And why had they put the photo on Jamie’s windshield? What were they trying to say, trying to prove?
Jamie scrubbed her hands down her face. She was too panicked to even think about driving. She was worried that if she pulled out of the parking lot right away, she might hit something. Or someone. She had to pull herself together. Surely this was nothing.
But it didn’t look like nothing. Someone had taken a photo of her husband and put it on her window. It wasn’t nothing at all. Someone was trying to send her some kind of message.
Jamie just didn’t understand why. What were they trying to tell her?
Rosie suddenly squealed and started crying in the back seat. Jamie nearly jumped out of her skin. She twisted around in her seat, but there was nothing she could see that was wrong. No one bugging her child.
The moment she thought it, the fear and panic she had felt when Markie had been taken came rushing back. This wasn’t nearly the same thing, she told herself. But it was something. Something bad.
Why did this keep happening? How were they going to get through every year if these things kept popping up?
“Hush, baby girl, everything is fine,” she murmured. “We’re going to be home soon.”
She was trying to calm down Rosie, but she was really trying to encourage herself.
Because she didn’t feel like everything was going to be fine.
Finally, Jamie had calmed down enough to be able to drive. She could only run on so much adrenaline before it started to subside again.
She put the car in reverse and slowly pulled out of the parking lot. She kept an eye on the rearview mirror all the way home, making sure that she wasn’t being followed. She was terrified. She took a much longer route back to the house because she was worried that someone would be following her and she didn’t notice.
What the hell did she know about these things? She had never been stalked and she didn’t really watch movies where it happened. Besides, movies were nothing like real life. Markie’s abduction had taught her that.
“Everything is going to be okay, Rosie, sweetheart,” she said. “There is absolutely no reason to panic. It was just...”
Her voice caught in her throat. It was just what? She had been trying to encourage herself again by speaking to the baby – when Rosie heard her voice it seemed to calm her down a little. Of course, she could pick up on Jamie’s panic.
Jamie was trying to get a grip on her panic and fear. She couldn’t freak out about this. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe she’d gotten it all wrong and she was panicking for nothing. After all, since Markie had been taken, she saw the worst in every situation that might affect her and her children. It was the reason they had gotten rid of Brianna, even though Jamie had initially decided not to blame the girl for anything.
It was the reason her mother’s release on parole had been so tough to deal with.
She just had to breathe through this. And maybe it would be a good idea if she got a second opinion. Maybe someone else would look at the situation and tell her that there was nothing to worry about, that everything was fine and Jamie was freaking out for no reason.
Yes, a second opinion would be great.
But Jamie didn’t want to call Alex. She didn’t want to freak him out for no reason if it really was nothing. He was just as on edge about the kids’ safety as she was.
She considered calling Erica, but they weren’t as close as they had been once upon a time. A couple of different things had taken its toll on their relationship, too.
No, she couldn’t call her. But she had to call someone to just talk about this and be reminded that everything was fine.
