House of Glass

Ted was yelling: no, stop, but he stayed rooted to the spot. Which was what she should have done, because she had endangered her daughter. The young one had Livvy’s hair in his fist, dragging her backward, out of the range of Jen’s flailing feet.

“That was stupid,” he snarled, and gave Livvy’s hair a hard yank, forcing her head back and exposing the long pale expanse of her throat. Her whimpering escalated to shrieking until he put his hand around her throat and squeezed. “Shut the fuck up now,” he yelled, and she did.

Jen scrambled backward on her hands and knees. Ted grabbed her arm and pulled her up, holding her around the waist against him. “What do you want?” he demanded.

The older one held Teddy tightly, absorbing the impact of Teddy’s silent kicking and flailing. He looked like he was in his fifties, but he was powerfully built, his forearms roped with muscle. He, too, was wearing latex gloves. “Tell this kid to calm the fuck down.”

“It’s all right, honey,” Jen gasped, thinking please please don’t hurt him. “Mommy’s here. It’s all right.”

But Teddy only struggled harder, trying to twist around in the older man’s arms so he could see her. Jen knew how strong a four-year-old could be—Teddy could grab your hand so hard you felt the bones squeeze together; he could hug you so tight it was hard to breathe.

“Goddamn it,” Ted said, pushing her roughly behind him, putting his body between her and the intruders. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Take him,” the man said, holding Teddy out like a sack of cement. The minute Ted grabbed Teddy, the man reached for a gun he’d jammed in the waistband of his pants. It seemed to take less than a second, the movement of his arm and the way he held it still and sure, pointed right at Jen’s face. She gave an involuntary gasp and felt her body slacken with fear, her bladder almost releasing. She imagined the bullet striking her full in the face, shattering the bones, liquefying her brains.

Teddy wrapped his arms tightly around his father’s neck and immediately calmed. Livvy was gurgling, her neck craned awkwardly backward, the young man not seeming to care that he was hurting her. A half grin on his face—as though this all amused him, as though he was deriving pleasure from their fear.

“Let me have her, let my daughter go,” she pleaded. “Please. We won’t do anything. We won’t go anywhere.”

The young man held Livvy in place for another moment and then shoved her toward Jen. Livvy’s neck snapped forward; she stumbled and went down on one knee. Her hair flew across her face, obscuring her terror for a fraction of a second. Jen rushed to help her, wrapping Livvy in her arms, tensed for the bullet, waiting for the gunshot, but it didn’t come.

“Mom, Mom,” Livvy wailed, holding her so tightly the air was crushed from her lungs. But Jen held on, dragging Livvy backward until they were standing next to Ted. Teddy’s shoe was wedged against her shoulder and they were all touching, jammed together in a family scrum, facing the strangers outside the bedroom door.

“What do you want?” Ted demanded for the second time. The question echoed through the room, which Ted had stripped of its carpets and drapes in preparation for painting.

“Downstairs. Now.” The older man motioned with the gun. There was a faint sheen of perspiration along his hairline, and broken capillaries marred his sallow, broad cheeks. A few flakes of dandruff rested on the shoulders of his shirt.

For a moment they didn’t move. Jen felt the warmth of Ted’s body through their clothes, his shoulder pressed against hers.

“Now!” the man bellowed, and she took a step forward, still holding Livvy tightly.

“The girl first,” the younger man said. He reached toward her with the gun, caressing Livvy’s arm with the barrel while she trembled. His eyes roved up and down her body, lingering on her small breasts. “Don’t be scared.”

He seemed relaxed, grinning faintly. He wore his hair buzzed short, and he had skipped a shave or two, but his beard grew in fine and strawberry blond—the beard of a boy rather than a man. There were tattooed spikes on his neck; the rest of the design was hidden under his collar and Jen couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. As they passed, his gaze stayed fixed on Livvy, watching her walk.

Livvy reached the stairs first and went down with her hand on the rail, barely pausing on the landing. Jen followed close behind. At the bottom of the staircase was the front door, heavy and solid. Jen could slip past Livvy and yank the door open. She could push her daughter out into the night, to safety. It would only take a second. One of the men might shoot her, but unless he got lucky the wound probably wouldn’t kill her. As long as she made it out the door, someone was bound to see her and Livvy on the front porch. It was dinnertime on Crabapple Court, and fathers were arriving home from work and kids from sports and clubs and music lessons. Moms were returning from grocery runs and yoga classes. Jen would scream and help would come.

Except she couldn’t leave her little boy behind, not even for a second, unprotected and vulnerable. She couldn’t leave Ted. So she walked past the front door and into the family room, the others close behind her.

“Sit.” The older man’s voice was terse and impatient.

Jen pulled Livvy down with her in the corner of the sectional. On the television, Dora the Explorer hid behind a cartoon tree.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ted said. “Come on.”

“Oh, yeah?” The man turned on Ted. The two men glared at each other, something passing between them. Jen looked from one to the other, trying to figure it out. “Turn that shit off.”

“Have you seen him before?” she whispered as Ted reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned off the set.

“No, never,” he muttered, sitting down on the other side of Livvy with Teddy on his lap.

The two men stood in front of them, one on either side of the television armoire. The younger one slouched against it, his gun practically dangling from his hand. The older man stood ramrod straight.

“We’re here to do a job,” he said angrily as though the Glasses had inconvenienced him in some way. “You make it easy, cooperate, you’ll be okay. You get in our way, we hurt you.”

Next to him the other man coughed, only Jen was pretty sure the cough covered up a laugh.

“What do you want?” she asked. “Because you can have it, I don’t care—”

“You don’t talk,” the man snapped. “I talk. I’m Dan. This is Ryan. You only talk when we tell you. You got something to say?”

Was she supposed to talk now? Jen tried to ignore the pounding of her heart, “I’m sorry. I’m just scared. Please don’t hurt my family. How can we help you get what you want so you can go?”

“Hah,” Ryan said. “She wants to help us. You like that, Dan?”

Jen realized something deeply terrifying: they had made no effort to disguise themselves. No knitted caps or Nixon masks, which meant they didn’t care if the Glasses knew what they looked like.

They’re going to kill us, Jen thought, terror slicing through her.

Dan ignored the younger man. “All you need to know right now is don’t talk until I tell you to. Keep your hands to yourself. Do what you’re told and don’t make me ask twice.”

“Just tell us what you want,” Ted demanded. “Whatever it is, we can help you get it.”

“That right...Ted?” Dan drawled.

“How do you know his name?” Jen asked. Ryan swung the gun in her direction, instantly tense.

“Aren’t you paying attention? Shut up!”

“Please,” Jen whispered. “I’m sorry. Can I ask, just one question—”

“Go. Fast.” Dan watched her impatiently.

“Let the kids go,” Jen said quickly, pleadingly. “Please, just let the kids go. They can walk over to my sister’s. It’s less than a mile.”

Ryan laughed, lips pulling back from slightly crooked teeth. “Right! Great idea. Livvy here’s gonna take her bratty little brother over to her aunt’s house and forget to mention that her parents are being held hostage.”

Jen felt her daughter stiffen in her arms. They knew Livvy’s name. Ted’s name. Ryan spun his gun so the barrel was pointing down, reached out and caressed Livvy’s cheek with the grip. Livvy flinched and pulled away with a whimper, and Ryan laughed.

“Get up,” Dan said. “Time to go downstairs.”

Chapter Six

“Oh, God,” Livvy said, a split second after they heard the lock at the top of the stairs. She was standing apart from her parents, her arms hugging her body. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. “It smells so bad down here!”

Ted reached for Livvy, and she fell against him. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, and she sobbed against his chest. Jen picked Teddy up and rocked him gently, whispering that he shouldn’t worry about Livvy, that his sister would be just fine.

After a few moments Livvy’s sobs subsided and she pulled away from Ted. She went to stand near the shelf where all her trophies were lined up—Mini Marlins swim, eight years of soccer, a few for softball, one from the American Legion speech contest back in middle school. Jen could see her shoulders trembling.

“Honey, it’s going to be okay,” Jen said, handing Teddy to her husband and approaching Livvy cautiously. She had to keep her calm, had to make her believe she and Ted had things under control. “Once they get what they want, they’ll go.”

“But what do they even want?”

Jen put her hand on Livvy’s shoulder and gently turned her so she could look into her eyes. “Anything they can sell, I would guess. There’s the silver, my jewelry, the computers—any number of things. They’ll take it and they’ll go.”

She could see Livvy trying, wanting, to believe her. She tried to make herself believe it, so her face would convince Livvy.

“I need to talk to Daddy,” she said as calmly as she could. “Can you play with Teddy and keep him busy for a few minutes?”

Livvy nodded. She looked a little better, some of the panic gone from her eyes.

“His old toys are in here,” Jen said, getting a cardboard box down off the shelf. “I haven’t had a chance to get them over to St. Vincent De Paul’s yet. Go ahead and get them out. Whatever he wants.”

Livvy talked softly to her brother, kneeling down on the cold concrete floor next to him and peeling the tape off the box. Jen and Ted went to the far side of the basement where the old living room furniture was stored, the pieces that Ted kept meaning to put on Craigslist. Ted lifted the old lamp shades off the couch and brushed off the cushions. When they sat down, he took her hands in his.

“I don’t understand why they picked us,” Jen said in a low voice. “It’s not like we have the biggest house in the neighborhood. And we were home. Why wouldn’t they pick a place where nobody was home? I mean, all they had to do was keep knocking on doors until they found one that nobody answered. Then they could just go around the back and break in.”

“I don’t know, maybe they were worried about alarms. Everybody’s got those signs in their yard, those ADT warnings.”

“Not everyone,” Jen said. “Lots of people don’t.” They didn’t, for instance. They’d talked about a home alarm system, but they’d felt that Livvy was too young to be depended on to arm and disarm the system.

“I think we have to assume it’s just random,” Ted said. “Just bad luck.”

“But you’d think they’d at least watch the house for a few days. I mean, that’s what you always read in the papers—they watch the house to figure out when the owners come and go, right? But these guys came at exactly the wrong time. This is the time of day there’s most likely to be someone home. It doesn’t make any sense.”

I’m scared, she wanted to say. She wanted Ted to put his arms around her and tell her everything was fine. She wanted him to do for her what he had done for Livvy, to hide his own fear and promise her they would be safe. But she wasn’t Livvy. She and Ted were the adults, and they had to face the truth.

“I don’t know, Jen,” Ted said. His voice was oddly detached, and he was looking past her shoulder at the shelves behind her. “I’m guessing they’ll have one of us go up there and show them where everything is. Where your jewelry is, the safe, stuff like that.”

“Oh, God.” Jen felt a wave of nausea, and she doubled over her knees, letting go of Ted’s hands. “There’s nothing in the safe but papers. What if they’re expecting more? Like cash or something—what if they’re angry that there isn’t more to take?”

“Well, there’s the electronics, the silver—there’s lots of stuff,” Ted said, putting his hand on her back and rubbing absently. His offhand touch was the opposite of comfort; it made her flinch and shrink away.

If the men upstairs were disappointed with what they could take from the house, they might take it out on her family. She pictured them opening the safe, and—once they had seen that there was nothing but insurance policies, passports, copies of the will—becoming enraged. In her imagination, Dan swung his gun around, his eyes accusing, and pointed it at her face.

She whimpered.

“Oh, hon,” Ted said. He gathered her into his arms and held her tightly. “You can’t let yourself think the worst. Do you hear me? We’re just going to take this one step at a time. We have to stay calm and trust that—believe that things will be all right. These aren’t some hopped-up drug addicts up there—they’re professionals. Professional thieves. Believe me, they want things to go smoothly just as badly as we do.”

“How do you know that?” Jen drew back and looked deeply into his eyes, trying to find the source of his certainty. “How can you be sure?”

“I’m not sure—how could I be?” His gaze skittered away, avoiding hers. “But what choice do we have but to believe it?”

“I just feel like there’s some connection, that if we thought about it we could figure it out. You’re sure you’ve never seen these guys anywhere?” Jen’s mind raced through her routines, the small world she inhabited: the kids’ schools and the grocery store and the yoga studio and the restaurants and coffee shops downtown. She was sure she’d never seen these men anywhere she went on a regular basis.

She thought of something. “Remember when your wallet was stolen from the locker room?”

“That was almost a year ago. Even if someone had kept it all this time, why would they wait so long to come here?”

“But they knew your name.” She remembered the faint smirk on Dan’s face, as he looked down on her in her own family room.

“Jen, they could have found out our names on a two-second Google search of the address. Hell, they could have gotten our names on their way up the sidewalk by just looking on their phones. That doesn’t mean anything.”

Jen was silent a minute, thinking through her family’s routines. Teddy was always with her unless he was at school or the Sterns’ house. Livvy went to school and soccer and out with her friends, less often since she’d been grounded last fall—

“What about Sean?” she said. “He had trouble with the police. Remember?”

“Sean’s sixteen years old, Jen,” Ted said incredulously. “He’s a child.”

“But he was arrested.”

“You mean that vandalism thing? That was just a stupid prank. He wasn’t even the instigator.”

It had happened after a football game, shortly after Livvy had started dating him. One of Sean’s friends had a key to the equipment shed, and they’d broken in and dragged the lacrosse goals into the parking lot and shot smashed beer cans into them. When the police came, Sean and one of the others were drunk enough that they fought ineffectively back and got assault charges tagged on, which were later dropped. The school got involved and suspended the boys for a week.

“I’m just saying he might know the young one. Ryan.” Jen tried to sort it out. “He could be friends with him. He could have told him to come here. Sean was in our house half a dozen times. He could have a grudge against Livvy from the breakup...or maybe all he did was tell them about the house, our stuff....”

“He broke up with her, Jen. Why would Sean have a grudge against her? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Jen’s mind raced with possibilities. “Or what about Renaldo?”

Ted stared at her, his eyebrows knit together. “Seriously? Our yard guy?”

“He has access. I mean, I know anyone could come through the gate, but he’s been in our yard so many times.” She felt ashamed of the betrayal even before she stopped speaking. Renaldo was a nice guy, respectful and dependable, and he never forgot to blow the bits of grass off the patio after the first time she had to remind him.

“Jen. How would Renaldo know those guys? And even if he did, why would he send them here—why wouldn’t he just come when he knew we were out of town? You always call to let him know when we’ll be away.”

Jen tried to corral the swirling thoughts in her head. She looked at her children, sitting on the carpet remnant Ted had laid out in the middle of the concrete floor. Livvy was talking softly, moving a plastic car along an imaginary track, a row of Playmobil people looking on. Teddy’s bubbling laughter was punctuated by growling engine noises and honking horns. Livvy was so good with him; she’d managed to banish the fear from his mind, somehow tamping down her own terror for his sake.

Because that’s what you do, Jen thought. When you love someone, you make yourself stronger for their sake. As strong as you can, as strong as you must—stronger than you ever believed you could be. Your love makes the other person all that matters, and how can you let your fear rule you when you have something so much more important to protect? Livvy had been shaking with fear when they came down the stairs, but now she was sitting cross-legged with a smile on her face, a smile she had conjured from nothing for her little brother.

And now she had to do the same for Livvy. For both of her children, and for Ted, too, because she was the center of their family. She was the axis on which the rest of them turned, and if she’d occasionally resented it, if sometimes it seemed thankless and even pointless, she had also spent the past fifteen years of her life building a core of strength that could support all of them even now. She would take over for Livvy and let her daughter be a child, and she would do her job.

“I’m sorry,” she said, running her hands through her hair. “You’re right. About Renaldo, and Sean—I was just trying to figure it out, but like you say, it’s probably just random. Just bad luck. Listen, can you see if you can talk to Livvy? Who knows what’s going through her head right now—just tell her what you told me, that everything’s going to be all right. And I’ll take over with Teddy.”

Jen knelt on the floor with her children. “Wow, I haven’t seen these old toys in a long time,” she said.

“Shepherd,” Teddy said, holding up an androgynous plastic figure with a yellow bowl haircut and a crook in its hand.

“That’s right, shepherd! Where are the sheep, do you think? I wonder if they’re in the box?”

While she upended the box of toys on the carpet, Ted took Livvy by the arm and led her to the couch. He sat with his arm around her and Livvy pressed her face to his shirt, shaking with silent sobs. She was trying to stay quiet for Teddy’s sake—and Ted enfolded her in his strong arms, comforting her like he always did after the worst disappointments. When her soccer team lost in the semifinals. When Sean had broken up with her. Ted was the one Livvy wanted when her world was falling apart.

Teddy’s eyes went wide at the pile of toys on the carpet. A few round pieces from the K’Nex set rolled across the floor. The poor kid was never allowed to make a mess like this; Jen was forever cleaning up around him, sorting his toys into their various bins and baskets. Well. If—when—they got out of this, she would try to loosen up a little.

She plowed her hand through the center of the pile, the figurines and building toys and vehicles clattering against each other. She dug out a Star Wars figurine. She didn’t know its name—it was from the new movie, some sort of soldier with a head scarf obscuring his face.

Teddy took it from her solemnly. “Bad mans,” he whispered. He stared at the inscrutable painted eyes, the plastic rifle nearly as tall as the figurine itself.

Jen took a deep breath. “You mean the men upstairs? They were a little scary, weren’t they?”

Teddy nodded, his lips quivering. He gripped the toy tightly. “He didn’t put me down. I wanted him to put me down but he didn’t.”

“Oh, I see. I can understand why that was upsetting.”

“They had guns.”

What the hell was she supposed to say now? In all the women’s magazines Jen had read over the years, the ones that promised solutions to everything from dry skin to marital disharmony to kids’ behavioral issues, there had never been a single piece of advice for what to do when your child is threatened at gunpoint. Jen flashed through the possibilities and decided to lie. If it was the wrong decision, she’d do her penance later.

“Oh, those were just pretend. Those guns? Toys, like these, only bigger.”

Jen took the toy back from Teddy and bent the rifle’s stock. She waggled it back and forth.

“Don’t break it, Mommy!”

“Oh, sorry. Here you go.” She handed the little soldier back to Teddy. “They were playing a game, kind of like when you and Rand and Mark play in the backyard. Remember? With the Super Soakers? Those were pretend guns.”

“I shot Rand,” Teddy said. “Rand shot me and Mark.”

“That’s right!” Jen said, warming to her lie. “And remember when Mark was crying because he didn’t understand that it was just a game? And I had to take the Super Soakers away and you guys all had quiet time? Well, upstairs it was kind of like that. Daddy and I didn’t understand it was just a game at first and so we were kind of upset. And now we’re having some quiet time down here so everyone can calm down.”

Teddy regarded her skeptically. Jen’s smile felt frozen in place. “They have to leave now,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

“Oh, yes, it is almost dinnertime, isn’t it?” Jen said, faking surprise. “But I’m just having a nice time down here with you guys. Let’s play for a while longer, okay?”

“Tell Livvy,” Teddy said.

“Tell her what?”

“That it’s a game because she was scared.” Before Jen could react, he reached into the pile of toys and pulled out a chubby little sheep. “I found him!”

Jen helped him find the other sheep, the lambs, the pieces of fence and the plastic bushes. Livvy joined them on the rug, helping Teddy assemble the imaginary pen. Jen looked at the windows and saw that it had grown pitch-dark outside. What did that make it, seven? The lights worked down here, thank God, even if it was just a few naked bulbs in the ceiling.

Ted was sorting through the shelves, pulling bottles of water from the emergency supplies. Jen went to help him.

“You got Teddy calmed down,” Ted said quietly.

“How’s Livvy?”

“Okay, I think. I think I convinced her that they weren’t here to hurt anyone.”

“I just wish I knew if they were coming back. I mean, maybe they just took what they wanted and left already.”

“No, they would have had to bring a car to load it all, and gone through the garage, unless they were really stupid. We would have heard the garage door. Besides, I hear them moving around up there.”

“Oh.” Jen tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. Why were they still in her home? “Maybe they’re just waiting until everyone’s in for the night, so they don’t call attention to themselves.”

“Maybe. Though pulling up a car late at night has its own risks, if someone sees them. They’d be more likely to notice a strange car at three in the morning.”

“Who’s up at three in the morning?” Jen demanded, and then wished she hadn’t, because the look Ted gave her conveyed what they both knew: that she was up at that hour as often as not. Lately, sleeping through the night had been nearly impossible for her; her doctor said it might be from perimenopause.