Chapter 10
I heard the zipper before I saw the suitcase.
It was after dinner. Dad had cleared the plates and I was still at the table, not eating, just sitting with my hands flat on the wood. The hallway light was on. From the bedroom at the end of the hall came that long, sharp sound of a zipper being pulled all the way around, then the thump of something heavy being tossed onto a bed.
My name is Ethan. I was sixteen that fall, and that night my stepmother started packing like she meant to prove my father was bluffing.
I didn't move at first. I listened. Another zipper. Drawers opening and closing. The closet door sliding on its track. Then her voice, low and controlled, calling down the hall.
"Get your things, honey. Just what you need for a few days."
Her daughter didn't answer. I could see her doorway from where I sat. She was standing in the hall in her brown ribbed shirt, one sock on, one sock in her hand, staring toward her mom's room. Her face was pale except for her cheeks. She wasn't moving.
Dad was in the living room, standing by the stone fireplace. The patterned rug was under his boots and the framed photos were above his head. He didn't go to the bedroom. He just stood there with his arms crossed, watching the hallway, his jaw set. When our eyes met he gave me a small shake of his head. Stay put.
I went to the staircase anyway. Not down it, just to the second step where the wood paneling made a shadow and I could see without being in the way. From there I could see straight into the bedroom.
She had the big navy suitcase open on the bed and a smaller pink one next to it for her daughter. She was folding clothes fast, not neatly, just grabbing armfuls from the dresser and pressing them down. Her black button-front top was untucked now, her ponytail a little loose. She worked like someone racing a clock, pausing every few seconds to listen for footsteps that weren't coming.
"Come on," she said louder, not looking up. "We are not staying where we are not wanted."
The girl still didn't move. Then she started to cry, quiet at first, the kind of crying where you try to breathe and it catches.
"I don't want to go," she said. Her voice was small.
Her mother stopped folding. "Honey, get your backpack."
"I don't want to leave," she said again, louder now, and she stepped back and put both hands on the doorframe of her room and held on. Her knuckles went white. Her gold hoops caught the hallway light. "I like my room. I don't want to go to Dad's."
My stepmother came to the doorway with a stack of the girl's shirts in her hands. She knelt down.
"It's just for a night or two," she said, softer. "Until your stepdad remembers this is a family house."
"It's his house," the girl whispered, but she was looking past her mother at me on the stairs. Our eyes locked for a second. She wasn't angry. She looked scared that the packing was real.
My stepmother followed her look and saw me. Her expression hardened again. She stood and went back to the suitcase and zipped the pink one shut with a hard pull.
Dad still hadn't moved from the living room. I wanted him to say something, to stop it or to say he didn't mean it. He didn't. He just watched. His silver watch glinted when he shifted his weight. When his wife came out into the hallway dragging both suitcases, the wheels bumping over the patterned rug, he didn't reach for them.
"You don't have to do this," he said. His voice was flat, tired.
"You said if she felt uncomfortable she could leave," she said. "I'm showing you what leaving looks like."
She set the suitcases by the front door. The girl hadn't let go of the doorframe. She was shaking a little, tears running down her flushed cheeks, her sock still crumpled in one fist.
"Mom, please," she said. "Can we stay?"
Her mother didn't answer right away. She looked at Dad, waiting for him to step forward, to say wait, to unpack. He didn't. He kept his arms at his sides. The silence stretched and the only sound was the girl's breathing and the faint tick of the heater kicking on.
I sat on that stair and kept my hands on my knees so they wouldn't shake. The house felt too warm. I could smell the laundry detergent from the open suitcases. I understood then she thought he would stop her. He was letting her find out he wouldn't.
Her mother finally knelt again and tried to gently pull the girl's hands from the wood.
"We'll come back when it's fair," she whispered.
May you like
The girl didn't let go.
And the bags stayed packed by the door, zipped and waiting, while none of us moved to carry them out.
