“Jane, what—oh my god. Honey, oh my god. Don’t move! Your feet!”
Somehow, that broke the spell. Jane looked down at her feet and saw tiny rivulets of blood branching out from underneath them. The glass. She was standing in glass, and she hadn’t even felt it.
“Mom,” she croaked, finding her voice again. “Someone broke the window. And someone is inside. I think… someone came inside.”
“What is the door doing open? Were you out there?” Ruth’s face changed. “Jane—you weren’t trying to go after them, were you?”
“No, I just… There was another light. And… and a hand. Upstairs.”
But even as she said it, Jane doubted herself. She hadn’t been standing far enough away from the door for someone to sneak past her. Had she even seen anything at all? Or had her brain played tricks on her, feeding off the intensity of the moment to create the next thing to panic about?
“Honey, it’s just the wiring. I’ll go unplug everything tomorrow. We’ll have an electrician come in. We need to get you out of there. Don’t move. There should be a broom in here—” Ruth opened a tall cabinet and pulled out a broom and dustpan. “Jesus, it’s everywhere. Don’t move.”
Ruth began sweeping the glass to the side, carefully brushing it away from Jane’s feet. She cleared herself a path to the door and pulled it shut, locking it. She put her hand up and gently touched the broken pane of glass.
“Did you see who did it?” she asked.
“It was too dark.”
“I heard yelling,” Ruth said. “And then I rolled over and you weren’t there. Fuck, it scared me. You should have woken me up or called 911.”
“There’s no service, remember?”
“I’ll call the phone company. We’ll get a landline. And we’ll go to the cell phone store and ask about our options. And—oh shit. Are you crying? What am I doing? We need to look at your feet. Can you lift up your foot, honey?”
Jane placed a hand against the wall and lifted up her left foot. Ruth was wearing socks; she pulled one of them off and used it to gently brush the sole of Jane’s foot, sweeping tiny shards of glass away.
“Okay,” she said. “The other one.”
Jane lifted her other foot and Ruth repeated the process.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Ruth said. “Fuck, the blood scared me, but… It’s just a couple scratches. Can you walk? Can you make it to the kitchen?”
“There’s nobody upstairs, right? There’s nobody in the house?” Jane asked. Her brain felt fuzzy, like she was coming out of a dream, waking up from a nap she’d only been half-asleep for.
“There’s nobody in the house, honey,” Ruth said quietly, putting her hand on Jane’s cheek. “Come into the kitchen, okay?”
Jane followed Ruth down the hallway and into the kitchen, taking a seat at the table as Ruth disappeared and returned a minute later with rubbing alcohol and bandages.
Now that her body was calming down, Jane could feel her feet. They stung, like a dozen little fiery pricks.
And there was another pain—a stinging on her right knuckles that had nothing to do with what had just happened. A phantom sting from years ago. She squeezed her eyes closed as Ruth took a cotton ball of rubbing alcohol to the soles of her feet, and suddenly she was six years old again, and the boy next door had taken the white LEGO horse from her.
“That’s mine,” she’d said. “If you want to play, you can have the brown one.”
She’d held it out to him helpfully, but he’d kicked it out of her hand. It went flying across the driveway. He had refused to give the white horse back.
The next thing she remembered, she’d been standing over him. He was writhing around on the driveway, holding his nose. He’d dropped the white horse. Jane had bent over and picked it up.
Her hand stung.
She’d looked down at it, surprised to find it bleeding in one spot, the rest of her knuckles red and raw.
Underneath her, the boy had finally managed to get to his feet. He’d stood up and run home.
The anger had left as quickly as it had come. It had gone with the punch, as if that physical act had been enough to dispel it from her body.
Of course the boy had told his mother, who’d called the house and gotten Greer on the phone.
Greer had sat Jane down on the couch and she’d begun to cry. Through her tears, she had protested that the boy had deserved it.
“I have no doubt about that,” Greer had said. Jane’s father had always been fair, willing to listen and reason. “I’ve always thought he was a little punk. But, Jane—you can’t go around punching all the punks in the world. First of all, it’s not right, and it’s not the way to solve your problems. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jane had said quietly.
“And second of all, you’ll end up doing more damage to your hand than you’ll do to them. Just look at it.” And he’d taken her hand gently in his and turned it knuckle-side-up, so they could both see the tiny cut and the raw redness of her skin. He’d kissed her softly on the back of her wrist.
Jane could feel that kiss now, as plainly as if Greer were standing over them in the kitchen, watching as Ruth cleaned Jane’s feet. She rubbed her knuckles as he faded away again, until the only thing remaining was the sharp absence of him—the place where he had been and wasn’t anymore. The place where he would never be again.
She wrapped her arms around her stomach.
“Does it hurt?” Ruth asked.
“Not really. Just stings.”
Ruth raised a hand and touched Jane’s cheek. Jane hadn’t even really registered it, but she realized now she was crying.
“I miss him,” Jane whispered. “And I hate him for leaving us.”
Ruth leaned the broom against a wall and wrapped her arms around her daughter.
“Oh, honey. I miss him and I hate him, too. And I think that’s okay, for now.”
Jane woke up late the next morning, to sunshine streaming in through the windows, to the smell of coffee. For once Ruth was up before her. Jane stretched and groaned a little—she was exhausted, and nights on the floor weren’t doing her back any favors. She wiggled her toes and flexed her feet, looking for any pain, but felt nothing. The cuts had been small, and Ruth had been diligent in cleaning them.
It had taken her hours to fall back asleep.
Ruth had made them tea after covering up the broken window with cellophane. They’d built up the fire again and sat in front of it, sipping the tea and trying to relax.
“I’m sure it was just kids,” Ruth had said. “Kids who probably thought this house was still empty. You must have scared the shit out of them, Jane, chasing them into the backyard like that. They won’t be back.”
Jane pulled herself out of her sleeping bag and grabbed a sweater from the couch—it was one of Ruth’s, an old fisherman’s sweater, oversize and soft. She pulled it on and ran her fingers through her hair, tangled and messy from the night.
She stood up carefully, testing her weight on her feet. They hurt a little, but nothing unbearable. She made her way into the kitchen slowly, stepping lightly, expecting to find Ruth with a cup of coffee, but she wasn’t there. So she wandered around the first floor, peeking into different rooms, finally reaching the foyer, where she paused for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.