Except the insistent pull at the back of my neck tells me it’s not.
Gina, Melvin’s whisper says from the back of my mind. You can run all you want. But you can never run far enough.
You’re dead, I tell him. That’s far enough.
The hallway’s dark, just night-lights along the baseboard to illuminate the way. Connor’s room is first on the right from ours; I ease his door open a crack and see that my son is not asleep. He’s sitting up, staring into the darkness. He turns, and his face is pale. “Did you hear it?” he asks me in a low whisper. He’s not my little boy anymore, except in moments like this; he’s got the growth of fifteen. I still want to take him in my arms and rock him, but I don’t. I’m starting to realize how difficult it is that even my youngest isn’t a baby anymore. That I have to let him grow up.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. Sam’s behind me in the doorway. “We’ve got this. You know the plan?”
He nods. He does. Everybody in this house knows the plan.
I close his door, and I hear him get up and throw the interior deadbolt I installed for safety. Good. Step one: delay an intruder from getting into his room. Step two: if the all clear doesn’t come within a few minutes, hit the silent-alarm button that signals an alert straight to the Knoxville police. Step three: Get out through his bedroom window, run for help. Don’t stop for anyone or anything.
We all know the plan because there’s always a chance we’ll have to use it.
I go to the bathroom. It’s dark, but I check the window anyway. Firmly closed and locked and too small for most intruders to slip through. Then I continue to my daughter’s bedroom. It’s also dark, but when I open it up, I catch a whiff of fresh, damp outside air. Her window’s closed, but it hasn’t been for long.
Dammit.
I flip on the light, and Lanny—Atlanta, but no one except teachers uses her full name—groans and turns over to glare at me. She’s still wearing club makeup—dark glitter around her striking eyes, painted silver stars on her cheeks. She’s dyed her hair into a shimmering rainbow of colors. “What?” she snaps, and groans into her pillow. “Mom!”
I have to swallow a volcanic explosion of frustration and anger and fear. “Where were you?”
“Nowhere.”
“Lanny. You obviously just came in. You left your window out of the alarm circuit, again. Do you know what kind of danger you’re exposing your little brother to when you do that?” Sometimes, that appeal works.
Not tonight. She rolls up in her covers and throws the pillow over her head. “Would you just leave me alone? It was a good day, why do you have to ruin everything?”
My daughter is seventeen-going-on-thirty, and there’s not a lot I can do about it. She knows it’s not safe out there. She’s determined not to care, or to prove that she can handle whatever comes at her. It terrifies me. It also exhilarates me that my child is so strong, when fear of losing her isn’t tearing me apart. But she’s not an adult yet, and I know I have to find a way to keep her in line for another year until she can freely make her own choices. Her own ghastly mistakes that I can’t prevent, and consequences I can’t save her from. That’s the hell of being who we are: the normal stumbles of most girls her age are different for the child of Melvin Royal. Stakes are always, always higher.
I want to roll my children in Bubble Wrap and set them safely on a shelf and never, never let the world chip and crack them. But they’re not made of porcelain, and no matter how strong that protective desire might be, I have to fight it. I have to relax my grip, not tighten it.
I can yell at her, but I’ve tried that before. Lanny, like me, is stubborn. I’ll have to be smarter, not louder. I’m acutely afraid that my independent, brave, smart, sometimes reckless daughter might just . . . leave. Run away. And on her own, she’ll be unprotected.
I need to find a way to keep her with us just a little while longer. I know I have to face losing her to the world, whatever danger that brings.
But not yet.
“We’ll talk later,” I say. She groans again, this time in rejection of the whole idea. I shut the door and leave her without another word. When I turn, Sam’s watching me with level, calm intensity, and when I sigh, he just shakes his head. He understands. Better than I have any right to expect.
“Do you think she was out with Vee?” he asks me.
“Probably,” I tell him. Vee—Vera Crockett, late of the rotten little town of Wolfhunter, Tennessee—became our responsibility not long ago, but Vee has never let anyone rule her for long. After just a few weeks living with us here in Knoxville, she pushed for emancipated-minor status; thing is, she had it anyway because she’s never obeyed anyone’s rules, and if I hadn’t helped her get it legally, she’d have just taken off and lived rough. Again. So we helped, and at least it ensured that Legally Emancipated Vee stayed relatively close in case of trouble.
Vee’s a girl with a lot of damage, but I do have faith in her. She’s not broken. At least not any more than the rest of us. And it’s exactly right for Vee—the same age as my daughter—to have talked Lanny into sneaking out and clubbing, against strict house rules.
“Maybe I should take it out on Vee,” I say. “Without her, Lanny wouldn’t be taking these kinds of risks.”
“Look in the mirror and tell me where she gets her risk-taking gene again?”
“Well, Vee’s enabling her.”
“I’m not saying what they get up to is safe, but at least we know that Vee’s a survivor. She’ll fight like hell to protect Lanny. You know that. And you’re going to have to let Lanny live her life, eventually.”
I do. That’s the hell of it.
I knock the all clear on Connor’s door, and Sam and I settle on the couch in the living room. I feel rather than hear his long sigh. “Girls,” he says. “God, I love them, and at the same time I have no idea what to do at times like this. Is that stupid?”
“Normal,” I say, and lean into his embrace. “Girls are tough at this age. Regretting signing those papers already?”
“Never. Not for a second.” He moves hair back from my forehead, a gentle touch I would have flinched away from a few years ago. But now, it soothes something inside me. “Were you that tough at her age?”
I have to laugh a little. Bitterly. “I was a good little rule-follower with strict churchgoing parents. I didn’t even own a pair of blue jeans. No drinking, no drugs, no boyfriend, no clubs.” I’d hit eighteen—or more accurately, eighteen had hit me—like a runaway bus. I’d been utterly unprepared for the charm onslaught of a controlling older man who targeted me the way a lion targets a slow gazelle. Melvin Royal had been the ideal suitor, according to my parents. He’d played the role to perfection because he knew exactly what he wanted: a captive child-wife he could isolate and train as he wanted her to be.
And that’s who I became. I’d worked so hard to lose any semblance of who I was, who I could be, and became exactly what Melvin Royal required. I’d thought that was happiness.
Until it all collapsed in such horror. Then I had to find out who I really was. What I could really do.