Rise--How a House Built a Family by Cara Brookins

Author:Cara Brookins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

–14–

Fall

Loyalty Won’t Save You

I left work early to get new brakes on my car and made it home before the kids. Being in the house all by myself was a fantasy that almost never came true. Having Hope and Drew in elementary school and Jada in kindergarten made for a noisy life. I was smiling right up until I opened the car door and heard the god-awful noise. It was a hellacious animal cry, somewhere between a whine and a scream. It was the sound I imagined a forest animal caught in a bear trap might make. But it wasn’t in the forest; it was coming from behind my house.

Sometimes I felt ridiculous, even paranoid for being afraid of Adam years after our divorce. I wondered if he had left a paranoia seed in my mind, sending me on my own path toward insanity. But then on an ordinary day I would come home before the kids and find a note, or a knife, or hear the pained scream of an animal, and know the paranoia was justified. He was never far enough away.

“Hershey?” I yelled, tears coming even though I didn’t know for sure if the noise was her or some wild creature. I ran to the side door of the garage, wondering if it was safe and worried that the sound of my heart would announce me even over the animal shriek. I held back a sob when the scream grew louder. It was on my back porch, and since Hershey hadn’t come to greet me, I knew it had to be her.

I pulled the back door wide and was standing on the concrete slab before I realized I should have grabbed a weapon, at least a knife.

Hershey was on her back, thrashing wildly from side to side like she had a thousand times before on a hot day when she found a shady spot of tall, cool grass. Her feet were taped together with clear packing tape. Back paw to back, and front to front. Her jaw was taped shut, too, a cellophane muzzle of packing tape, but she’d worked it open enough to make that noise, that god-awful noise.

“Shhhhh,” I said, kneeling beside her and looking for wounds. The sidewalk was bloody but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. “It’s okay, I’m here, girl. I’ll get you out. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t leave you. I’m sorry.” I was bawling. Snot, tears, and sobs like I don’t think I’d ever cried before. I ran back inside and grabbed a steak knife, then returned to Hershey, trying to calm her so I wouldn’t take gouges of her hide when I sawed at the tape.

Scissors would have been better, but one of the kids had forgotten to return them to the drawer. “How many times? How many damn times have I told them to put things away? You never know when you’ll need them. When an emergency like—”

I started laughing. “An emergency like what?

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