Molly looked at Andrew with a fear he had never seen.
“Open the door,” Sean yelled. “You have one second or I open it for you.”
She motioned for Andrew to shut the closet door, almost pleading with her eyes, so he closed it. The bedroom door clicked open a second later. Andrew froze. His feet tottered on a pile of shoes. Don’t move, don’t move. Don’t make a noise.
There was silence outside the closet. A shoe shifted under his foot, and he leaned back to offset his balance.
“I think you know why we’re here,” Sean said.
Footsteps. Someone walking further into the room. “Daddy, I don’t know—”
“Molls, don’t ‘daddy’ me right now.”
“Molly, please,” Elise said. “Please don’t fight us here.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Molly said.
They know. Andrew didn’t know how, but they had figured it out. He closed his eyes.
“Where is it?” Sean said.
It?
“I don’t know what—” Molly said.
“Cut the crap,” Sean said. “I’m already pissed off you would betray my trust like this. But you lying to me will only make it worse. Now tell me where all of it is.”
Where it is.
“Dad, I don’t know,” Molly said, blubbering.
There was a long pause; an intense silence like every molecule in the air was electrified. Andrew drew a breath as quietly as he could.
“Fine,” Sean said. “You want to play it like that, we’ll play it like that. I have a video camera in the basement.” Sean’s voice growing louder. “I just watched you take food off the shelves this morning. Stealing food.”
Molly sniffled, her breath stuttered.
Sean yelled, “You spend all day up here. You come out only to have meals with us. You don’t want to talk. You don’t want to listen. And now I watch my daughter—my own daughter—taking food from my reserves. You have betrayed all of our trust, you know that?”
“Daddy, I’m so sorry,” Molly sobbed.
“Then where’s the food? How much did you take?”
“Only a little.”
“How much did you take, Molly?”
“I didn’t think it would be that big a deal.”
“Not that big a deal? That is all we have to live on. It’s everything. When it’s gone, we have nothing. No more. You understand that?”
“Sean, I think she gets it,” Elise said.
“Apparently not, because if she did she wouldn’t have stolen from the only source of life we have in this house.”
“Please. Let’s talk about this when we all have cooler heads.”
“Elise,” he said and then paused. Andrew heard him growl over Molly’s sobbing, imagining his eyes piercing, his shoulders rising. God. “She is going to tell me where all the food is. All of it.”
“I didn’t mean it—” Molly cried.
“Where is it?” Sean said. A scrambling. Someone moving things around. “Where’re the cans, huh? Where are they? They in your drawers? Where are they?”
“You’re acting like a crazy person,” Elise shouted.
He heard a piece of furniture tip and then the distinct scraping of the wooden dresser drawers opening. Elise yelled something else and another male voice—Andrew thought it was Michael—tried to chime in, but the ruckus persisted. It sounded like he was removing the drawers one by one and dumping the contents on the floor. Molly only whimpered a few nonsensical words as he did it.
“Where’s the food?”
“I don’t know,” she screamed.
“Is it under the bed?” A thud reverberated through the floorboards. “There’s some.”
The room filled with the sound of cans rolling along the floor. He had discovered the stash under the bed. “This is unbelievable,” Sean said. “Unbelievable. Why’d you do this? What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know,” Molly said.
“You don’t know? How could you not know? You barely eat anything downstairs and then you steal more food from the reserves. Why didn’t you ask me? You think I would be mad if you asked for a little more every day?”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it? The hell are you doing taking food behind my back?”
“I didn’t want to make you mad.”
“You didn’t want to make me mad?” Sean said, his voice reaching a terrifying crescendo. “What do I look like now, Molly? Did you not think this would make me a little mad? What were you thinking? Putting everyone else at risk.”
“Stop it,” Elise yelled. “Sean, stop it. Please. Take the cans and we can talk about this later.”
“Will everyone stop telling me what I can do in my own house?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Molly said. “I’m sorry.”
“Is there more?”
She took too long to respond, because within another second the floorboards resounded, and he said, “Where’s the rest of it?”
“There isn’t any more. I swear.”
“Molly, I’ll only ask this once: do you have more?”
“No!”
“I don’t believe you. I’m sorry, I can’t believe you.”
“Daddy, please.”
“Why are you hiding this? What good is this doing right now?”
“I don’t have any more.”
“Is it in the closet?”
The air ruptured from Andrew’s lungs. His hands shook, then his legs, his feet shifting on the uneven surface. If Sean discovered Andrew, the way he was right now—game over. Andrew imagined Sean’s big hands wrapped around his throat, collapsing his windpipe, Andrew floundering, slamming his arms against the walls and floors and Sean’s forearms, struggling for air.
Only one choice: get to the other end of the closet and sneak into the crawlspace leading to the other room. But that required him to move the clothes and brush up against the metal closet doors. To make noise.
“Get out of the way,” Sean said.
“I gave you all the food, I swear,” Molly said.
“I won’t ask you again.”
“Daddy, please. There’s no more.”
He had to try to get out, so he shuffled further down the closet.
“If you have nothing to hide, then let me look.”
“There’s no more food, I swear. I swear.”
He took another few micro-steps across the closet, feeling his back scrape against the metal door.
“Get out of the way.”
Someone tugged hard on the closet door. The one side, jammed, lifted in the track and slammed back down. It sounded like someone had bashed sheet metal with a hammer, and Andrew felt his heart skip.
“What’s wrong with this thing?” Sean said and then tried to open the door again.
Andrew hurried as fast as he could, tripping over a pair of shoes. His first instinct was to reach out and balance himself on the door, but that would cause a huge noise. Instead, he gripped the dowel rod holding the hanging clothes and hoped it would support his weight. It did. He finally reached his small cubby space and lowered himself to his knees. The doorway to Aidan’s closet was already open. So close. Just a few seconds and he was safe. He pulled himself forward into the crawlspace and popped his head into the other closet.
“I said get out of the way,” Sean said.
“Please don’t hurt him,” Molly yelled.
Andrew stopped. Touched his head to the floor.
“Don’t hurt who?” Sean said.
Seconds passed. Andrew sat upright and pressed his shoulders against the wall, his heart drumming so hard he could feel it in his throat. Then Sean hurled the closet door open.
Chapter 12
MICHAEL WASN’T ABOUT to be the one to tell Sean he was acting like an asshole. He had already tried. Sean would probably only tell him it was his house and that he had no right to talk.