After a pause, Elizabeth said, “You know, Merrie, sometimes it helps me feel better if I talk about what’s bothering me.”
“Even if you made a promise not to?” Merrie asked.
“Sometimes,” she replied with a nod. “It sort of depends on the promise…” Elizabeth paused for a long moment then clucked her tongue and said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll stop pestering you about it. You just give it some thought, and if you feel like talking later we can. I’d just hate it if you were feeling bad over the holidays. So would your father. Especially if it’s something we can help you sort through.”
“Okay,” Merrie replied. “I’ll think about it.”
The truth is, she didn’t want to think about it at all. She wanted nothing more than to make it go away. She wanted to just pretend it never happened. But she had a terrible kind of weird feeling inside. It was a kind of feeling that told her she couldn’t ever make this go away.
Ever.
Still, her mother’s words gave her some small bit of comfort. In a way, they had switched on a dim light in the terrible darkness that had been wrapped around her all afternoon. Once they were at home, maybe they really would be safe. And, if she could tell Daddy what had happened, he could protect Mom and Becca from the man in the red suit. Daddy would know just what to do and then everything would be okay. He would make it all right.
They continued along the highway in silence, but Merrie’s mood wasn’t quite as dark as before. The inner glow was becoming brighter as they closed the distance between themselves and home. For the first time since late this morning, she was feeling that it was possible everything could be okay. They just had to get home before that could happen.
However, a few short minutes later, as they entered the limits of the township of Hulis, her mother slowed the vehicle and then turned it to the right instead of the normal left. In that moment, everything changed. They were headed toward Main Street and away from the safety of home.
Alarmed, Merrie asked, “Where are we going?”
“Oh, I must have forgotten to tell you. I have to stop at Norris’s to pick up a few things for Christmas dinner,” Elizabeth replied. “The weatherman is predicting a lot of snow tonight and tomorrow, so I want to get it done now so we don’t have to go out. Besides, that way we can just stay in and bake cookies all day.”
“Oh.”
“What? Baking cookies doesn’t sound like fun?”
“Yes…it does. I like baking cookies,” Merrie said, trying to use the thread of conversation to hide her sudden panic. “Can we make chocolate chip?”
“Absolutely!” Elizabeth glanced over at her daughter and saw that her expression, just like her tone, didn’t truly match her words. She smiled and reassured her, “Don’t worry. It shouldn’t take very long. We just need a few things.”
“Okay… Umm… How long do you think?”
“I suppose that depends on how busy they are, honey,” her mother told her. “Why?”
“I dunno…” she mumbled. “I guess I just want to be home.”
“I know… We will be soon enough.”
Merrie considered her options for a second. Her father worked an early shift and was almost always home not long after she got in from school. She offered that fact as an appeal. “Won’t Daddy be wondering where we are when he gets home and we’re not there?”
“He’s working late tonight, sweetheart,” he mother explained. “We’ll still be home long before him.”
Working late? Merrie swallowed hard as her stomach flipped over, and then flipped over again. If she had felt panic just a minute ago, this was twice as bad. Her head pounded some more, not that it had ever really stopped, and she could feel the tightness returning to her chest once again as it became hard to breathe. The previously growing light at the end of her darkened tunnel had already dimmed when they made the right hand turn. Now it had gone completely out. The blackness was moving in on her again, and it was terribly bad.
This was worse than waiting for her birthday, or Thanksgiving, or anything… The promise of everything being okay was gone, just like that.
“How late?” she forced herself to ask.
“He probably won’t be home until after dinner, honey,” her mother said.
After dinner! That was even worse. She wasn’t sure she could wait another minute, much less until after dinner. She was all kinds of sick inside, and the longer she kept this secret, the more it hurt. The more it felt like it was eating her up. Suddenly, she felt as if she had to tell someone what had happened before she just exploded. She couldn’t take it anymore.
As Elizabeth pulled the car into a diagonal space in front of the store, Merrie looked over at her and said, “Mom?”
“Yes, Merrie. What is it?”
Merrie opened her mouth, preparing to spill everything, but before she could make a sound those painful words hammered against the inside of her head.
“… If you tell anyone, I’ll have to come to your house and hurt your parents. Maybe even kill them…”
“Maybe even kill them…”
“Maybe even kill them…”
She stared back at her mother, but was unable to make herself let go of the pain she was feeling. She was sure Daddy could protect them, but she didn’t have that same belief about her mother. Not right now, anyway. It hadn’t been all that long ago that Mom had been in the hospital for what she had called “woman problems,” whatever those were. Merrie just knew that she had been really sick for a long time, and finally the doctors had to operate on her. And now, just a few weeks later she still heard Mom complain about being sore and tired all the time. And most especially, how she always said that she felt weak.
Merrie kept imagining the man in the red suit doing the same things to her mother that he had done to her, and Mom not being able to stop him. Even worse, she saw flashes of him doing the terrible things to Becca as well because her mother was too weak to save her. Then, she would see them dead. As the horror of it played out inside her head, each image made her feel even sicker than the one before.
No. She couldn’t possibly tell her mother what had happened. Not just her alone. She had to wait for Daddy. Only he could protect Becca and Mom.
“… If you tell anyone, I’ll have to come to your house and hurt your parents. Maybe even kill them.”
Merrie balled her fists inside the arms of her coat once again and squeezed as tightly as she could. She felt her fingernails biting sharply into the palms of her hands. It hurt, but in a way it didn’t. Not like it hurt when he had done the bad things to her, anyway. It didn’t make any sense that something hurting could feel good. But, it did. It made her feel like she was here, and not there.
It made the other hurt go away, if only for a moment.
“Merrie?” Elizabeth asked, a mix of confusion and concern rimming her voice. “What is it?”
“Nothing…” Merrie finally said. “Just… I love you, Mom.”
Elizabeth smiled; she could tell her daughter had been on the brink of confessing the issue that appeared to be bothering her so much. What held her back she didn’t know, but she wrote off the sudden backpedaling to the earlier conversation about keeping promises. With a quick nod she said, “I love you too, sweetheart. Don’t worry. If you want to talk later we’ll sort everything out when your father gets home, okay?”
Merrie nodded.
“Everything will be fine, honey. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, I’m sure it can’t be that bad. Now… What say we get this shopping done so we can get home, okay?”
Can’t be that bad? Merrie thought to herself. If only she could tell because she just knew this was bad. And she knew that when her parents heard it they would think it was bad too. Instead, all she could do right now was force a thin smile and say, “Okay.”
“Can you do me a favor and help your sister with her seatbelt?”
From the back seat, Becca started to gleefully chant once again, “He knows you’re naughty… Santa Claus is coming… He knows you’re naughty… Santa Claus is coming…”