Part 2
Margaret sat hard on the floor, the child tight against her chest, and listened for the lock.
A second later, the deadbolt turned.
She had not known Drew had installed a deadbolt on the attic door until that sound.
For a while, everything inside her moved too fast to become thought. Her left hand supported the baby’s head. Her right hand patted the blanket. Her knee throbbed. Her breath came in short, foolish little bursts. Somewhere downstairs, the house made its ordinary noises: the refrigerator compressor, a pipe ticking in the wall, the muffled hum of the furnace that did not reach this unfinished space. Normal things continuing. That offended her more than the dark.
“Drew,” she called. “Open this door.”
No answer.
“Claire. Listen to me. Whatever happened, we can call someone. We can—”
Footsteps moved away down the hall.
Margaret stopped calling.
She looked at the baby. The little girl’s face had gone red from crying, a crease between her brows so severe she looked offended by the entire arrangement of the world. There was a knit cap on her head, slipping sideways. One tiny ear had folded under it. Margaret adjusted the cap with two fingers and found herself whispering nonsense.
“There. There now. That’s better. That’s a terrible hat anyway. Nobody asked your opinion before putting that on you, did they?”
The baby screamed directly into her collarbone.
“I agree,” Margaret said, and a cracked laugh escaped her before she could stop it. The laugh turned into a sob. She swallowed it hard. Babies did not need adult grief poured over them. They needed heat, food, clean diapers, help.
Help.
Her phone was downstairs on the kitchen counter beside her mug of tea. She had left it there because Claire had called from the upstairs hall saying, “Margaret, could you come up here a second?” in a voice so artificially pleasant it had made Margaret wipe her hands on a towel before obeying. She had thought Claire wanted help with a box of baby clothes. She had thought a lot of stupid things.
Her purse was downstairs too. The landline had been disconnected in June because no one used it anymore except scammers and the pharmacy robot. The attic door was locked from the outside. The window was too small and too high, opening onto the steep roof above the backyard.
Then she saw the black canvas bag.
It lay on the floor near a stack of plastic tubs labeled CHRISTMAS, though inside them were mostly Drew’s high school trophies and old extension cords. Margaret had brought the bag upstairs herself that morning, thinking she would reorganize emergency supplies before the storm due that night. Flashlights, batteries, wool socks, protein bars, a hand-crank radio Drew had teased her for buying, and, because she had lived long enough to distrust calm days, the small emergency alert device her friend Louisa had insisted on after Margaret slipped in the driveway the previous winter.
The device was not a phone. It would not call Drew. It would not record Claire. It would not solve the family. But if charged, if within range, if the subscription Drew had promised to help her cancel had not actually been canceled, it might connect her to someone trained to answer panic.
The bag was six feet away.
Margaret looked at the baby. “We’re going to do something undignified now.”
Getting across the floor with a newborn in her arms and one bad knee was not graceful. She scooted on her hip like an old woman in a comedy sketch, except nothing in the attic was funny except the absurd precision of ordinary objects around them. A coffee can full of screws. A chipped lamp shade. A bag of gift bows smashed flat. Drew’s baseball glove from eighth grade sitting palm-up on a shelf, still holding the shape of his hand from a boyhood he had survived and apparently betrayed.
The baby’s cry hitched. Margaret stopped moving and pressed her cheek to the cap.
“I know,” she said. “I’m slow. File a complaint.”
Her fingers reached the bag’s strap. She dragged it toward her. The zipper caught on a folded poncho. She yanked too hard and the bag toppled, spilling a flashlight and two granola bars onto the floor. One bar slid under the shelving.
“Fine,” she muttered. “Take the granola. We have bigger problems.”
She found the device in the side pocket. Small, black, rubber-edged, with one raised button she had never liked because it looked too serious to live among breath mints and grocery receipts. Her thumb hovered over it. A ridiculous hesitation stopped her. Once she pressed it, the thing became real outside the attic. People would know. Someone might come. Someone might ask questions Margaret could not answer without destroying whatever remained of her son’s life.
Then the baby made a sound that was not a cry, more like a weak goat’s bleat.
Margaret pressed the button.
A red light blinked. Nothing else happened.
“No,” Margaret said. “No, come on.”
She pressed again and held it down until her thumb hurt. The device vibrated once, then emitted a faint chime.
A woman’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Emergency response. This is Tanya. Margaret, can you hear me?”
Margaret bent over the device as if prayer required proximity. “Please. Someone answer. I need help now.”
“Margaret, I can hear you. Are you injured?”
“My granddaughter—” The word caught on the sharp place Claire had left. Margaret looked at the baby. “There’s a newborn. She’s cold. We’re locked in the attic.”
There was a beat of professional silence. Tanya did not gasp. Margaret loved her for that.
“Is the baby breathing?”
“Yes. Crying. Less now. She’s only—she’s new. Very new. Three weeks. No, wait. Four. I don’t—please send someone.”
May you like
“I’m contacting emergency services now. Stay on the line. Are you in your home?”
“My son’s house. Well, mine too. I gave them the money. I live here. I don’t know why I said that.”
