CHAPTER NINE

ADAM

Helen is mostly silent as I inventory Aubrey’s things in the cabin. She’s always been mostly silent. I can’t think of the last time she really said something of any real consequence. I know that she has been beaten down by her husband and that the world he’s created barely leaves any room for her. I know that Sophie stayed in their house after college because she wanted to be there for her mom. Helen is weak, yes. It isn’t because she suffers from depression (though she does) or that she is an alcoholic (I wouldn’t blame her for that extra glass of wine early in the afternoon). She seems to inhabit the fringes of her own world. As if Frank rules their world and allows her to coexist with him as long as she keeps the house clean and does his laundry.

I try to be friendly to her. There is no chance that Frank will change his mind about me. He doesn’t change his mind about anything. Hard-line. Always right. Early on, I saw Helen as my way into some kind of a normal in-law relationship. While there were flashes of a possibility that she could soften the blow of having a father-in-law like Frank, it just didn’t go my way.

“I’m scared,” she says to me as we stand outside the cabin.

Helen’s eyes are blue, and for the first time since she and Frank arrived, I notice how red they are too. I expect she’d cried all the way from their home in Federal Way while Frank went on and imagined every terrible scenario that could have happened to Sophie. As if an abduction by a stranger wasn’t traumatic enough on its own.

I imagine his nonstop harangue:

“Serial killer got her.

“She’s probably being raped by some madman right this minute.

“She’s been sliced and diced.”

And then, while she would lean her head against the passenger window, flattening her hair on one side as I noticed she had, she’d cry and move her lips with words that float like dust into the air-conditioning unit of the Buick.

“She’s going to be found, Frank.”

“What? Did you say something?”

She’d keep her focus on the road because to make eye contact with Frank meant that he’d have cause to shut her down with some kind of verbal punch in the face.

“We can’t lose her,” she’d say.

“Frank’s going to blame you,” she says to me now. Maybe it’s a warning. Maybe it’s meant to hurt me the way her husband hurts her. “He’s going to use this to prove to Sophie that you are a poor excuse for a husband.”

She never gazes at me once as she says this. She drops the bomb and runs for cover by going into the bathroom to assist Aubrey with the faucet.

“When’s Mommy coming back?” Aubrey asks. She looks concerned, but it’s clear she doesn’t know anything other than that her mom has gone somewhere. Not the how of it. Or the why.