A Slow Ruin Read online

  My lips brushed against her salty cheek. “My poor babycakes. Let’s get that owie feeling better, okay, Syd Squid?”

  She nodded meekly. Taking her into the bathroom across the hall, I dabbed at the cut while she squeezed the life out of the rabbit, until the bleeding stopped, then I dotted kisses on her cheeks and nose and neck until she collapsed into a giggle fit. She held out her finger, where the paper cut had turned an angry red, and I kissed that too before wrapping it in a Paw Patrol Band-Aid. When I had discovered that the kids show supported the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I happily purchased the cartoony Dalmatian- and German-shepherd-themed bandages. Sydney smiled and hugged her tiny arms around my neck, squeezing her thanks. Owie cured.

  “You’re the best mommy ever.” Her standards were pretty low.

  I hefted her into my arms and tossed the Band-Aid wrapper in the trashcan. Downstairs the dogs continued barking as Eliot yelled at them, his voice growing more frantic by the moment.

  The disciplinary part of my job always escalated the drama, but I couldn’t let it go.

  “Eliot!” I yelled over the dogs’ baying as I descended the stairs. “Syd told me you pushed her.” My voice lowered an accusatory decibel. “You know better than to hurt your sister.” I reached the first floor when a piercing cry nudged me into a sprint.

  “Moooooommmm! Help!” Eliot sobbed.

  I whipped around the doorway, finding Eliot in the kitchen trying to pick up shards of glass with his little bare fingers.

  “Whoa, what happened here, bud?” I shifted Sydney to my hip and rushed to where Eliot knelt on the glass-besieged floor, his face apple red.

  Tears streamed down his cheeks as he looked up at me, grabbing Brutus by the collar to keep him from cutting his paws.

  “It was an accident! I was getting a cup and it dropped and broke, and when Syd came over I tried to push her away so she wouldn’t get cut, but then she fell and hurt her lip. And I can’t clean it up without the dogs trying to run through the glass…”

  When he finished his breathless defense, I realized—once again—how I failed as a mom. Here my eight-year-old son had been scrambling to keep everyone safe while I obliviously wallowed in my sorrow upstairs. It was a recurring theme lately: my negligence, my absentmindedness, my disconnect. My despair.

  I couldn’t seem to find my way out of the darkness. Not when my only light—my daughter—was missing.

  “I’m so sorry, honey.” I said that a lot these days. “It’s okay, Eliot.” I pulled him aside, drying his tears on my shirt. “Let me clean this up while you put on Captain Underpants for you and Syd.”

  Patting his flat little bum, I sent them to the living room while I dragged all three dogs by their collars out through the back door and into the yard. While sweeping up the shards, a macabre thought slivered into my brain. What would it feel like to just jab one of these glossy spikes through my heart and end it all? Wouldn’t work. There was already a gaping black hole there…in the place where my love for Vera had been.

  Stop.

  Enough.

  I couldn’t let go when so many people needed me to hang on. But it was so damn hard to hold on to so much at once.

  When the glass had been cleaned up, I wanted to make it up to the kids with a treat. If I was being honest, I needed to more than I wanted to. I owed them so much more than a sugary bribe, but I found it harder and harder each day to be who they deserved me to be.

  “Who wants brownies?” I called out from the kitchen with a fake cheer that the kids believed.

  “Me!” both kids replied in unison. When do we outgrow childlike simplicity? I wondered now if I’d ever had it.

  “No nuts in the brownies, Mom!” Eliot added over the sound of the show.

  I pulled out my mother’s recipe for homemade double-chocolate-chip brownies, mentally adjusted the ingredients for Sydney’s kidney-friendly diet, and slipped into the pantry. Within ten minutes I mixed the batter, poured it into a glass baking dish, and slid it into the oven. While it cooked, I swept clean the espresso-stained butcher block island—a rich contrast to the white quartz countertops throughout the rest of the kitchen—then shifted my brain to what to make for dinner tonight. I dreaded meal planning almost as much as I dreaded grocery shopping. Eliot hardly ate anything but tacos these days, and Sydney wouldn’t touch a vegetable unless I smothered it in cheese.

  As I piled the dirty bakeware into the sink, my phone beeped with a notification. Opening up my Facebook app, I checked to see if it had anything to do with my latest post about our ongoing search for Vera. The Crimestoppers post featuring last year’s school picture and her physical details had been shared over 5k times and had 1.4k comments:

  MISSING: Vera Portman

  Missing since: 4/16/2021

  Age: 15

  Race: White

  Sex: Female

  Height: Approx. 5’2” tall

  Weight: Approx. 105 pounds

  Hair: Blonde

  Eyes: Green

  Six months of shared posts. Six months of friends’ crying emojis and sympathetic comments. Six months of nothing helpful.

  Captain Underpants’ tra-la-lahhh battle cry faded in the background, along with everything around me. My heart sank; it was just someone commenting with yet another prayer emoji that the police would find her soon. Except I had already given up hundreds, maybe even thousands of prayers for God to bring her back to me, and He had yet to deliver. What was the point of faith if God wasn’t listening?

  As my finger continued clicking, scrolling, clicking, scrolling, my eyes scanned for anything new. Anything relevant to Vera. Day after day I found nothing but #momlife memes and book club recommendations and kittens and political noise. It killed me, like tiny paper cuts slowly bleeding me to death, when I watched the world continue to live while I died. Each day slicing deeper. Each morning bringing fresh pain. Each breath a weep.

  Everyone else got to live their lives, while my daughter stayed missing, lost somewhere in the world, unable to make her way home. The pettiness of everyone else’s “problems” infuriated me, not so much that I wished their own kids would go missing, but better theirs than mine. Because a missing child was a real problem, not some make-believe offense over supporting the wrong sports team, the latest celebrity victim of cancel culture, or whether or not you’re properly wearing your face mask in public.

  I clicked over to a Facebook support group for mothers whose children had gone missing. The consolation it offered was mostly symbolic, but it helped, a little. As my fingertip touched the screen, my phone was ripped from my hand.

  “Hey!” I looked up to find Oliver holding my phone out of reach. “What the hell?”

  “What the hell is right. I’ve been trying to get your attention for five minutes, Felicity. You spend more time on Facebook than taking care of the kids.”

  Touché. Maybe I had been wrapped up in my phone…and my emptiness again. But didn’t a missing child warrant it? “I’m trying to find our daughter, Ollie. That’s more than you’re doing.”

  “Right now I’m more concerned about whatever’s burning in the oven,” he said, gesturing toward the smoke billowing against the oven window.

  The brownies! Had it been fifteen minutes already? I turned off the oven and whipped the door open, releasing a fog of charred chocolate smoke into the kitchen and fanning it away with my mitted hand before the smoke alarm started screaming. First the broken glass, now the burned brownies. And none of it mattered because Vera was missing and I had no idea if she was dead or alive.

  “You’re constantly on your phone or in your own head,” Oliver continued ranting, “and it’s like the rest of us don’t exist anymore. There’s a point where we have to move on…accept this as the new normal. Without Vera—”

  “Don’t you dare say that!” I needed him to stop. Stop talking. Stop guilting me. Stop. Stop. Stop! “Do you even miss her?” My voi
ce dropped to a low growl.

  Oliver showed me his scolded puppy look.

  “I’m sorry.” I was on the verge of tears. “I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry I’m a terrible wife and neglectful mother and horrible housekeeper. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! But I just don’t know what to be anymore, because I will never be who I used to be—Vera’s mother.”

  I felt it before it arrived, the tide pushing against my eyes, my throat, my stomach. A mother’s heart shatters daily, but nothing like this. It should never hurt like this. Unable to stop the tears, I sobbed as the pain swelled. So many tears over so many days. It had been six months, but it felt like six years.

  “Of course I miss her,” he consoled. “And I don’t expect you to just move on like she never existed. But there’s nothing else we can do. We’ve done everything we can to find her. But we have to stay strong for Eliot…and especially Sydney.” Oliver pulled me into his arms. “And for each other. I know you’re hurting—I am too. But we still have two little kids who need you…here…now. You can’t get so caught up in the life you lost that you forget the life you still have. With us.”

  Still holding me, Oliver turned us toward the living room where Eliot and Sydney laughed at some loud, goofy antic escalating in the cartoon.

  “You’re right. But I don’t know how to move on. I can’t stop worrying about her. Wondering if she’s…okay.” I couldn’t say alive. I could never let that doubt creep in.

  Oliver handed me back my phone, releasing me with a kiss on my cheek. “All I ask is that you try to be present. For us and for them.”

  Oh my heart. Two pieces of it sitting on the sofa snuggled together. I tried every day for them, but trying didn’t seem to be enough. Not enough to cover the guilt that haunted me for what I had done. And for what I continued to do.

  Maybe I deserved the hell I was in. Payment for my sins. I had never been punished for that terrible act, or all the lies following it. Maybe I was overdue.

  On the counter behind me Oliver’s phone chirped, and I reached to pick it up and hand it to him when he grabbed it. I thought I caught the name Vera in the text message that blinked off the screen.

  “Geez, you’re awfully protective of that thing. Are you hiding something from me?” I lifted an eyebrow, and he nervously grinned. I had been joking, but maybe it wasn’t a joke. What was he hiding? “Oliver, who are you texting about Vera to?”

  “Vera? I wasn’t texting about Vera.”

  “Yes you were. I just saw her name in that text.”

  “Oh.” He glanced at the floor, as if he’d find a more convincing lie in the grout between the tiles. “Cody was asking if we heard anything new on Vera’s case, that’s all.”

  It seemed an awful strange thing for Oliver’s brother to ask via text, considering we saw him every week for family dinner where we always kept him well-informed. Which, now that I realized the time, was quickly approaching. Oliver’s family usually arrived around six o’clock for dinner, and it was already four thirty. That didn’t leave much time to figure out a meal, prepare it, and serve it.

  “You’re just as bad as I am,” I grumbled as I tossed a cookbook on the counter.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your phone—you’re just as possessive with yours as I am with mine.”

  “No I’m not.” He laughed it off, but something inside me wilted with the awareness that my husband had a secret too, and it had to do with Vera.

  Once upon a time we shared everything, with no space between us. Until lies and secrets broke us apart, made us strangers, and nothing could fill the breach.

  Chapter 4

  Marin Portman

  The blue flame on the gas stove licked my fingertip. Something inside me wanted to touch it, feel it sear me, cook my skin. I wanted to see my flesh bubble and pop. I held my hand there for just a moment, soaking in the heat as it blistered red. It should have hurt, but I didn’t feel anything. Maybe my body had become so used to the ache that it was numb. I used to get burned by fire, but now I was forged by it. Into something inhuman. Something dark and evil.

  “Marin!” Hearing my name jarred me back to my body, standing in the kitchen, while the kettle shrieked, and a flare of pain shot up my arm.

  Maybe I wasn’t immune to pain after all.

  Turning off the burner, the kettle died down but I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be doing. Oh right, taking the sweet potato casserole out of the oven, the side dish that I had committed to bringing to family dinner tonight at my sister-in-law Felicity’s house. I doubted anyone would eat a bite, as most of my cooking turned out to be inedible experiments, but the family—it sounded so Sopranos-ish in my head—insisted we all be there to support Felicity through “this difficult time.” Difficult time. That’s how my mother-in-law Debra had worded it, as if Felicity losing a daughter was just a minor obstacle to hurdle.

  I was devastated for Felicity. Angry at myself. These hot emotions coated me like melted wax, hardening the place where my heart should be. It felt dishonest being the shoulder for Felicity to cry on when I was the reason for her tears.

  Opening the oven door, I stepped aside to allow light from the mismatched hood into the oven to see if the marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes had melted into goo yet. The oven that came with the house predated the time when they installed lights inside the guts. It was an O’Keefe and Merritt model, circa 1940s, old enough that I had to manually light the burner with a match when I turned on the gas. Somehow the porcelain was still in great shape, and I loved the look of it—a vintage mint green. It was the only thing I liked about my home.

  Home felt too intimate a word for the house that Cody had purchased before me, furnished with cheap Walmart décor that screamed broke bachelor. From the goldenrod linoleum floor that looked perpetually dirty, to the original single-pane windows that did nothing to keep the Pennsylvania chill out, to the money-pit furnace that couldn’t keep up with the extreme lows. You’d think we could have afforded a little modernization—like trading up from wall units to central air-conditioning and replacing the leaky galvanized plumbing with PVC—but the attribute I loved most about my husband was the thing that kept us perpetually broke: his love for me above all else.

  While other men slaved at their jobs, dedicating endless nights climbing whatever ladder brought them bigger pay, Cody was satisfied with just getting by. Sometimes his single-minded adoration was a huge pain in the ass. He clocked out at work at exactly five o’clock just so he could bounce through the front door and smother me with kisses. He could work an hour or two overtime every now and then to earn extra money, or take a job further away that paid more, but no, not my Cody. I was the center of his universe, and he was a pesky satellite, revolving around me. Sometimes I wished he’d get swallowed up in a black hole.

  As Cody gorged himself on our love, I starved for something more.

  The white plastic timer dinged just as I carried the casserole dish from the oven to the orange Formica counter with metal trim. It was a mystery why an owner from the past picked this permanent color palette, as it didn’t match a single detail in the kitchen. Heat seeped through the cheap oven mitts, burning my palms. As I rushed to set it down, I felt my feet slipping…then my body falling backward.

  The crack! impacted my tailbone first, shooting a jolt of pain up my spine.

  After my butt hit the floor, scorching magma spilled across my lap. I screamed and pushed myself upright, feeling sticky orange sweet potatoes covering my legs, chunks of it falling to the floor. I cried out for Cody, partly in pain, partly in fury. In a mental instant replay, I imagined my fall looked something like Joe Pesci tripping on Macauley Culkin’s Micro Machines booby trap in Home Alone. I had never empathized for the sawed-off tough guy until now.

  By the time I had scooped most of the food off of me, Cody showed up, laughing hysterically as he grabbed a wet wash cloth to help wipe off my pants. Cody
had also laughed like this through Home Alone. God love him, but the man had the attention span and the sense of humor of a ten-year-old boy.

  “Are you okay?” he managed to ask.

  “It’s not funny!” I wanted to yell at him, but my throbbing tailbone dialed my voice down to a whimper. “I think it burned my legs.”

  I glanced at the space on the floor where my feet had given way and saw a puddle of water seeping into the sweet potato juice. Pulling open the cabinet under the sink, I watched a drip, drip, drip trickle down the elbow pipe, splattering on the cabinet base before streaming onto the floor.

  “I thought you fixed the leak in the pipe already,” I groaned as I hooked my hands on the metal edge of the counter and pried myself back up. I let Cody lift me, even though I was pissed at him for a reason I couldn’t explain. My rear hurt so bad I could hardly stand.

  “I did. I replaced the whole thing.” No he didn’t. “I guess the leak is coming from somewhere else.” Wrong again.

  It was the same leak I offered to fix countless times, and countless times Cody told me it was a man’s job. He called it chivalry; I called it chauvinism. When it came to home repairs, or anything do-it-yourself, Cody had no clue what he was doing. That’s what growing up privileged afforded him, the luxury of relying on others for basic survival. My life hadn’t afforded me the same blissful ignorance. By age ten I knew how to change a tire; by age thirteen I could replace a water heater.

  Let me fix the damn plumbing, Cody.

  Cody tossed the hand towel on the growing puddle and knelt down on it as he reached under the sink to shut off the water. Glancing up at me, he asked, “Are you able to still go to family dinner, or do you want to stay home? Everyone would understand if you’d rather not go, Marin, considering everything going on with Vera…”

  I shrugged, partly wanting to stay home to nurse my aching ass, but I needed to be there tonight. I could never tell Cody why. I could barely admit it to myself.

  “I’ll be fine. I just need to get changed really quick. Could you text Ollie and tell him we’re running late? And obviously I won’t be bringing sweet potatoes like I planned.”