I turn further left, the mental task calming, my heartbeat slowing, the shake in my hands subsiding. If there is a solution in this room, I will find it.
A skinny shelving unit, one that holds our laundry detergents, cleaning supplies, and iron. A toolbox sits on the bottom shelf, alongside a flashlight. The flashlight is long and heavy, the type that, if swung properly, could act as a club. I crouch and pull it out, the weight of it reassuring in my hand. Worst-case scenario, at least I am somewhat armed. Before I stand, I look through the toolbox. Basic items. Screwdriver. Hammer. A wrench. I eye the hammer. Another possible weapon. I start to stand, then stop, thinking of something.
The wrench. I turn back and look at it. It’s not the big heavy sort. This one is more delicate, the sort that fits into a small hand like mine, its nimble pinchers designed for household screws and bolts. In a battle of strengths, it’d be as useless as a pillow. In a battle of wits… I bite at my bottom lip, an idea forming.
The Terrace. It’s a book of mine that no one has heard of. If I move three gigantic steps to the left, it will be there, among the stack of manuscripts. It is one of the eight Unpublishables, eight novels no one will ever read. They range from uninteresting to terrible. One is about a talking cricket. One is about a menopausal woman who talks to herself for four hundred pages. One is about a lonely teenager who reads on her terrace while her mother dies from carbon monoxide poisoning. The twist? She’s responsible. Carbon monoxide was the fourth attempt on her mother’s life, and the first successful one. Somehow, the book managed to be boring, while also… I purse my lips and attempt to remember the carefully worded rejection. Disturbing. Psychologically disturbing. Boring while also psychologically disturbing. I had agreed with the editor. It was boring. And disturbing. If my mother had ever read it, she would have shipped me off to the closest mental health facility and locked me away forever.
In The Terrace, the girl floods the home with carbon monoxide. Her tools of death were simple: a wrench and a hot water heater.
I turn to the two eighty-gallon hot water heaters. I have everything I needed. Two huge water heaters and a toolbox. I turn and look at the stacks of manuscripts. A meticulously researched instruction manual of death. And, somewhere in those cabinets, I probably have the hot water heater’s manual.
Can I do it?
Will I?
I slide my hand around the wrench, then drop it back into the toolbox.
I don’t even know if Simon is still home. How long has it been since he locked me in—ten, fifteen minutes? It is hard to tell, the seconds stretching before me, my manic mind either moving extremely fast or ridiculously slow. If he has already left, if he is already on the way to dispose of evidence, or pick up Bethany, then I will accomplish nothing by turning the house into a poison-filled capsule. If anything, I’ll only endanger my eventual rescue party, assuming one ever comes.
I step away from the toolbox and lean against the door, my back sliding down the metal until my butt hits the floor. Lowering my head against my knees, I fight against the panic.
Then, as if a gift from God, the hot water heater comes to life.
I lift my head and stare at it, the machine humming, the sound of water flowing, and I hold my breath, wondering if my husband is simply washing his hands, or has turned on the shower.
Part of me is shocked that, right now, he would think that a shower is appropriate. The other half of me understands it completely, especially if he is going to run away with her. Simon abhors the scent of the school on him, the smell of cafeteria and teenage sweat and the exhaust from the bus pickup. His first step—once home from work—is typically the shower. And he takes his dear time in there. I once asked him what he did for thirty or forty minutes, just standing there, under the spray. He said he thought about things, that it was where he got his best ideas. I never understood what great ideas he was coming up with. Fantasy Football projections? A more efficient way to stack his beer in the fridge? Now, with my newfound knowledge, my thoughts turn dark, his “ideas”—much more sinister in their possibilities.
The water continues, and it’s been thirty or forty seconds now, definitely past the half-ass motion that he considers hand washing. If he is in the shower, I have a guaranteed half-hour where he will be at home. Add time for him to get dressed and pack up some items… probably more like an hour. He won’t rush. Why would he? I am locked away, giving him all of the time in the world.
I spring to my feet and turn to the shelving, to the stacks of manuscripts there, my mind almost spasming with my next decision. Stay here and wait? Sit on my bony ass and do nothing? Or flood the house with carbon monoxide and kill him? Kill him and the possibility that he will ever hurt another girl again; kill him and ensure that Bethany’s innocence will forever be protected?
I close my eyes and work through the process. The time it would take for the carbon monoxide to fill the house. Simon growing sleepy. Lying down on the bed. Death. When I don’t show up to pick up Bethany. Mom will call. Grow worried. Come by. She will find Simon and call the police. She won’t want Bethany to see the body. She’ll take her into the backyard. The police will come. Search the house. I will be found.
I will have to tell them the truth. There’s no way they’ll believe the hot water heater malfunctioned on its own, not when I’d been locked inside the room with it.
Will the police understand? Will they consider it an act of self-defense? Or will they arrest me for murder? Even if found innocent, I might lose custody of Bethany in the process.
It’s worth it. I would rather my mother have custody of her than him. I would rather risk my own incarceration than him ever touch her, or another child. Am I too late? Has he already… I almost vomit at the thought. Surely not. Surely she is too young, surely his tastes aren’t that twisted. I close my eyes and think of every child at his school. The neighborhood full of kids that have sprinted across our lawn and dove down our slip-n-slide. Every smiling face we’ve welcomed into our home on Halloween or Easter. When she is older, we would have hosted sleepovers and movie nights. I would have gone up to my office to write. I would have left them alone with a monster and never been the wiser.
Imprisonment, losing custody… all risks I have to take. If I have the opportunity, right now, to stop him from getting to my daughter, or to any other child, I have to act.
I move aside five manuscripts before I find The Terrace. I rapidly flip through the pages, the first eighty percent of the book detailing the girl’s failed attempts. Skimming over the scenes, I realize exactly how screwed up my sixteen-year-old self was. Had I really hated my mother this much? Had I felt this detached? How many of these emotions had been fiction, and how much reality? I’d blamed my stiffness with my mother on her disapproval of my parenting, on her attempts to separate me from my child. But now, reading through my teenage thoughts, I am reminded of how different we have always been. In my upbringing, there had been no cuddly moments, no friendly lunches or the sharing of feelings. Any discussions had been examined through her psychiatrist magnifying glass, my emotions and motivations picked apart and analyzed to death. I learned, early on, to hide everything from her.
The plot progresses and I slow my reading, bending the page over at the section where Helen (such an original name) did her research. The detail, as in all of my early novels, borders on excessive—an insecure need to show my thorough research. And I remember the research well. The Internet hadn’t been as all-encompassing back then. I’d had to hunt down a local plumber and get my information from him. He’d found me strange, and had asked a lot of his own questions. What I planned to do with the information. If my parents were aware of my interest in killing someone via carbon monoxide. All of those suspicions had been overcome with a crisp hundred-dollar bill and a promise to mention him in the book’s acknowledgements. I hold my place with my finger and flip to the back, using a precious moment to verify that I had, in fact, acknowledged him. And sure enough, on the second to last page, on the book never published, there was his name. Spencer Wilton. I let out a sigh of relief, that debt paid. I return to the meat of the document, skimming over the content quickly, then a second time, my eyes darting occasionally to the tall metal tanks, as I verify the facts.