Chapter 2 - The Game Lacey Was Told to Play
I did not sleep that night.
I pretended to.
That is not the same thing.
After dinner, I tucked Lacey into bed, checked the lock on her window, and sat with her until her breathing became soft and uneven. She clutched the stuffed rabbit Nolan had bought her at O’Hare before his first “business trip” two years earlier. I had once thought that rabbit was proof he was trying.
Now it sat in her arms like a witness.
“Mom?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“If Dad comes out, don’t tell him I told.”
I leaned down and kissed her hair.
“He doesn’t get to make you responsible for grown-up secrets.”
“But Grandma said secrets keep families safe.”
My throat tightened.
“Some secrets keep people powerful. That’s different.”
She thought about that, then closed her eyes.
When I returned to my room, I left the closet untouched. Instead, I placed my phone on the dresser, screen down, and moved through the house as if the world were normal. I washed one mug. Turned off the living room lamp. Left the hallway nightlight on for Lacey. Brushed my teeth. Changed into navy satin pajamas.
Then I lay in bed and faced away from the closet.
At 1:42 a.m., the wall clicked.
It was not loud.
A careful sound.
A practiced sound.
My whole body wanted to bolt upright, but I stayed still, breathing slow, counting the way my old therapist had taught me after postpartum anxiety. Four in. Hold. Six out.
The closet door shifted.
Fabric brushed fabric.
Then feet.
Bare or socked.
Quiet.
Someone stood in my bedroom.
I smelled him before I saw him.
Nolan’s cedar soap.
The one I kept buying even after he left because grief makes rituals stupid.
He walked to my side of the bed and stood there for so long my skin seemed to separate from my bones. I kept my eyes closed. My hands lay loose beneath the blanket.
Then his voice came low, almost tender.
“Allie.”
I did not move.
He touched nothing.
That frightened me more.
After another minute, he crossed into the hallway. The floorboard near the linen closet sighed under his weight. In the kitchen, a cabinet opened. A wrapper crinkled. Water ran for three seconds.
My husband was not in Seattle.
He was eating crackers in our kitchen like a ghost with house keys.
When he returned, another sound followed him.
A phone vibration.
Then Nolan whispering, “She’s asking questions.”
A woman’s voice answered faintly from his phone.
Vivian.
“Then move to the next step,” she said. “Mr. Hale is done waiting.”
Mr. Hale.
The powerful executive whose name appeared in Nolan’s work stories more often than mine had in his schedule. Preston Hale. CEO of Hale-Bridge Logistics. Charismatic in interviews. Cold in photos. The kind of man who could make a family disappear behind corporate language and call it operational necessity.
Nolan whispered, “Not with Lacey in the house.”
Vivian snapped, “You should have thought of that before you let the child see you.”
Silence.
Then Nolan said, “I can still fix it.”
The wall clicked shut.
I waited thirty minutes before moving.
Then I walked to the bathroom, turned on the shower, sat on the closed toilet lid, and shook so hard my teeth hurt.
In the morning, I bought two tiny motion-activated cameras. One faced the closet seam. One watched the kitchen. A third, after I stood in the hardware aisle staring at security devices like a woman choosing the shape of her own rescue, went into Lacey’s hallway.
The cashier asked if I needed batteries.
I nearly laughed.
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What I needed was a world where daughters did not have to tell mothers their fathers were hiding inside walls.
But batteries were a start.
