The Imperfections by Sam Mariano
4
Brant
When morning comesand Alyssa’s still asleep in the bed beside me, I breathe a little easier. I climb out of bed, careful not to wake her, and go in to take a shower, taking the key to the chest with me.
I bathe as quickly as I can, then pull on clean jeans and a T-shirt. I’m still running my fingers through my dark, damp hair when I walk back into the bedroom and my heart damn near stops.
She’s gone.
Her spot on the bed is empty.
My heart jolts back to life, racing so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t explode.
“Shit,” I mutter, tucking the chest key into my pocket and running out of the room.
I hustle down the steps, trying to think how long I was in the shower. She couldn’t have made it too far. Not only is she naked with no clue where she is, I wasn’t in the bathroom for long. As long as she wasn’t faking sleep and didn’t make a run for it as soon as she heard the water turn on, I can probably catch up to her.
“Fuck,” I mutter when I realize I forgot to grab my phone off my nightstand. Then horror dawns on me, because maybe she took it. Maybe the cops are on their way right fucking now. I never grab my phone until I’m about to leave, so I didn’t even think about it when I went to shower, but it was right there on the nightstand where she could have easily grabbed it if she woke up and I wasn’t in the room.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” When I get to the kitchen, I see the door cracked open and my heart sinks. “Goddammit,” I mutter before walking toward it.
“What’s wrong?”
My gaze snaps to Alyssa standing at my counter, her long blonde hair a little frizzy and a lot wavy since she took it out of the braid. She’s not naked, though. She grabbed one of my T-shirts and put it on, and now she stands here in my kitchen looking over at me while she absently whisks something in a bowl on the counter.
I open my mouth and close it again, then I look at the door.
“What…? Why’s the door open?”
“Oh.” She looks back at it. “I let Scout out to go potty. I was going to wait and let you do it, but he was whining at the door, so I didn’t see any point in making him wait.”
Still frowning, I walk over next to her and peer into the bowl. “What are you doing over here?”
“Making breakfast,” she tells me. “This is the last of your eggs, by the way. You need to get some more.”
I stand there, confused as hell, and watch her finish scrambling the eggs and move over to the stove. Without needing conversation, I guess, she whips up the eggs, takes a grapefruit I had on the counter, slices it in half, and then puts it on a plate with the eggs and hands it to me.
“I had to improvise,” she tells me. “You desperately need to go grocery shopping.”
Damn sure didn’t expect her to make me breakfast, but okay.
I shake my head, walking over to the fridge and grabbing some orange juice. “Want some?” I ask her as I open the cabinet overhead where I keep my drink glasses.
“Yes, please.”
Most of the time I eat standing at the counter, but since Alyssa went to the trouble of making breakfast, this morning we sit down and eat at the kitchen table.
I’m still confused as hell that she got out of bed when she knew I was in the shower and didn’t try to leave, but I don’t want to ask her about it, because maybe she’s just not that bright and it didn’t cross her mind to leave. If that’s the case, I’d hate to be the one to give her the idea.
“So, Theo mentioned you brought flyers around advertising your babysitting services. Did you have other clients?”
Glancing up at me, she says, “Yeah, I have a few regulars.”
“Sleep with any of the other fathers?”
She slides me a look of clear disapproval. “That’s not very nice.”
I shrug, taking a bite of grapefruit. “It’s an honest question.”
She rolls her eyes but answers me anyway. “No, I did not sleep with any of the other fathers.”
“That’s good. Seems like it’d be bad for business.”
“Unless it was a single dad,” she shoots back. “Then it could be very good for business. I bet he’d be a repeat customer.”
I crack a smile, shaking my head at her. “I guess you gotta make money somehow, huh?”
“I’m just kidding,” she tells me, her tone more amiable. “None of the other fathers came on to me, only Theo. And aside from you last night, he’s the only man I’ve been with, in case you were wondering.”
“Man seems a generous term for Theo,” I mutter. “So, are any of these other clients gonna notice you missing?”
Before we left her house last night, since her sister hadn’t come home yet, I decided to have her leave a note instead of sending that text message. Texting her sister that she was going to sleep would have bought me time last night, but it wouldn’t have explained her disappearance the next morning. When my plan was to kill her and dump her body, that would’ve been okay. Someone would have noticed her missing before long, anyway.
Now that she’s alive and well at my house, though, that complicates things. She’s still a missing person, but I don’t want her to look like one, because then people might start searching for her. Then it becomes a whole thing.
To buy myself a few days to figure out what I want to do with her, I had her leave a note saying she got a last-minute call from one of her babysitting customers and had to go babysit for the weekend. I knew she was willing to do overnights since she did one for Bri and Theo for their anniversary, so it shouldn’t seem too out of the ordinary.
Less ordinarily, she had to say they picked her up and brought her to their house, since her car is still parked in the driveway at hers.
The clock is definitely ticking.
“Depends on how long you keep me here,” Alyssa answers. “I’m supposed to do a job Thursday night, and since you didn’t let me bring my phone, I can’t message them and cancel. I’ve never not shown up for work, never called off, so if I don’t show up Thursday night at their place, they’ll probably think something is wrong.”
Today’s Saturday, so that gives me a few days if I need ’em. Of course, her parents will probably be expecting her back Monday morning.
I did bring her phone, but she doesn’t know that. I thought her parents would find it strange if she went to a weekend babysitting job without her phone and charger, so I grabbed both while she packed her clothes. They’re in my truck now, but I’ve gotta put ’em somewhere today. I wasn’t worried about them locating her by her phone last night since they don’t know she’s missing, but if I don’t take her home, that’s bound to change come Monday.
“Tell me about your family, the ones you live with,” I tell her, grabbing my orange juice to take a sip.
“All right,” she says, easily enough. “Well, we live in my Pappy’s house—my mom’s dad. He’s an alcoholic, but not an abusive one or anything. Half the time he falls asleep in his big brown recliner chair in the living room. You’re very lucky he wasn’t in it last night,” she tells me, pointing her fork at me.
“I’d say he’s the lucky one,” I offer mildly.
Ignoring that comment, she goes on. “I live there with my mom and my sister, Amber. We have different dads. My mom got pregnant her senior year of high school with Amber, and her dad moved to South Carolina… or North Carolina? I don’t remember which. Anyway, he went off to college there and Mom never heard from him again.”
I frown, but she says it like it’s normal.
“My dad was a couple years later. She had signed up for community college classes, wanted to take advantage of some grant or something and try to get a better job. Anyway, they were partners in English class and I guess they spent more time making me than studying. He stuck around for a while, but their relationship didn’t work out, and a year or so after I was born, he got engaged to someone else and they moved away. I never saw him again after that, so I don’t remember him.”
What the fuck? Who are these men who leave their daughters behind and move on with their lives like they never even existed?
Brightly, she says, “So anyway, as far as adults go, it’s just Pappy, Mom, Amber, and me, but then my sister Amber has two kids.”
“How old is she?”
“Almost 21,” she answers.
“And she has 2 babies,” I reiterate. “She went on a date last night, so I guess there’s no man in the picture for her, either?”
Wrinkling her nose up with displeasure, she says, “None worth calling a man, kinda like Theo. She hooks up with the hot ones, but they’re always unreliable assholes. I love my sister, but she has terrible taste in guys.”
“Sounds like that runs in your family,” I murmur, putting down my fork.
Instead of being offended, she laughs a little. “Yeah, I guess it does, huh?”
“Does she go for older men, too?” I ask, out of curiosity.
“The first time she did. My niece’s father was a lot older than Amber. He wasn’t married, but he did have a girlfriend or fiancée or some kind of thing like that. They met at work, and he lied to her, told her he and the woman were on a break. Amber was already pregnant when the girlfriend came in wanting to surprise him with lunch one day and it turned out he was just a lying sleazebag.”
“Jesus Christ,” I murmur, shaking my head.
“My nephew was with a guy her age, though,” she tells me. “It was just a drunken hook-up and nobody had a condom. They were never together.”
“Your mother never told either of you about birth control? I know you don’t have daddies, but fuck, where’s your mother while all this is happening?”
“Mom works a lot,” she tells me. “She’s an STNA at an old folks home, but she also has a boyfriend she spends most of her time with if she’s not working. The house is pretty full, so she sleeps at his place most nights. We don’t see her much, but the kids keep us busy, anyway. I started babysitting so I could make some money and help my sister out. Obviously, since she’s raising two kids on her own, money’s pretty tight. I wanted to be able to pitch in and help out with the extras from time to time.”
I try to process this abundance of information. The environment she’s describing does match the impression I got of her house last night, but it doesn’t sound like the kind of environment another baby should be brought into. She’s barely an adult, surrounded by other women who are barely adults and raising their babies in this potluck family of hers. That’s not how I think it should be.
Aside from their sorry excuse for a father, my nephews have got the kind of stable life a kid should start out with. It sounds like Alyssa’s family life is a mess.
I’m not the most tactful person in the world, but I think about how best to avoid offending her for a minute, then I ask, “And, uh, where are you planning to put this new baby? I mean, where does he or she fit into all this? You said the house is tight already. Were you planning to stay there?”
“I’m not sure,” she answers, shrugging one shoulder then reaching for her orange juice. “I only took a pregnancy test a couple weeks ago, so I haven’t figured it all out yet. My sister already has baby stuff for a boy and a girl, though, so I can just use a lot of her hand-me-downs.”
I don’t say anything with my mouth, but my face must be doing some talking, because after a minute, she narrows her eyes at me across the table.
Sounding a little guarded, she says, “What? You don’t think I can handle raising a baby on my own?”
“I didn’t say anything like that,” I point out.
“It doesn’t seem like you approve of this plan. I didn’t even say it was my plan—you’re just assuming, like you assumed I must have run off when you came downstairs and saw the door open, right? Maybe you shouldn’t assume so much, ’cause sometimes you’re wrong.”
I shake my head, picking my fork back up so I can finish my breakfast. “I didn’t say anything about you not being able to raise a baby yourself. I just don’t think you should have to, that’s all. The situation you’ve told me about seems far from ideal, and it doesn’t seem like you and your sister grew up real well without a father in the picture, so maybe it’s not the best cycle to keep going.” I shrug again, raising my hands in surrender. “I’m not judging you, just making observations.”
“I think I grew up all right,” she says, clearly defensive.
“I think it could’ve gone a little better,” I offer, generously.
She scowls at me. “Well, I don’t have a choice, do I? Having a baby under these circumstances wasn’t my first choice, either. I figured when it happened someday my baby would have a father and we’d be in love, but… that didn’t happen. I fucked up, okay? What do you want me to do about it? I’m trying to make it right, but I can only work with what I have.”
It’s not that she’s wrong; I just don’t like it. I can’t very well tell her she should try to make it work with the baby’s father or at least let him be in the kid’s life so it has some kind of male role model to look up to, because the father in question is married to my sister and already has a family. He’s also not at all someone who should be held up as a goddamn role model.
The link to my family, even if it’s through Theo’s worthless ass, makes me feel some kind of connection to this kid she’s carrying, like it’s family, even if it really isn’t. Obviously I’d never let a niece or nephew of mine be born into squalor, and since her baby will be a sibling of my nieces and nephews (even if they never know that)…well, damn. I don’t know. Makes me feel bad, like maybe it’s my job to fix it.
“I don’t think you should stay at your grandfather’s house,” I tell her, looking at her across the table. “Seems to me the place is full already. You have any other relatives you could stay with? Reliable ones?”
“No,” she answers, taking the last bite of her eggs and standing, clearing her plate and glass from the table and taking them to the sink. “I don’t know why you’re so worried about it, anyway. Aren’t you still thinking about killing me? Maybe I’ll never even get to have my baby.”
It makes me feel mean, hearing her say that. I don’t like it. “I’m not gonna kill you,” I mutter.
She looks back at me as I finish my orange juice and stand. “No?”
I follow her over to the sink with my dishes. “No,” I verify, meeting her gaze. “Even if I could kill you, which I don’t especially want to do, turns out I don’t think I could live with killing a pregnant woman.”
It’s an absurd statement to draw a smile out of her, but she gives me a little one anyway. “I knew you weren’t all bad.”
“If you think that makes me good, I’d say your bar’s set a little low there, darlin’.”
Her cheeks flush, but her pretty eyes are still glittering with pleasure.
They’re not gonna be for much longer. I check the watch on my wrist for the time and see I need to get my ass to work. Technically, the place doesn’t open for a few hours, but the supply order comes on Saturday mornings, so I need to get in early to receive it and put it all away.
Despite knowing how much she’s not gonna like it, I look at her and say, “Thanks for breakfast, but I have to lock you in my basement now.”
Her smile disappears and dismay replaces her pleasure. “What?”
“I’ve gotta go to work,” I explain. “I didn’t plan to bring you back here, so I don’t have another room secure enough to keep you in while I’m gone all day. I have a bedroom upstairs I can fix up to make sure you can’t get out, and I’ll stop at the hardware store tomorrow to get what I need to do that, but for today, the only place I have without windows and with a lock strong enough to hold you is in the basement.”
Her jaw hangs open and she looks so damn offended, I get the absurd feeling she’s about to yell at me. “Are you serious right now? Why would you lock me up in a basement?”
“I just told you—”
“If I wanted to run, I could have done it already! You’re only keeping me here for the weekend, and you just said you don’t even want to kill me anymore, so what the hell, Brant? Why do you have to lock me up?”
I didn’t say I was only keeping her for the weekend. I don’t know where she got that idea, because when I took her out of her house last night I had no intention of ever returning her, but maybe she got confused by the note I made her leave. I was only buying myself a couple days, but she must have thought it meant I’d bring her back when my excuse for her disappearance expired.
Maybe that’s why she’s not as desperate to leave as I thought she’d be. Here I am thinking she understands she’s a prisoner with a bleak outlook on what’s to come, and in reality she’s thinking I’m only forcing her to be my house guest for a weekend.
If she thinks that, she’s probably telling the truth. There’s little reason for her to run beyond impatience to get home, but it would be an awful lot of trouble just to get home a day sooner, and she doesn’t seem to hate my company. Maybe her misunderstanding of the situation will work in my favor.
“I can’t just leave you here alone all day,” I say, testing the waters.
“Why not?” she demands. “I could let Scout out and keep him fed so you don’t have to put out a bowl. I can clean up the breakfast dishes and maybe make you a grocery list. I’ll find ways to keep myself busy. My house is rarely quiet, so a peaceful weekend in the woods sounds pretty nice to me. Do you have any books? I can relax and read a book while Scout plays outside. Scout wants me to stay,” she informs me.
“Does he, now?”
She nods solemnly. “He told me so. He doesn’t want me to be a basement dweller.”
My lips tug up in reluctant amusement. “You promise you’ll be here when I come back?”
“I promise,” she verifies. “I’ll even keep wearing your old T-shirt instead of my clothes, if that will help convince you.”
Her mention of it brings my gaze back to her body wrapped up in my clothes. I’ve never actually seen a woman wear my shirt before, but as my gaze wanders over her, I find myself liking it.
“Looks better on you than me,” I admit.
“I’m sure it looks great on you,” she says, flashing me a smile I’d almost call flirty, but I’m not sure. Maybe I’m imagining it.
“Yeah?” I murmur.
She nods, suddenly bashful, then she steps forward and wraps her arms around me. I blink in surprise when she looks up at me, but it’s so unexpected, I don’t think to hug her back.
After a few seconds, she lets go and awkwardly retreats a couple steps. Her cheeks are flushed and I think about explaining, but I don’t even know what I want to explain.
“I won’t go anywhere,” she tells me again before turning around and facing the sink. Without waiting for me to leave, she turns the water on and starts washing dishes.
I stand there for a second, feeling like I did that wrong, but I really need to head out, so I don’t try to fix it right now. I go to the door and whistle for Scout. He comes barreling at me. I bring him inside and kneel down, rubbing his head.
“I’m gonna go to work,” I tell Scout. “You stay here and keep an eye on Alyssa, all right? Make sure she doesn’t do anything crazy.”
Alyssa casts me an unamused look from the sink, and I crack a smile. Looking back at Scout, I pet him for another minute, pat his belly, then stand.
“I guess I’ll go, then,” I announce uncertainly.
I’m gonna feel stupid if this girl’s playing my ass. As I head to the door to put my shoes on, I think about changing my mind. Could be she’s lying and saying all this so I will leave and let her stay here unattended. Could be as soon as I’m far enough down the road she knows I’m not coming back, she hightails it out of here and never looks back.
I linger at the door, unsure what to do. I walk back to the kitchen as quietly as I can and peek in on her, just to see if her mannerism has changed since I left the room.
She’s still standing at the sink, scrubbing a plate from breakfast and smiling down at Scout sitting on the floor by her feet.
“Do you like to play fetch?” she asks him.
As if answering, Scout barks at her and wags his tail.
I sigh, deciding just to leave her be. Maybe she’s a damn good liar and I just don’t see it. Either way, I guess I don’t have a right to complain.
If I come home tonight and she’s still here, I’ll know I was right to trust her.
If I don’t get to come home because cops show up at the bar to arrest me, well, I guess I earned it.
At least if she does turn me in, I won’t worry Scout’s going hungry here all by himself. Whether or not Alyssa decides to keep me around, I know she’ll take care of my dog.
