Chapter 5 - The Pressure Cooker
The smell of burnt toast hung in the hallway when I walked through the front door at six-forty.
In the living room, the TV was blaring a cartoon with high-pitched, screeching sound effects. Chase was lying on the floor with his feet propped on my microfiber sofa, his dirty athletic socks leaving grey smudges on the cushions. Hadley was at the kitchen counter, cutting construction paper into tiny green strips that were already scattering across the linoleum like confetti.
Travis was sitting at my dining table, right between his two computer monitors, talking on his headset.
“Yeah, we can turn the property over by Thursday,” he was saying, his voice loud and authoritative. “Cleaning crew will be in at eight, staging is already set. Tell the client the pool heater is fully operational.”
He saw me enter, held up one finger to tell me to shut up, and continued talking.
“Right. Wire the deposit to the Horizon account. Appreciate you, buddy.”
He clicked off the headset, pulled it down around his neck, and looked at me.
“Where’s the pizza?”
I set my purse on the small entry table. “I told you, Travis. I don't have twelve dollars.”
He let out an exaggerated breath, shaking his head as if I were a particularly dim child who had failed a basic spelling test.
“I had to give Owen dry cereal, Darcy. Dry Cheerios. Because you couldn't swing a ten-dollar pie from Little Caesars?”
I walked into the kitchen. I didn't look at him. I walked straight to the sink, turned on the cold water, and washed my hands.
“Where’s Junie?” I asked.
“In your room,” he said, turning back to his screen. “She was making a fuss about Hadley using her colored pencils. I told her if she can’t share, she needs to stay in the back until she gets her attitude adjusted.”
My hands stopped under the stream of water.
The water was warm from the pipes sitting in the Texas sun.
“You sent my daughter to her room for not sharing her own pencils?”
“It’s about community, Darcy,” he said, not even looking up as his fingers clattered across his mechanical keyboard. “We’re a family unit here. The kids have to learn to live together. Chase doesn't hoard his PlayStation.”
“Chase doesn't hoard his PlayStation because he keeps it plugged into my television twenty-four hours a day,” I said.
My voice wasn't loud, but there was something in the timbre of it that made Chase look up from the floor. The boy sat up slightly, his remote dropping into his lap. He wasn't a bad kid; he was just an indulged, confused twelve-year-old whose father had taught him that the world was an all-you-can-eat buffet where someone else always picked up the check.
Travis stopped typing.
He turned slowly in the swivel chair he had dragged out of my garage without asking.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me, Travis.”
He stood up. He was six-foot-two, two hundred and twenty pounds. He used his height the way some men use a raised fist—not to hit, but to cast a shadow that made smaller people back into corners.
“I have had just about enough of this passive-aggressive nonsense,” he said, stepping toward the kitchen threshold. “I am dealing with the most stressful transition of my entire life. My marriage is dead. My assets are tied up. I am trying to keep my children from feeling like their world has ended, and every time you walk through that door, you bring this black cloud of resentment with you.”
Hadley stopped cutting paper. Her small hands hovered over the scissors, her eyes wide.
“If you don't want us here, Darcy, just say it,” he challenged, his chin coming up, his voice ringing off the low popcorn ceiling. “Just say, *‘Travis, I don't give a damn about your kids, get out on the street.’* Say it in front of them so they know who their aunt really is.”
It was the master move. The checkmate he had used on Lindsay for a decade, the one he had used on our mother since he was fifteen.
Put the cruelty on the other person. Make them speak the words that make them feel like a villain, so they back down, apologize, and retreat into compliance.
Three days ago, I would have swallowed it. I would have felt the burning shame behind my eyelids, thought about our mother’s lectures about family loyalty, and hurried to make grilled cheese sandwiches to prove I wasn't cold.
I turned around from the sink.
I picked up the dish towel, dried my fingers one by one, and looked him straight in the eyes.
“Your marriage isn't in transition, Travis,” I said, my voice dead and flat. “It’s been over since January fifteenth. Your assets aren't tied up. You own the house on Mockingbird through Vance Horizon Holdings. And you’re turning it over on Thursday for an executive lease after the cleaning crew leaves at eight.”
The silence that hit the kitchen was so heavy, so instantaneous, that the only sound left was the tinny music coming from the TV in the living room.
Travis’s mouth stayed open by a fraction of an inch.
The color didn't drain from his face; instead, a dull, dark crimson began to creep up from the collar of his black polo, spreading into his cheeks and ears.
“What are you talking about?” he said, but the thunder was gone from his voice. It had been replaced by the frantic, scurrying tone of a man who has just felt the ice crack beneath his boots.
“I saw Sienna’s Instagram, Travis,” I said.
He blinked.
“And I had coffee with Lindsay at five-thirty.”
He took half a step back. It was an involuntary movement, a physical retreat from a blow he hadn't anticipated from a woman who had never, in thirty-five years, thrown a punch.
“Darcy,” he started, his hands coming up, the fingers splayed in that old, familiar gesture of mediation. “Look... you don't understand the legal situation. It’s complicated—”
“It’s not complicated,” I said. “You’ve been living here for four months because you didn't want your kids messing up your six-thousand-dollar-a-month rental property. You let Junie sleep on the floor so you could collect corporate checks and buy lime sparkling water.”
“That money is going into an escrow account!” he stammered, the lies tumbling out of him now in a desperate, uncoordinated heap. “It’s for the kids’ college! It’s to settle the tax liens from the construction company! I’m doing this for *them*, Darcy! Do you think I want to live out of a suitcase?”
“You aren't living out of a suitcase,” I said, pointing toward the hall. “Your clothes are in my daughter’s closet. Her dresses are in a cardboard box under my bed.”
He stared at me, his eyes darting toward the living room where Chase was now watching him with a look of profound, horrifying realization.
Children are not stupid. They know when the grown-ups are lying; they just don't have the vocabulary to name the lie until someone says it out loud.
“You’re going to regret this,” Travis whispered, his voice suddenly turning vicious, the mask slipping completely away to reveal the spoiled, cornered bully underneath. “You think you’re smart? You think Lindsay gives a damn about you? She’s using you to get to that house. And when she takes it, you’ll still be sitting here in this dump with your thirty-thousand-dollar dental job and your bald tires, and you won't have a brother anymore.”
“I haven't had a brother since February seventh,” I said.
I walked past him. He didn't try to block me. He stood there like a post in the middle of my kitchen, his chest heaving, his hands balled into fists at his sides.
I walked down the hall to my bedroom, opened the door, and went inside.
Junie was sitting on the edge of the queen mattress, holding her stuffed rabbit, her small shoulders hunched.
“Mom?” she whispered.
I sat down beside her, pulled her against my side, and wrapped both arms around her.
“Pack your backpack, Junie,” I said into her hair.
She pulled back, her eyes terrified. “Are we leaving? Where are we going to sleep?”
May you like
“We aren't leaving,” I said, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. “We’re staying right here. But tonight, you and I are going to sleep at a hotel with a swimming pool. And tomorrow, we’re coming back to get your room.”
***
