Page 7

7

Lynn Tatum

LYNN OPENED THE DOOR of her daughter’s room to find both her children on the floor covered in red.

Red everywhere.

Their clothes. Hair. Skin. The carpet. Gracie’s walls and bedsheets—the quilt her grandmother had made her sat in a heap on the floor with her pillow, stained, ruined.

Unmoving and horribly pale against the crimson, they looked up at her with petrified stares.

Gracie’s upper lip twitched. “Oscar wanted to paint a dog. I told him not to.”

Still dressed in his Paw Patrol pajamas, Oscar’s face twisted from fear to rage. “That’s not true—I wanted to watch TV!” He somehow stretched the word I into no less than four syllables. Eyeeee. “Gracie said she wanted to paint.”

“He’s lying,” Gracie quickly fired back. “He got the paint down from the pantry shelf even when I told him we weren’t supposed to. Then he opened the red, even though dogs aren’t red, and when I told him he had the wrong brush he used his fingers, so I tried to put the blanket down and he wouldn’t let me, and when he got it on the floor he tried to mop it up with clothes from my hamper—he used my favorite Elsa shirt, Mama!”

The shirt was in the corner of the room, covered in so much paint Lynn could barely make out the faded image of Elsa from Frozen standing in a field of ice. The shirt was a 5T, too small for a seven-year-old, but Gracie wore it several times each week anyway.

“Clifford’s red,” Oscar muttered, as if that made everything okay.

Along with open bottles of blue, green, and yellow, the red was lying sideways on the floor between them, soaking into the carpet. It was acrylic and would probably come out, but Lynn had no intention of touching it—that was Josh’s problem.

“I can’t reach the paint,” Oscar added.

“Can too!” Gracie shouted. “From the counter. You climb up with the stool!”

Oscar yelled something in response, but Lynn didn’t hear it. The buzzing in her ears drowned it out. The rush of hot blood. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt it in her teeth.

They were arguing again. Screaming. This muffled mess of words tripping over each other. Lynn covered her ears again, but it did little good. “Stop.”

They ignored her.

Gracie smacked the paint bottle with the palm of her hand, and it cracked against Oscar’s chest, sending red spittle everywhere.

“STOP!”

Both kids went quiet.

Down the hall, her computer dinged with another message box. Probably one telling her she’d be fired if she didn’t get on the phone. She thought of the pills in her drawer, and her mouth watered. “Both of you, take off your clothes and get in the bath.”

Gracie glared at her, horrified. “I’m not taking a bath with him! I’m too old!”

Lynn wanted to grab her by the shoulders. Shake her. Throw her from the second-floor window. Anything to shut her up. She sucked in a breath between clenched teeth. “Take off your goddamn clothes.”

Gracie’s jaw began to quiver, and her eyes glistened.

“NOW!”

Fighting tears, Gracie stood and pulled her shirt up over her head, dropped it on the floor in the puddle of paint, and shed the rest of her clothes.

Lynn yanked at Oscar’s pajama top, and when it caught on his elbow, she pulled even harder, nearly lifted him off the ground before something tore and the top came free. Oscar yelped and started crying. He cradled his arm as she tore away his pants and the pull-up diapers he still wore at night. The smell of stale pee lofted out, filled the room. Josh hadn’t bothered to change him before running off. Of course not. Why would he?

Lynn was shaking nearly as much as her kids when she jerked her finger toward the hallway and pointed. “Bathroom. Now.”