Seven Minutes to Midnight

38

After tapping a few more times, I debated whether or not to open the door to my mother's bedroom. She had worked all night, and had waited up for me for breakfast until who knew when. I could be considerate and let her sleep, and just call her later.

Or I could consider that I might never see her again, and wake her up.

I quietly opened her door and leaned in. Sure enough, dead asleep. "Bye, Mom," I whispered. And closed the door. Tears pressed against the inside of my eyes but I rubbed at them fiercely. My father would definitely NOT be able to handle tears.

The car ride to my dad's place was quiet. I didn't have the energy to talk, and my dad didn't have much to say beyond, "We fixed up a room for you. I hope you like it."

To which I replied, "I'm sure it'll be just fine."

It was clear that the room had been some kind of play room for the kids. The walls were painted a bright yellow and there were crayon marks behind the door. When I opened the closet door, I found boxes of toys. I supposed it shouldn't matter—I had only given them a couple days' notice to clear everything out. The twin bed was chipped and pretty battered but it was better than sleeping on the couch, which is where I thought I'd end up. And there was a desk. No bureau. I guess they expected me to live out of my suitcase. Maybe they had their suspicions that I'd had a blowout with my mom and would be ready to head back there before fully unpacking would be necessary.

After unpacking what little I could, I wandered down to the kitchen, where my father was making dinner. "So, um, where are the kids?" I asked.

"Well, Brandon's over his friend's house, and Laurie's got Abby and James Alexander up to her mother's. We thought it'd be best if it was quiet when you got here."

I couldn't imagine a bigger mouthful of a name than James Alexander.

"When are they coming back?"

"They should get here around dinner time. Abby sometimes gets a little grouchy if she doesn't want to leave someplace."

"Oh." I beat a swift retreat to my new room, and curled up in bed with the newest Patricia Briggs novel. Reading about werewolves put my mind at ease, until I learned what it meant when Abby got grouchy.

The screaming drifted in through the windows even as I heard a car pull up into the driveway. My new bedroom faced the backyard (with no porch roof allowing quick access for vampires), so I didn't get the full force until I heard the front door open.

Perhaps my mother and father had conspired something, because at that moment my cell phone rang. Sure enough, it was my mother.

"Hello?" I shouted over the din downstairs, getting up and shutting the door to my room, then steadying myself on the doorframe.

"Amy? What's going on over there?"

"Uh, apparently Abby's a little grouchy."

"Oh, dear. Can you hear me okay?"

"Yeah."

"I just wanted to make sure you were settling in okay. Do you at least have your own room? I didn't realize those kids would be so loud."

I decided not to mention that this was only one of the three kids making all the racket. "Yeah, I have my own room. I think I'll be okay. It's just for a month anyway, right?"

"Right," she said. Maybe if she didn't sound like really saying, Yeah, right and mentally winking at my father I might not have been so irritated. "Well, I'm sure it's about dinnertime there"—said like I was now living in a different time zone—"so I'll let you go. But you call me anytime. Especially if all that screaming gets to you." Wink, wink.

"Sure thing, Mom," I said as cheerfully as possible given the circumstances.

I was afraid to go downstairs.

I'd never met any of my stepsiblings. I got Dad's family Christmas cards every year, glossy photos of a smiley happy family-of-the-year and some pre-printed "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays from the Vaughn family!" The kids had always looked cute in their little Santa hats. Clearly that was all false advertising.

So I waited until the screaming died down a bit and Dad called up the stairs, "Amy! Dinner's ready!"

Abby, a four-year-old with a tangled mess of what may have once been ponytails on both sides of her head, sat on a little stool in the hallway, letting out intermittent shrieks. Laurie was doing a fairly good job of ignoring her. "Amy! It's so nice to have you here with us! You remember Brandon and James Alexander?"

The two boys, one about six and the other three, sat at the table already. Even though James Alexander was strapped into a booster seat, he and Brandon were busy trying to stab each other's hands with their forks.

"Boys! Enough!" my father said.

"Sure," I said, although I'd seen them briefly about twice in my life.

Laurie then turned to Abby, who shrieked. "Now Abby"—shriek—"don't you want to show Amy how a good girl behaves?" She received a shriek in response.

I may have looked alarmed, because Laurie attempted to reassure me: "She not usually like this."

The look on my father's face said different. And Brandon agreed. "Abby's ALWAYS like that."

Then James Alexander looked at me and asked, "How come you're dressed up for Halloween already?"

It was a struggle not to respond sarcastically.

Once dinner was over, and the kids had their baths and went to bed—trust me, plenty of screaming went down both times, and it wasn't just Abby—I put in my earbuds and read my book by the light of a small desk lamp I plugged in near my bed. This wasn't so bad, I reasoned. And even when I fell asleep reading and was awakened by bare feet pounding along the hardwood floors and a shrieking match over a toy at the ungodly hour of seven o'clock, I still told myself it wasn't so bad. Lane hadn't come. I had kept him out.

I was safe.

TO BE CONTINUED

____

What do you guys think?  Is Amy safe here?

EDITED 2/24/18