The Babysitter

Chapter 13 — The Family

Sarah came home at eleven. Jess had already put Tommy down, already folded the throw blankets the way Sarah liked, already reheated nothing and tidied nothing and rehearsed the words three times in her head. When she heard the key in the door, her heart started hammering so hard she was sure Sarah would hear it from the foyer.

“Jess? You’re still here.” Sarah dropped her bag on the marble counter. She looked exhausted — the kind of exhaustion no amount of expensive moisturizer could cover. “Everything okay?”

“No,” Jess said. “Sit down, Sarah.”

Sarah froze. Nobody told Sarah Callahan to sit down in her own kitchen. But something in Jess’s face must have worked, because she pulled out a barstool and sat.

“I know about Ray,” Jess said.

The color drained from Sarah’s face so fast Jess thought she might faint. “What— what did you say?”

“I know he’s in the wall. Behind Tommy’s closet. I know he’s been there three months.” Jess kept her voice low and even. “I know about the robbery. He told me he was only the driver. He told me he didn’t know about the gun.”

Sarah’s hands were gripping the edge of the counter. “Tommy told you. I told Ray — I told him—”

“Tommy didn’t tell me. I saw him. Two nights ago.” Jess leaned forward. “Sarah. I need you to talk to me. Because I can’t sit on this alone, and you can’t keep doing this. It’s killing him. It’s killing you. Mark is —” She hesitated. “Mark is barely holding it together.”

Something broke in Sarah’s face then. The perfect mask — the polished, magazine-beautiful composure — cracked right down the middle, and underneath was just a woman, tired and terrified and barely hanging on.

“He’s my baby brother,” she whispered. “He’s nine years younger than me. I changed his diapers, Jess. I taught him to ride a bike. When Mom died, I was the one who —” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “He’s stupid. He’s so stupid. But he’s not evil. He’s not. He drove a car. That was his crime — he sat in a car and drove. And now Derek’s telling the police Ray planned the whole thing, and Ray’s facing fifteen years, and I couldn’t — I couldn’t let them take him. I couldn’t.”

“Mark wants him gone,” Jess said. It wasn’t a question.

Sarah laughed, a wet, broken sound. “Mark wants him gone the way you want a tumor gone. He’s not cruel, Jess. He’s scared. He’s scared every single day that someone’s going to find out and Tommy’s going to grow up visiting his uncle in prison and his mother in —” She stopped. “Harboring a fugitive. Do you know what that means? If they find Ray here, I go to prison too. Mark goes to prison too. Tommy goes into the system. One mistake — one noise, one neighbor, one —” She was crying now, really crying, shoulders shaking. “Mark says Ray has to leave. He says every week, he says, ‘He has to go, Sarah.’ And every week I say, ‘Where? Where does he go?’ And Mark doesn’t have an answer, because there is no answer. He can’t go to a shelter. He can’t use his name. He can’t —” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing mascara. “So he stays in the wall. And I bring him food and I pretend my life is normal and Tommy —” Her voice broke completely. “Tommy thinks his uncle is a superhero. What happens when he learns the truth? What does that do to a six-year-old?”

Jess thought of Ray’s gaunt face in the dark. Of the mattress. Of Tommy whispering a name in his sleep, over and over, like a prayer.

“Sarah,” she said gently. “How long can this actually last? He’s getting thinner. He told me the latch sticks. If there was a fire—”

“Don’t.” Sarah held up a hand. “Don’t say it. I think about it every night. I lie in bed and I think about it.” She looked at Jess, eyes red and raw. “I’m most afraid that if Ray gets caught, I’ll fall apart, and Tommy will have no one. Mark thinks I’m strong. I’m not strong, Jess. I’m just the only one who can’t afford to break.”

“The night you took him in,” Jess said quietly. “What happened?”

Sarah stared at her coffee mug. “He showed up at midnight. Soaking wet — it was raining. He had a duffel bag and a cut on his forehead and he was shaking so hard he could barely stand. He said Derek got arrested and he said —” She swallowed. “He said, ‘Sarah, I didn’t know about the gun.’ And I believed him. I still believe him. Mark came downstairs and saw him standing in our foyer and just — deflated. Like all the air went out of him. He didn’t yell. He just said, ‘How long?’ And I said, ‘Until we figure it out.’ And Mark said, ‘There is no figuring it out, Sarah.'”

She laughed, a hollow sound. “He was right. Three months later, we’re still figuring it out.”

Upstairs, a floorboard creaked — Tommy turning over in his sleep, probably. Both of them glanced toward the ceiling, and Jess saw it in Sarah’s face: the constant, bone-deep listening. Three months of listening for the wrong sound.

“He asks about him,” Sarah whispered. “Tommy. Every morning he asks if Uncle Ray is still in his hideout. Like he’s checking. Like he’s afraid one morning the answer will be no.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Jess said. “Not yet. But Sarah — this has to end. Before it ends you.”

Sarah reached across the counter and took Jess’s hand, and her grip was desperate. “Promise me you’ll help me figure it out. Promise me.”

Jess promised. She didn’t know what she was promising. But she promised.

Driving home that night, she kept seeing Sarah’s face — the mask cracked open — and Ray’s face — the hope flickering across it — and she understood, with a cold clarity that scared her, that she was now the only person in the world who knew the whole truth. And the whole truth was a weight she wasn’t sure her seventeen-year-old shoulders could carry.