The Babysitter

Chapter 16 — Torn

Jess sat in her car in the Callahans’ driveway long after her shift ended, the engine off, the October night pressing cold against the windows. Sarah’s porch light glowed above her, warm and golden, the way it always did. The perfect house. The perfect family. And three feet behind Tommy’s closet wall, a man who was slowly eating Sarah Callahan alive with worry.

*Ray,* Jess thought, and the name sat in her chest like a stone.

Her phone buzzed. Dad.

She stared at the screen — *Dad* — and the word looked wrong, like she’d never seen it before. Detective Cole. The man who’d sat in her school conference room last week asking about “the neighborhood” — about whether she’d noticed anything strange at the Callahans’. *Routine questions,* he’d said, smiling that careful cop smile. *Just being thorough.*

He’d been asking about *Ray*. About whether his own daughter had noticed anything strange in the house where she worked. And she had lied to him. Not by saying anything — by saying nothing. By smiling and saying no, everything was normal, just the usual bedtime chaos.

She answered the phone.

“Hey, kiddo.” His voice was tired. She could hear papers shuffling. He was at the precinct, or at home at his desk — the same desk where she’d seen the case file two nights ago, open to a photo of a young man with Sarah’s eyes and the name RAYMOND HALE in block letters across the top. *Wanted for questioning.* Jewelry store robbery. One of the crew had fired a gun; a clerk was still in the hospital.

“Dad.” Her voice sounded thin. “You’re working late.”

“Case is getting hot. We’re close, Jess. I can feel it.” He sounded almost excited, the way he got when a puzzle was about to click. “Three months we’ve been chasing this guy’s ghost. He’s here. In this county. Somebody’s hiding him.”

Her fingers tightened on the phone. “Somebody’s… hiding him?”

“Harboring a fugitive. That’s a felony, kiddo.” He sighed. “Whoever’s doing it — I almost feel sorry for them. You think you’re protecting someone you love, and then you wake up and you’re looking at prison time too. Ray Hale’s not worth it. He’s a kid who drove a getaway car and now a man might die because of it.”

Jess’s throat closed. “The clerk?”

“Still critical.” A pause. “Listen, I wanted to ask — you’ve been at the Callahans’ a while now. You sure you haven’t seen anything? Anyone extra around? Anyone who doesn’t quite belong?”

The porch light flickered. Behind it, upstairs, Tommy was asleep — or pretending to be. Sarah was probably in the kitchen, wiping counters that were already clean, the way she did when her brother’s cough carried through the wall.

“I haven’t seen anything,” Jess said. It came out steadier than she expected.

“Okay. Love you. Don’t stay up too late.”

“Love you too.”

She ended the call and sat in the dark, and for the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to be torn. Not metaphorically. Physically. She felt like something in her ribcage was being pulled in two directions — one rope tied to her father’s voice, warm and tired and *right*, because Ray *had* been part of a robbery and a man *was* in the hospital; the other rope tied to Tommy’s small hand in hers, to the way he’d whispered *Uncle Ray* in his sleep like a prayer, to Sarah’s face when she’d confessed, collapsing onto the kitchen chair like all her bones had dissolved: *He’s my baby brother, Jess. He called me crying. What was I supposed to do?*

If she told her father, Sarah would be arrested. Harboring a fugitive — a felony. Tommy’s mother in handcuffs. Tommy in some courtroom, or worse, in foster care while his parents faced charges. The perfect house smashed open.

If she didn’t tell, she was protecting a fugitive too. And her father — her *father*, who’d taught her to ride a bike and coached her softball team and cried at her middle-school graduation — would keep chasing a ghost, getting closer, and when he found out his own daughter had known… The look on his face would be worse than any punishment.

She thought about Ray himself. Grown man, twenty-five, living like a rat in a wall, eating sandwiches Sarah slipped through a panel, washing with wet wipes, going stir-crazy in the dark. *I didn’t know about the gun,* he’d told her, and his eyes had been so raw she believed him. *Derek said it was just a snatch-and-run. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. I just drove the car.*

But a man was in the hospital. And none of that changed the fact that Ray had been hiding for three months while his sister’s family crumbled around him. Mark sleeping on the couch. Sarah’s hands shaking when she poured coffee. Tommy, six years old, asking the closet to keep his uncle safe.

Jess started the car. The dashboard clock read 11:47. She drove home through the empty streets, past the darkened strip mall, past her school with its flag hanging limp in the still air, and with every block, the torn feeling didn’t fade — it sharpened. It stopped feeling like confusion and started feeling like a blade.

She pulled into her own driveway and killed the engine and sat there, and in the quiet she heard her own voice in her head, clear as a bell:

*Somebody has to end this. And it’s going to be me.*

She didn’t know how yet. She didn’t know what it would cost. But the indecision — the sick, spinning, cowardly indecision — was gone. In its place was something cold and clean and terrifying.

Resolve.

Tomorrow, she would go back to the Callahans’. And she would do the thing nobody else in that house had been brave enough to do.

She would tell Ray the truth: that the walls were closing in, and the only person who could save this family now was him.