Chapter Four #2
She shook her head, more tears spilling.
“It didn’t feel brave. It felt like being alone in the wilderness at night, hearing branches snap around you without knowing what was hunting you in the dark.
” Her voice shook, but she pushed through it.
“That’s what it felt like, the pure terror of being hunted.
I was standing in front of the cork board, looking over the stupid flyers.
Then, I heard it. The… pop.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “It didn’t sound real.
My brain didn’t want to believe it, so I ignored it at first. And then more pops, and they echoed.
People started to scream. Sneakers running past the windows.
I just… stood there for the longest time.
It felt like I was underwater, and the world was screaming somewhere above me. ”
Bodhi’s jaw flexed, his eyes burning with helplessness.
“I ran into the nearest storage room,” she continued.
“In the corner, in the back. The other students in the basement followed me inside. The lock didn’t latch, so I pushed a box against it and curled up in the corner behind stacks of chairs.
It smelled like dust and chemicals, and I kept thinking…
this is where I’m going to die. In the dark.
With strangers.” She broke off, shuddering.
“I kept hearing doors slamming. Distant screams, more gun shots. I couldn’t do anything to help them.
I… I gripped my phone until my hands cramped.
Then I realized I had it, could use it… That’s when I called Liis. ”
She took a breath that seemed to barely fill her lungs. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. I just held my phone against my ear, focused on Liis’s voice, and tried to make myself small enough that he wouldn’t see me if he opened the door.”
Bodhi quickly wiped his eyes.
“When you found me,” she whispered, “I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. I was screaming inside my head to move, but I just… couldn’t. I felt like if I moved, I’d die. One of the guys in there with me had to help me stand. I couldn’t make my legs work for what seemed like an eternity.”
Her face crumpled again, and Bodhi pulled her against him, holding her while she cried into his shoulder.
I watched them, a heavy ache settling in my chest. Livvy felt safe with him in a way that she didn’t with anyone else, not in the last two and a half years.
In that moment, everything became clear.
I didn’t need to be her father to feel protective of her.
I didn’t need to share a bloodline to want her safe.
Trenton had felt the same about a little girl once, and before now, I’d never understood it.
Livvy drew back, wiping her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “Never apologize for this. We want to help.”
Bodhi brushed a tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb.
She leaned her forehead against his. “I thought I’d never see you again. And I felt so awful, thinking about what it would feel like to lose you and not have you there to help me get through it… the one person who could. I hated the thought of putting you through that.”
He closed his eyes, seeming to war with that thought in his mind. “I couldn’t think about it. Losing you isn’t an option I could consider, not even for a second.”
I looked away then, giving them a moment. It was in that instant I felt something ease inside me; some worry I hadn’t even admitted was there. Livvy was loved—fully, fiercely, faithfully. And would always be.
The front door opened, and Liis’s voice drifted down the hall. She was talking to Stella softly, in the tone she used when something delicate needed protecting, likely trying to explain that Livvy needed quiet and tender handling, but translated into terms a toddler could grasp.
Stella’s backpack thumped against the wall near the entry; the door closed with care.
“Okay,” Liis said, gentle but firm. “We’re going to use inside voices today. Livvy’s had a hard afternoon.”
Stella whispered something I couldn’t hear.
“Yes,” Liis replied. “We’ll color quietly. And we’ll be extra kind, right?”
A pause. “Wight,” Stella said, not quiet at all.
Instead of reprimanding her, Liis spoke in the tone she wanted Stella to emulate. “Like when you had a fever and needed cuddles.”
“Wight,” Stella said again. Shoes were removed, the end-of-day ritual unfolding almost the way it always did.
I stepped back into the living room as they came down the hall. Liis met my eyes first. One look told her everything she needed, and she acknowledged with a nod.
Bodhi didn’t rise to greet Liis or reach for Stella the way he normally would; his attention stayed fixed on Livvy, as if whatever she needed in that moment mattered more than anything else in the room.
Stella padded toward the table, already reaching for Livvy. I scooped her up instead, turning to see Liis already bringing crayons and paper.
“Look at that silly clown. What color should we make his hat?” I whispered as Liis carefully dumped the box upside down on the table, the twenty-four colors spreading out in front of our daughter.
Stella’s eyes scanned each of them. “Hmmmm,” she said in a dramatic tone. “Wed.”
“Good choice,” I said, pressing a quick kiss over the neat part in her dark hair, between the tiny bows of her pigtails.
Bodhi leaned toward Livvy. “Have you called your parents yet?”
The question hung there, unforced, reasonable. Exactly what someone would ask if they believed the story we’d given them.
Livvy’s mouth opened, then closed again. She looked at Liis, then at me, waiting for permission to finally tell the truth.
“They know,” Liis said, stepping in for Livvy.
“Are they flying in?” Bodhi asked.
“We’re working out what to do next,” Liis said.
Another truth—bent but intact.
Bodhi leaned closer to her, watching Livvy tuck her hands under her thighs.
He’d accepted explanations of her family and past—that it was all so removed—more easily than he should have.
Not because it made sense, but because he had never been given a reason to question it.
He trusted easily. He saw the version of Livvy we let him see, the live-in nanny who came from somewhere ordinary.
The girl with parents he’d never met because they lived so far away, had busy careers, but who loved her from afar.
Bodhi’s phone vibrated, then Liis’s, then mine. Bohdi glanced down, his thumb unlocking the screen. Probably a text from his parents or sister, just an update or check in, but nothing more. Liis and I checked our texts and then traded glances.
“Bodhi?” Livvy said. “What is it?”
Bodhi didn’t answer. His eyes tracked across the screen, jaw tightening by degrees. The color drained from his face. “Sunny just sent me something.”
Another buzz. Then another.
Liis was furiously tapping her screen, likely asking for more information.
Livvy saw the movement from her peripheral and turned to Liis. “What’s wrong?”
“Livvy,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “Did someone in the basement with you record what was happening?”
She froze. “I’m not… I’m not sure. Why?”
“Someone did,” Bodhi said, turning the phone so we could see.
The video was shaky. Vertical. Someone was breathing hard behind the camera. The caption across the screen, all caps and panic. MARYMOUNT. SHOOTER STILL ACTIVE. SEND HELP.
The footage lurched into motion on a blur of drywall and dim light.
The camera pointed nowhere and everywhere, as if the person holding it had forgotten how hands worked.
Shoes flashed past the frame, scuffed sneakers shifting in tight, frantic increments, then the image jerked sideways and caught the inside of a closet so packed with tables, chairs, and boxes there was scarcely enough room to breathe.
Students were folded into themselves along the back wall, shoulders rounded, faces turned inward as if making themselves smaller might render them invisible.
The cameraman poked the phone out the door just long enough for a stack of overturned chairs to fill the frame.
After a loud bang somewhere outside, he pulled the phone back in and scrambled back into a corner.
Somewhere off camera, someone was whispering prayers under their breath. Someone else was quietly crying.
Then, Livvy came into view. She was pressed against the wall, knees drawn in with one hand, the other clamped over her mouth to hold the sound inside.
Mascara streaked down her cheeks in uneven tracks, her eyes, wide and glassy, fixed on the door as if blinking might cost her something she couldn’t afford to lose.
She didn’t move. None of them did. They waited in that dark, airless pocket, listening for footsteps, for shouting, for the sound that would mean the door was coming open and there would be nowhere left to go.
Someone whispered her name, and her hand fell away so she could mouth, No sound. Quiet.
The lens caught her eyes. Even through the grain, even through the noise, there was no mistaking it.
The same face that had lived in my house for two and a half years.
The girl with pale blonde hair, big green eyes, and a splash of freckles over her nose.
The girl more people than just her parents would recognize.
Bodhi’s thumb trembled. “It’s you. Over a million views so far.”
Livvy leaned forward, eyes fixed on the screen. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry.
“Thomas?” Livvy said, unsure what to do.
I took the phone, hoping her face wasn’t as clear the second time I watched it, or the third. I let it play through, and another video queued up automatically. Different angle. Same basement. Same Livvy, this time more of her face, for a longer increment of time.
I locked the screen and slid his phone across the table back to him.
“Bodhi,” Liis said, already moving, “we need a minute. Could you take Stella to her room to play?”
“It’s too late,” Livvy said.
Everyone was silent. Bodhi’s eyes danced between Livvy, Liis, and me.