1. Caroline
CAROLINE
“Oh, Jimmy, why?” I struggle to keep the exhaustion from bleeding through as I take in the disaster in front of me.
Jimmy sits proudly in the middle of what used to be an art project, now looking like the aftermath of a small, colorful tornado.
He hasn’t painted the paper at all—of course not—but has instead treated himself to a full-body mud bath with the paints.
Crimson, teal, and gold are smeared across his cheeks, his hair sticking up like he’s been struck by lightning.
He sees me staring and throws his head back, letting out a cackle that’s far too wicked for a four-year-old. Sometimes I wonder if Jimmy is actually a demon in disguise, slumming it in preschool while waiting to fulfill some mischievous cosmic purpose.
Before I can intervene, Jimmy shrugs one shoulder—a tiny, insolent move—and plants his dripping hands squarely on the picture of the little girl next to him.
Bella stares down at her ruined artwork. Her lower lip wobbles. Then, inevitably, the waterworks start.
I close my eyes, inhaling deeply through my nose, counting to five, and exhaling through my mouth. Patience, Caroline. You signed up for this.
Before I can open my mouth, a hand settles on my shoulder—warm and grounding.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I got it,” Alaina says softly.
I glance back at her, grateful. Her brown eyes are gentle, always.
There’s a speck of lunch still clinging to her teeth—maybe broccoli—but I’m too tired to point it out.
If I tell her, she might go to the bathroom to fix it, and I need her here right now.
I need the backup. “Okay, thanks,” I say, my voice coming out shakier than I’d like.
This is my life now. Quiet. Structured. Safe. Everything meticulously planned, contained within these four brightly colored walls filled with finger paints and sing-alongs and sticky fingers.
But days like today remind me this was never supposed to be Plan A. This was Plan Stay Alive.
I walk over to the corner of building blocks where I can always find my sons, Isaac and Joshua, in cahoots with each other, putting together wooden skyscrapers just to kick them over.
Neither of them are Jimmys, but they certainly aren’t angels either.
They’re whirlwinds of energy, crashing into each other, tossing pillows across the living room, staging dramatic battles with plastic swords and stuffed animals.
But they’re good. They’re mine. Seeing them grounds me, whether or not I’m the best thing for them.
I sit cross-legged on the carpet beside them, watching them play.
Other kids seem to need my attention to be able to have fun, but my boys need each other more than they’ve ever needed me.
I birthed a unit, completely independent from me.
Sometimes, late at night, when the house is silent and the only sound is the hum of the fridge, I wonder if they’d be better off with someone else.
Someone stronger. If they need a man in their life. Someone to teach them what I can’t. I can barely figure out how to be a person most days. How can I teach two little boys how to become men?
Still, we’re here. We’re safe. And that counts for something. God, it counts for everything.
Isaac stands on his tippy-toes to put a block on the top of the tower, but he can’t reach. He looks back at me with his blue puppy eyes and says, “Mama, can you help?”
And it snaps me out of my pity party. I stand quickly and grasp him around his little waist, holding him up just the few inches that he needs to make it.
With all the gentility that he never shows the rest of the world, he sets the block on top and crows happily.
He plants a sticky kiss on my cheek and tells me, “Thanks, Mama.”
There it is. That’s what he needs me for—to take him that last little bit. Moms are finishers. Closers. We lift our kids the couple of inches they can’t travel.
“You got it,” I tell him, sighing happily before making my way back to free Alaina from the shackles of Jimmy.
After that night in the club, the night that ripped my old life to shreds with canine teeth, I didn’t know if I’d ever stop looking over my shoulder. For months, I lived like prey, my heart thudding at every unfamiliar sound, every unrecognizable car parked too long on my street.
I stayed frozen, rooted to the city until I felt it, the first undeniable flutter of life, and that gave me the courage I couldn’t find for myself.
One morning, my belly straining against the steering wheel, I packed everything I owned into the back of my beat-up Toyota. No goodbyes. No forwarding address. Just the open road and a desperate prayer that we would make it somewhere those men wouldn’t follow.
I picked a place as far across the country as I could get from Boston without falling into the ocean. Washington. The literal other side. An ocean of land between us. A town where no one from that world would ever think to look.
I didn’t dare tell my family, didn’t even leave a note.
I needed them to be able to say that they didn’t know a thing.
I needed them to be able to say it with their hands on Bibles looking a judge in the eye if necessary.
I needed them to be able to say it if someone was threatening to rip their nails from the beds of their fingers.
I hadn’t understood what I was getting into back then. I hadn’t realized what it meant to step into that underground club where power, sex, and danger were indistinguishable from each other.
I hadn’t understood that those men were masked for a reason, that they were far more than guys looking for a good time. They had an agenda that night, and I got mixed up in it. I had just been a moment in a plan. I’ll never know if I was part of it or just caught in it.
Did they plan to look distracted to lure that man to his death?
Were they just as lost in the sex as I was or were they ready for him the whole time?
That couple that I saw for just a flash entering the club—was I meant to see them?
Or could I have been anyone? Would they have taken any woman who would have them? Did they actually want me ?
The questions are just echoes of each other, and will never have answers. I know one thing now—my boys will never grow up with that kind of fear hanging over them as long as I can help it.
If that means trading Plan A for Plan Survival, so be it.