Chapter 7
It was only a matter of hours after Heidi discovered Carrie’s bruises before Heidi began to plot her sister’s escape.
Lying in the dark next to her snoring husband, Harvey, Heidi considered how she could rearrange her own house to bring Carrie into it.
Carrie could easily live in the room at the top of the stairs.
They used it for storage right now, but it wouldn’t take more than a day to clean it out and get it ready for her.
If Carrie lived here in the house with Heidi, Heidi could protect her from their father.
She could make sure that Carrie stayed in school and eventually went to university.
Sure, she felt sad about her mother, about her littlest brother, and about how into disrepair the old family house would fall.
But she couldn’t focus on that now. Carrie’s life was at stake.
Heidi decided not to tell Carrie about her scheme right away.
It was better, she felt, to arrange for everything beforehand, then maybe sneak Carrie out of the house under the pretense of needing her help.
That morning, after Harvey went to work and Heidi finished her chores, she attacked that spare room, throwing things out, vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing the windows.
When she finished, the room looked downright quaint.
She stretched sheets over the mattress, then smiled to herself. This was really going to work.
One problem, she knew, would be Harvey. Harvey grew increasingly upset as the days passed and Heidi still wasn’t pregnant.
She guessed that bringing “another mouth to feed” into the house—a mouth that wasn’t related to Harvey by blood—wouldn’t be an easy sell.
But maybe she could reason with him. Perhaps she could tell him that her father was trying to kill Carrie, that she needed to save her life.
Harvey was a human, after all. There was empathy in there somewhere.
That evening over dinner, with the spare room all set and ready for Carrie, Harvey asked her how her day had gone. This wasn’t something that Harvey usually asked. Heidi raised her eyes to his and searched them, trying to figure him out. “It was good,” she said.
“Did anything happen?” her husband asked.
Heidi decided to list out all the chores she’d done. She talked about prepping dinner. She talked about weeding the garden out back. He listened, his brow furrowed, as though he were searching for clues that she’d wronged him somehow.
And then, he said, “I couldn’t help but notice that the room at the top of the stairs is all fancied up.”
Heidi’s heart thudded. But she was careful not to show that fear on her face. “My sister is going to come stay with us. Just for a little while.”
Harvey took a deep breath and set down his fork. “I beg your pardon?”
“She needs a place to stay. My parents can’t take care of her anymore,” Heidi said, looking straight into her husband’s eyes.
“They should have thought of that before they had so many children,” Harvey shot back.
“She’s sixteen,” Heidi continued. “She can do chores around the house. She can help make your life easier. And when we have a baby, she’ll be here to take care of things.”
Harvey looked thoughtful, almost tender, after that. He loved it when Heidi mentioned their future children. He loved it when she got “romantic” about their life together, as strange as that was.
“Why don’t you think about it a little bit?” Heidi urged. “You don’t have to make a decision now.”
Heidi hoped that he’d forget about it. She hoped she could sneak Carrie in by the weekend, and that by the time he realized it, his life would be so comfortable and so much easier that he wouldn’t be able to resist her.
Carrie did make incredible desserts—blueberry and blackberry pies that had everyone salivating. That had to count for something.
The following morning, after Heidi finished her chores, she went to her parents’ place to speak with Carrie.
Carrie’s bruises had gotten worse, darkening into purples and greenish yellows.
She looked like a meek girl of thirteen, as though their father had sent her back in time.
With their mother snoring in her bedroom and their littlest brother outside mowing the lawn, Heidi sat with Carrie at the kitchen table and told her about her idea.
“I have a room all ready for you,” she said. “You can go back to school. You can take days off from chores, if you want to.” She wanted Carrie to have the childhood she couldn’t have.
Carrie’s face echoed her shock—and a tiny bit of anger. “You know this won’t work,” she said. “You know that Daddy won’t let me leave.”
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Heidi stammered. “And won’t he be happy to have someone out of the house?”
“He’ll marry me off before he lets you have me,” Carrie stated.
“You’re sixteen,” Heidi declared.
“Rachel got married last week,” Carrie told her. Rachel had only just turned seventeen a few weeks back. Heidi had been at the party. She’d heard whispers about a wedding, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it was really going to happen.
“Listen, Carrie,” Heidi whispered. “Pack what you need. Pack it discreetly and come to my place. Not today. Harvey might be too upset about it today. But tomorrow, during the day, before Daddy comes home. Will you do that for me?”
Carrie closed her eyes for a long time. She looked exhausted. “I’ll try,” she said. But she was obviously filled with doubt.
The following day, Heidi didn’t go to her parents’ place.
She did her chores, then began cooking a delicious, complicated dinner, something she felt would welcome her sister to their place.
It was two in the afternoon, and then it was three thirty, and still, Carrie wasn’t there.
Heidi alternated between rage and fear. She considered running down the road, taking Carrie by the hand, and walking her back here.
Was it possible that Carrie didn’t want to come?
Was it possible that Carrie was fine with her life with their parents?
Heidi shuddered.
Sometimes, if Heidi stopped at the public library (which was rare), she picked up books and read the first few pages.
She read about other people’s lives, about lives in big cities, about lives on gorgeous coasts that, from her humid and strange town in the mountains, she could hardly fathom.
She read about heroines falling in love with heroes—romances that had nothing to do with her marriage.
Was that how every wife felt? She read about women who were so strong, who had so much agency, that they could create whatever lives they wanted.
Heidi never finished the stories. She didn’t have a library card, so she couldn’t take the books home.
But just knowing the stories were there felt almost like enough.
She needed to create a new story with Carrie. She dared to hope.
Just when she’d decided that Carrie wasn’t going to make it today, that she’d chickened out, Carrie appeared on the front stoop.
She carried a single suitcase, and her eyes glinted with tears.
But she’d come! Heidi threw open the door, hugged her sister, drew her in, poured her a glass of water, and told her to get herself comfortable in the bedroom upstairs.
“What happens when Harvey comes back?” Carrie asked meekly.
“We’ll eat dinner. It’ll just be like a normal night,” Heidi said firmly, because it had to be so.
Heidi focused on her breathing as she prepped the last of dinner and set the table.
She could hear her sister upstairs, moving around her new room, making it stylish for herself and reflecting her personality.
They’d never really been able to do that as girls back at home.
She imagined countless mornings and evenings with Carrie by her side, happy hours during which they could talk about Carrie’s next steps.
Maybe they could even try to get real library cards.
Perhaps they could exchange real ideas. Whatever “real” ideas were.
But then, she heard her husband’s boots on the stoop.
Fixing her smile, she raised her chin and watched as he came in, casting a shadow on the dining room table.
“Hi, honey. How was your day?” she asked, hurrying over to kiss him on the cheek.
His breath reeked of alcohol. She knew he was tipsy, if not all the way drunk.
She didn’t know what that would do for her case.
Harvey grunted, then sat in the chair by the fireplace to take off his boots.
For a little while, he talked about some minor tragedy that had happened at work.
It sounded like some poor soul had lost a finger.
Heidi shuddered. She hated hearing about it.
She hated knowing that people all across the mountains had to struggle so much to stay alive.
Maybe that was why Harvey and her father needed to drink.
And then, from upstairs came the sound of Carrie moving something around.
Harvey stopped speaking immediately and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
It was sinister. Without speaking, he got up and went to the stairs.
Heidi reached for the spatula, with which she’d been cooking dinner, as though it were a weapon.
“What do we have here?” Harvey asked under his breath, moving up the stairs.
“Harvey, why don’t you sit down? There’s plenty of beer in the fridge,” Heidi said, hurrying to the base of the stairs.
But Harvey was fixated on Carrie, who’d come to the doorway of her new room. She gazed out at him, frightened as a deer in the woods. Her face was pale.
“I told you,” Harvey hollered. “I told you that I didn’t want her here!”