Courtney
Somehow I must fall asleep.
When I wake up, it’s hot in the bedroom. The windows are closed, and there is no air-conditioning in the cottage, so that
it’s unventilated and close. I wake up with a slick of sweat running between my legs and breasts, my thin shirt adhering to
my wet skin. I push the covers off and rise from bed.
It’s dark in the cottage. My eyes struggle to adjust, the blackness unbearable, so that I want desperately to turn on a light,
but I don’t because I don’t want to wake Wyatt.
Alone, I feel my way to the kitchen. I run my hand along the knotty pine walls and then, when the wall ends, I put my hands
out in front of me, casting around for the counter, touching it. I hunt for a glass in the cabinet, not bothering to run the
water to let it cool before filling my glass and throwing it back.
All of a sudden, the floor behind me creaks, the sound of it like a rusty gate blowing shut on a stormy day. I jump, nearly
letting go of the glass and dropping it into the sink.
I whirl around, just barely hanging on to the glass, gasping. Wyatt is there. He’s not much more than a dark figure that I
know is him by his shape: as tall as Elliott but much more slender with his hair in his face, a dark mass like a mophead.
I throw a hand to my heart, breathing hard.
I didn’t hear him get out of bed, not the rustle of sheets nor the keening of the mattress springs as he rolled over and pushed himself to his feet.
“I’m so sorry, Wyatt,” I whisper, turning back to set the glass on the countertop. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just needed
some water.”
Wyatt is quiet. Unresponsive. He stands there, motionless, and I ask, tilting my head, pulling my eyebrows together and searching
through the darkness for his face. “Are you okay? Is there something you need?”
He’s quiet at first, his breath audible in the stillness of the cottage.
“Come on,” he says. “Hurry up or we’re gonna be late for school.”
School.
He breezes past me, and as I watch, Wyatt goes to the refrigerator, bumping my elbow as he passes. He pulls open the refrigerator
door, the light from inside an advantage. “Where’s my lunch?” he asks, searching the empty shelves, getting agitated because
he can’t find it. “Where is it? Where’d you put my lunch?”
When he looks at me, I see in the refrigerator light that, though his eyes are open, they’re glassy, looking through me more
than at me, and I realize then that he isn’t awake. He’s sleepwalking. And he’s agitated about his missing lunch.
“Can you hear me? Or are you fucking deaf? I asked where’s my lunch,” he says, though I can’t find the words to respond at
first. I’ve never seen Wyatt sleepwalk. I’ve never seen him angry like this. I’ve never heard him curse.
My voice is gentle when I finally do speak.
“You don’t have to go to school, Wyatt. It’s summer.
We’re in Wisconsin, remember?” I ask, trying to explain without saying too much so that it all comes snowballing back to him.
Emily. Nolan. Reese. It doesn’t matter. Wyatt ignores me; he bends down and looks into the refrigerator again and keeps searching for his lost lunch, shoving a gallon of milk and leftover macaroni and cheese roughly aside, and I let him, thinking maybe he will give up on his lunch when he can’t find it and go back to bed.
But then, all of a sudden, he jerks his head to the side. He stands fully upright, staring hard at me. There is a tightness
on his face, his eyes cold as ice.
He breathes fire when he speaks.
“I’m going to kill you if I’m late for school. It will be all your fault.”
Kill you.
It takes my breath away.
Still, I move toward him. I set a gentle hand on his arm while easing the refrigerator door closed with my opposite hand because
he doesn’t mean it of course. He’s just dreaming.
It’s not like he’s going to hurt me.
“Wyatt,” I say, pulling him away, trying to lure him from the refrigerator, to wake him from his dream. “Your lunch isn’t
in there. You’re not going to be late for school. You don’t have to go to school. It’s the middle of the night. You’re dreaming.
Come on, let’s get you back to bed.”
I grasp his arm more firmly in an attempt to draw him away and walk him back to the sofa bed. But Wyatt reacts. He shakes
off my hand, pulling his arm fiercely back. It happens so fast that I can’t process what’s about to happen, I can’t react.
I don’t even see it coming. Wyatt winds up and then, all of a sudden, there is the loud smack of him hitting me across the
side of the face with an open-hand blow. The shock is overwhelming. I almost don’t feel the pain of impact. I’m too stunned.
My eyes water and, by instinct, my hand goes to my face, while at the same time, Wyatt rears back, positioning himself to
hit me again.
“Wyatt!” I scream with everything I have, waking everyone else in the cottage.
From upstairs, Cass cries out, “Mom!”
Elliott, too, calls for me, stumbling from the bedroom in the darkness, tripping over something on the floor. “Courtney? What’s
wrong?” In the living room, he turns on a lamp, dousing the cottage in light, and for the first time I get a good look at
Wyatt: shirtless, in Elliott’s gym shorts, his hair a mess, the bones of his rib cage showing, though his arms are toned,
his chest still bruised.
The ruckus, the noise, the light must wake him.
He comes to life, blinking repeatedly. “I . . . I . . .” Wyatt stammers, his face bemused. He looks around the cottage, trying
to make out where he is and what happened.
“You were sleepwalking,” I say to him, explaining, struggling to catch my breath. “You’re safe. You’re with Elliott and me,
remember? In our cottage.” My heart hammers inside of me, my face now throbbing. I feel a bruise start to form on the upper
cheekbone, the pain of it radiating all the way to my teeth.
Wyatt looks around. He’s breathing hard in confusion and fear, a memory washing over him. “There . . . there was someone here.
They were pulling me by the arm. They were trying to take me.” His fear is acute. It’s on his face and in his eyes, the wide-eyed,
feverish look of someone who was, just a minute ago, scared to death for his life.
“It was a dream, Wyatt. You were just dreaming. You’re safe.” I set a timid hand on his arm, afraid of what he’ll do, of how
he’ll react to my touch this time. “There is no one here. It’s just Elliott, the girls and me. No one is going to hurt you,
Wyatt.”
“Someone was here.”
“No,” I tell him definitively, shaking my head. “No. It was just a dream.”
His nod is hesitant and I can see on his face that he’s not sure if he believes me.
Cass finally makes her way down from the loft, with Mae just a step behind her, their eyes like slits as they adjust to the light. “What happened?” she asks.
“Everything is fine, honey. You girls go back to bed.”
“But why did you scream?” Cass asks.
“I . . . I couldn’t see where I was going. I ran into the corner of the door. I bumped my face. That’s all. I’m so sorry I
scared you. Mae,” I say, looking at her. “Are you okay, honey?” Mae nods, her hair falling in her eyes as she does, but it’s
meek and unbelievable.
A knock comes on the front door then. Elliott goes to it and I turn away, knowing who it is but not wanting the officer to
see my face. I hear Elliott say to him that everything is fine, that one of the kids just had a bad dream, and the officer,
barely glancing inside the cottage to verify that Elliott’s story is true, leaves.
Elliott closes the door. He gets the kids back to bed while I excuse myself for the bathroom. Standing before the dark wood
vanity with its harvest-gold laminate countertop, I get my first look at the black-and-blue mark starting to form on my cheek.
I lean in closer to the mirror. In the glow of the vanity lights, I see the red impression of Wyatt’s fingers where they made
contact with my skin, more bruised where the heel of his hand hit.
The door opens. “Cass asked to sleep with us. She’s scared. Jesus,” Elliott says, coming up from behind me in the bathroom,
looking up and really seeing my face for the first time.
I turn to him. “I just . . . He was scared. I scared him. It’s my fault. I should know better than to wake someone who’s sleepwalking.”
His expression changes. His head slants and his eyes widen. “Did he hit you?” he asks, astonished.
“It’s not his fault,” I say, rather than answering Elliott’s question directly. “I think he thought that I was an intruder
and that I was trying to kidnap him. He was protecting himself. After everything that’s happened, you can’t blame him.”
There are tears in my eyes. In all my life, I’ve never been hit like that. My cheek smarts and I wonder, if it’s already starting to bruise, what it will look like come morning and if by then it will be the full imprint of his hand.
Elliott steps closer to me. He sweeps a gentle thumb across my face and I wince, pulling back. “Does it hurt?” I nod. “Let
me see if I can find some ice to help bring the swelling down.”
I leave the bathroom for the bedroom, where I climb into bed beside Cass. Elliott goes to the kitchen, returning with a cool
washcloth because there isn’t any ice in the cottage; he leans over me and lays it gently on my face.
“Do you want me to close the door?” he asks, standing beside the bed before getting into it, lying on the other side of Cass
like another defensive wall.
This time I don’t hesitate.
“Yes,” I say. “And can you lock it too?”