Chapter 5
NIA
T he sound of Katie’s laughter and my parent’s voices spill into my dream to pull me from it. My eyes drift to the small novelty alarm clock on our shared nightstand, which reads seven fifty-six in the morning.
Crap.
“Katie-cat!” I shout as I bolt out of the bed and scramble to tie my hair over my head with an elastic. “Five minutes!”
Searching for my phone on the nightstand turns up no results, and I hurry downstairs as I remember that I’d left it on the coffee table last night. “Are your teeth brushed?” I shout from the living room as I try to find the damn thing, coming up empty. “Has anyone seen my phone?”
With no answer, I move toward the kitchen, and my daughter heads me off at the door with a banana in one hand and an orange in the other, both still in their peels.
“Mommy! I got breakfast for you,” she tells me.
Crouching down to her eye level, I offer her a grateful smile and a kiss on her nose as I take the items. “Thank you so much for getting me such a nice breakfast. Are you ready for school?”
She nods. “Grammy did my hair for me.”
Keeping my eyes locked onto those of my smiling mother, I tell her, “We are so lucky to have Grammy.”
I give my daughter one more kiss before moving back to the living room to give one last once-over in search of the phantom cell phone.
“ No one has seen my phone?” I groan, flipping over the throw pillows one last time. As I reach for my jacket and Katie’s backpack, I turn toward Keith and say, “After school, if anything…have me paged, okay?”
“Yes ma’am,” he nods, offering me a salute.
I tack ‘find missing cell phone’ onto the seemingly ever-growing to-do list in my mind as I hurry out the front door behind my daughter.
As we cruise down the road toward the school, I reach into my call bag for my travel toothbrush, working as quickly and carefully as I can to squeeze toothpaste onto it with one hand while Katie belts The Wheels On The Bus from her car seat behind me.
I’ve done this countless times since my days in nursing school, and I’m sure I’ll do it countless times more in my career. I don’t love swallowing toothpaste, but sometimes it’s better than the alternative.
Despite the chaos of the morning rush, after dropping Katie at school, I walk into a shift that is blissfully peaceful in comparison to my usual shifts. Only a handful of patients need to be triaged at one time, and the waiting room isn’t overflowing.
This, I can work with.
I breeze through my shift, even finding an additional two minutes to add to my quick vending machine lunch. It’s fantastic.
The parking lot isn’t a nightmare when I leave, and traffic is forgiving. It’s as if the universe has been paying attention and has decided that it’s time to cut me a little bit of slack in at least one corner of my life, and I’m more than happy to accept it.
I drop my call bag and rubber clogs next to the door as I step into the house, breathing deeply to inhale the savory smell of my stepdad’s homemade chicken casserole.
As if this day couldn’t turn out any nicer.
I help myself to a plate in the kitchen, sitting at the table and eating slowly to savor every bite while Katie finishes her nightly bath.
This is the respite that I needed.
Refreshed and full-bellied, I clean my dishes and trek up the stairs toward our bedroom, knocking my knuckles against the door frame in attempt to not startle her when I step inside.
“Katie-cat,” I coo. “Come on, it’s time to tuck in.”
Making a big show of searching for my giggling daughter, I toss pillows and blankets from the bed, shoes from one side of the room to the other, and I flip through the pages of her bedtime book. All the while, I speak to myself out loud, asking questions like ‘where could she be?’ and ‘is she under here?’
When I finally approach the small closet, I pull open the accordion-style door with a ‘boo!’
Katie squeals with laughter and clutches something tightly to her chest, forcing me to tickle, pull and pry to get it away from her. When I finally have the item in my hand, I’m staring down at my husband’s name on the screen of my missing cell phone, and my body goes cold.
“Katie, go to bed,” I tell her more harshly than I mean to. “ Now .”
As she scurries out of the closet and into the bedroom, I duck past the door, pulling the phone to my ear. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I was telling my daughter goodnight.”
“No.”
He scoffs. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” I tell him. “You don’t speak to her without me here. I’d rather you not speak to her at all right now, honestly.”
“Jesus Christ, Nia, you sound like you think I would do something to her,” he tells me.
“Did you have that woman in my house while Katie was home?” A long silence hangs on the other end of the line that forces my blood to a simmer beneath my skin. “I can’t trust you, Daniel,” I tell him. “And I am scared of you. You’re a total stranger to me now.”
“I’m not a—” a loud sigh pushes through the receiver. “I want to see my daughter, and I want her out of that house.”
“Don’t call this number again,” I tell him. “You can talk to my lawyer.”
“Or I can talk to protective services,” he says. “It’s your choice, Nia. Let me see Katie, or I can have someone down there within a week to inspect that house.”
My fingernails bite into my palm as my fist tightens, releasing and contracting again in an effort to calm the anger brewing inside of me at his threat.
Maybe there’s some fear in there, too, if I’m being honest with myself.
The house isn’t great. It’s far from being in shambles, but I’m not sure that it would pass a home visit. One of the outlets in the living room lost its cover years ago and has yet to be replaced due to damage on the wall surrounding it.
The stove is gas and there are no covers over the handles; an easy fix that I can manage between shifts, but certainly not the only thing that needs to be done.
And then there’s the bathroom door issue.
It’s a good house; it kept me happy and healthy while I lived in it, and I’m so grateful to have had it. But Daniel could use it to hurt me, and now, I’m terrified that he will.