Archive for April, 2026

When Val got home from after-school gymnastics practice, her mom wasn’t in the kitchen starting dinner as usual. After dumping her backpack on her bed, Val wandered around the first floor of the house and found her mom picking through the center drawer of the desk in her dad’s home office.

“Hey, what are you looking for?”

Her mom jumped as if a bomb had exploded under her feet. “Oh, it’s you.” She closed the drawer she’d been searching and brushed sweat-dampened, gray-streaked brown hair off her forehead. “Help me look. Your father will be home from work in less than half an hour.”

Val’s chest and stomach tightened at the thought of having to resume tiptoeing around the minefield of his temper. Only when he wasn’t home could she draw deep breaths “Look for what?”

“A key. I’ve already been through his closet and dresser and every other likely place. I left this room for last because it seemed too obvious. If he carries it on him all the time, we’re screwed, but I don’t think he’d risk losing it that way.” Kneeling on the floor, she gestured toward the drawers on the left side of the desk. “You take those, and I’ll do these. But be sure to put everything back exactly the way you found it.”

Val didn’t needed reminding about his perfectionism. He would notice a pen as little as an inch out of place. She obediently started searching where she’d been told. “Key to what?”

“The fireproof lockbox in there.” Her mom pointed at the office closet. “Hurry. I have to open it before he gets home.”

“Okay, but why right now?”

Her mom met Val’s eyes with a bleak stare. “Because of last night. God knows I’ve tried for all these years, but we can’t live like this anymore.”

Val shivered from more than the low thermostat setting her dad insisted on, turning the house into a refrigerator all spring and summer. Except for an occasional slap, he’d never escalated to physical violence. Until dinnertime the previous evening.

He’d grabbed the bottle of steak sauce and groused, “What’s this crap? Where’s my regular brand?”

Her mom had ducked her head in the submissive way that sometimes made Val want to shake her. “The store was out of it.”

“So you were too lazy to drive somewhere else to shop? Damn it, I work hard so you can hang around the house all day. Why can’t you do your job right?” He’d flung the bottle across the room, barely missing her head. It had shattered against the wall.

In reaction to Val’s frozen gape, he’d glared at her, “And what are you looking at? Clean up that mess.” He’d stomped out of the room. The slam of the office door had reverberated down the hall.

No, Val didn’t want to go through a scene like that, or worse, again.

She glanced up from the drawer she’d opened. “Have you tried his pirate ship?”

Her mom followed Val’s gaze to the two-thousand-piece deluxe LEGO construction on top of the bookcase beside the closet. Her dad had owned it ever since high school. In Val’s preteen years, before he’d turned so harsh, he had sometimes taken it down for her to admire and even touch, if she’d promised to be very careful.

“I never thought of that. Where could he hide a key in there?”

“You didn’t know there’s a treasure chest inside?”

Her mom straightened up, rubbing the small of her back. “No, I never paid much attention to the thing. He didn’t want me going near it – too fragile, he said.” After a nervous glance at her watch, she stood on tiptoe and moved the ship to the floor. “It makes a twisted kind of sense. He stole from me like a pirate and keeps me prisoner like a pirate.”

What did she mean by that? Val decided not to ask. She crouched down to detach plastic blocks from the hull, exposing the cabin interior, complete with miniature furnishings. She plucked out the treasure chest, which she’d seen a couple of times but never been allowed to touch. “I’ll bet this opens.” Sure enough, when she pried the top with a fingernail, it flipped up.

A key lay inside.

With a gasp of indrawn breath, her mom snatched it. Her hands trembling, she dashed to the closet, opened it, and thrust the key into the lock of the heavy-duty, fireproof box inside. Throwing back the lid, she pulled out – a rolled-up, silver-gray fur coat or blanket?

A moan escaped her lips as she hugged it and rubbed her cheeks against it. When she shook it out, it looked like an actual animal pelt. “At first, he thought this was cool, a major turn-on. But when I got pregnant with you, he took it and wouldn’t give it back no matter how I begged. Said it was for my own good.” Bitterness edged her voice.

Abruptly, she tilted her head as if listening. “There’s the car. Your father’s home.”

Val didn’t doubt her mom’s sharp hearing, and an instant later she, too, heard the engine’s rumble.

“Get out of the house! I’m going to wait here for him, and it won’t be safe for you.”

“What? Why not?”

“You heard me. Go!” She draped the fur around her shoulders, then pulled a flap of it over her head. Her body blurred into a silver-glowing mist. Her outline shimmered for a few seconds, then re-formed.

In her place a wolf, bigger than any beast in a wildlife film, loomed.

Val ran, her chest heaving with panicked breaths – to the front door, outside, onto the driveway where her dad stood beside the car.

“What’s gotten into you? Where’s your mother?”

“In the office.” Val bent over, her lungs aching. “Waiting for you.”

Should she warn him?

He shoved past her and into the house.

No.
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