And that’s when it happened.
Before my fingers touched the knob, Lily let out a high-pitched cry and lunged at me with a force that didn’t seem like hers. He pushed me back so sharply that my keys fell to the floor.
“No!” he shrieked. Don’t open it!
His voice bounced through the hall, and at that very moment I heard a metallic click from the other side of the door.
It did not come from the metal plate.
It came lower.
I froze.
Lily clung to my leg, shaking from head to toe. I could barely breathe. I looked down slowly at the bottom of the door, and then I saw it: an almost invisible thread, stretched at the lock and attached to something on the other side of the frame.
I felt a hole open in my stomach.
It wasn’t normal.
It was not improvised.
It was a trap.
I knelt down carefully, trying not to touch anything. The air suddenly tasted strange to me. Heavier. More chemical. As if underneath the smell of coffee and lemon cleaner there was something else… something sour, something that shouldn’t be there.
Gas.
I backed away suddenly.
Not much. Just one step. But it was enough for my brain to finally put the pieces together with terrible speed.
Derek had gone “on a trip”.
Lily had heard him say that it was going to happen today.
“Make sure it looks like an accident.”
The front door was ready.
And there was gas in the house.
I looked into the kitchen. The stove was off. But that meant nothing. It could come from somewhere else. From an open line. From the basement. From the heater. From anywhere I couldn’t see.
“My love, don’t touch anything,” I whispered, taking Lily by the shoulders. No switches. No lamps. Not your tablet. Nothing, yes?
She nodded with pursed lips.
My hand was already going towards the phone inside the bag when I stopped.
If there was enough gas, even a call could be a risk in there. I didn’t know if it was paranoia or instinct, but I wasn’t going to gamble my daughter’s life on appearing rational.
We needed to get out.
But not through the front door.
My eyes swept over the house. The dining room windows looked out onto the side garden. The sliding door from the living room went out to the terrace. The back door led to the small utility yard next to the garage.
Garage.
The garage was connected to the house.
And Derek’s car was gone.
Too many variables. Too much risk.
I crouched down until I was at Lily’s level.
“We’re going out the dining room window, okay?” Without making a sound. Like when we play at being spies.
She was so frightened that she didn’t even smile, but she nodded again.
I led her by the hand down the hallway, away from the entrance. Every step seemed to me a blasphemy against something that could explode just by listening to us. The house, which an hour before had seemed normal to me, now felt alien, hostile, watching us. The refrigerator was humming. A clock marked the seconds. The heating exhaled a low breath from some hidden grate.
Everything seemed too strong to me.
Too dangerous.
As I walked through the living room, I saw the family photograph on the shelf: Derek with his arm on my shoulders, Lily in the middle, smiling with two loose teeth and a cardboard crown from his birthday party. For a moment my mind did what cowardly minds do when the horror is too great: it tried to defend him.
Maybe it wasn’t him.
