Page 291 of Wicked Brutal

Arthur: RECEIVED.

The laundry-room door handle moves. Locked. Silence on the other side. Then—

“Jane?” Mom’s eyes come to mine. The handle moves again, harder. “Open the door.”

She looks at me for one more second — one more second where it’s just the two of us and a box full of proof and everything we’re not saying. Then she unlocks it.

Dad stands on the other side. His eyes move from Mom to me. Then slowly around the laundry room — the open cabinet, the containers slightly out of place, my mother’s breathing. Then back to the phone in my hand.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping Mom.”

“With what?”

“Laundry.”

His eyes narrow. Mom’s breathing is too fast. I can hear it. He can probably see it — he’s spent years learning to read exactly this, the fear he built into her on purpose.

His gaze drops to my phone. “Give me that.”

“No.” The word leaves before I can stop it.

His face changes. “Excuse me?”

I look at Mom and I understand, all at once, that two days is gone. There is no Friday. There is no waiting for Arthur to finish building it clean. If Dad takes this phone — if he sees Arthur’s name, if he understands what my mother just handed me, if he realizes she’s the one who kept it — he doesn’t just win. He makes her pay for it first. In this room. Tonight. And I will have to stand here and watch it, the way she once stood and watched him do it to me.

We’re out of time.

“Mom.” Her eyes meet mine. I keep my voice level, and I say the only thing that matters. “Get Tobias.”

Dad goes completely still. “What did you just say?”

I already have my phone open. This one doesn’t go to Arthur. This one goes to Ryan — because Ryan is the one who’s been waiting across a dark yard for exactly this text, the one we agreed on so no one reading over my shoulder would understand it. My fingers shake once. Then stop.

I need my green sweater.

Dad takes a step toward me. “Give me the phone, Alison.”

It buzzes.

Ryan: Both?

Me. Tobias. That was always the plan. Get the two of us out and worry about the rest after.

I look at Mom. At the bruise disappearing beneath the collar of her blouse. At the woman who stepped between Dad and me on Thursday and took the floor for it. At the box hidden behind detergent because her husband has never once done his own laundry. At all the years she spent quietly collecting proof of a nightmare she didn’t know how to survive, let alone escape — keeping it, page by page, for a daughter she must have prayed would someday be brave enough to use it.

No. Not both. I’m not leaving her in this house to bleed for what she just did.

All three, Ryan.

Ryan: Coming.

Now we just have to survive until he gets here.

Ally: All three, Ryan.

Istare at the message. All three. Ally. Tobias. Jane. Something happened. Something fucking happened.