Даниэла Стил - Neighbors

—

Andrew’s take on it was different. After Tyla put the children to bed, after the big meal they’d eaten and the late hour for them. Daphne was already asleep when Tyla tucked her in, and she joined Andrew in their bedroom on their bed, where he was watching TV. He turned to Tyla with a sneer. He’d had a lot of wine to drink with dinner, a martini first, and the cognac afterward in the library had probably been one too many, Tyla realized.

“What a little whore Ava is,” he commented, “moving in with Peter. She’s probably fucking both him and Joel, and giving Arthur blow jobs.” Tyla hated it when he talked that way. She considered Ava a friend now, and felt honor-bound to defend her, which with Andrew was always a mistake.

“She broke up with Joel before Arthur asked her to move in with them,” she said primly. “She hasn’t seen Joel since they broke up.”

“Not likely. She looks like a whore and acts like one. Shit, she was standing naked on the sidewalk the night of the earthquake.”

“She was wearing a bathrobe,” Tyla corrected him.

“Yeah, and what do you think they were doing right before that, which is more than I can say for us.” Tyla knew better than to answer him, particularly when he’d been drinking. He was capable of flying into a rage stone cold sober, and worse when he was drunk. “She’s such a little slut,” he went on, “and so are you.” He rolled over at lightning speed, grabbed Tyla by the throat, and pressed her down on their bed, choking her. It crossed her mind instantly that she’d have marks from his handprints on her throat the next day, if she survived it. “Are you fucking Joel now? Is that why he didn’t come tonight, because he was afraid to face me? Is that it?” He tightened his grip on her neck, dragged her up to the headboard, and started banging her head against it. It made a terrible sound, as she struggled against him, but she was afraid to wake the children if she screamed.

She did the only thing she could think of and kneed him in the groin. He doubled up with pain, and hit her so hard in the face that it threw her against the headboard even harder, and then he dragged her out of bed and she fell to the floor. And then he kicked her as hard as he could. “Don’t you ever do that again, you bitch!” he shouted at her. She was dazed from the pain and could taste blood in her mouth. Her nose was bleeding, and then he slammed her head into the floor for good measure. She felt as though she was underwater, and then realized there was so much blood in her eyes she couldn’t see. He continued to kick and pound on her as she came in and out of consciousness. She was sure he was going to kill her and she didn’t care. She had no way to stop him or defend herself. There was no one to help her. She just didn’t want her children to see it happening, but she forgot about that too as she lost consciousness. Everything went black as she went down, down, down to the ocean floor and swam away in a river of blood. It was the only way to get away from him.

—

The bell on the front gate rang about an hour after the guests had left. Charles and Meredith were asleep with the TV on, and she stirred when the intercom rang in her room. When she answered it, it was their night security man on duty that night. He was new. A service provided them on a rotating basis.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” he said politely. “There’s a child here. She rang at the gate, she says she lives down the street, and she needs your help. Her mother is sick or something.”

“What’s her name?” Meredith asked as she jumped out of bed.

“Daphne. She’s very upset. Should I call 911 for her?”

“No…yes…I’ll tell you in a minute. Tell her I’m coming right down.” She shook Charles awake, and he was fully conscious quickly. “Charles…wake up…I need your help…Daphne’s downstairs, something about Tyla. Andrew must have beaten her again. Should I call the police?”

“Yes.” He grabbed his phone on the bedside table, called 911 and told them they had an injured person down, attacked by an intruder, gave them the Johnsons’ address, and jumped into the clothes he’d worn to dinner. Meredith had already put on jeans, slipped into shoes, and put a sweater on, on her way down the stairs. He was right behind her. Daphne was sobbing in the front hall, barely able to speak, in her nightgown and bare feet, as Meredith grabbed her hand and they flew out the front door. The security guard opened the gate for them, as all three of them ran to the sidewalk.

“Tell me what happened,” Meredith said to Daphne as they ran.

“I think he killed her…he hit her and hit her and I think Mommy’s dead.” They could hear sirens by then, and two police cars converged on the Johnson house at the same time from opposite directions. The policemen jumped out with guns drawn. Because Charles had told them it was an intruder, they drew their weapons, but for domestic violence they would have taken twice as long to come, which he knew.

“There’s an eleven-year-old boy in the house,” Meredith told them quickly. They had no way to get in. The door had locked behind Daphne when she left. They were sturdy young officers. They broke the door easily, as Charles followed them, and told Meredith to stay on the sidewalk with Daphne. She put an arm around her and held her close, and thanked God that Daphne had come to get her.

“Are they going to shoot my daddy?” Daphne sobbed. Meredith didn’t know what to answer while they waited. Two more officers arrived and entered the house at a dead run, talking into their radios, and they came out two minutes later with Andrew, his hands cuffed behind him, his shirt and hands bloody, and for a moment Meredith was afraid that Daphne was right, and her mother was dead. They pushed Andrew into a squad car, and took off. He never looked at Daphne once. Meredith thought he hadn’t even seen her. He was screaming at the officers and fighting them, and they were rough with him, as Daphne hid her face against Meredith. Two minutes later an ambulance arrived and three paramedics rushed into the house. They still didn’t know what had happened, or if Tyla was alive, as Daphne buried her face in Meredith’s sweater and sobbed. A minute later, Charles came out with Will. The boy was ghostly pale, he had been hiding in his room under the covers, but he could hear his mother’s screams while Andrew beat her.

“Your mom is alive,” he told both children, and then looked at Meredith with a grim expression. “I’ll take the kids back to your house. You go with her in the ambulance.” She nodded, and wanted to ask him how bad it was, but couldn’t with the children present. A moment later, they brought Tyla out on a gurney, her face and head drenched in blood, her identity unrecognizable. She was just a bloody blob. She had an oxygen mask on, an IV in each arm, and was unconscious. Meredith gently handed Daphne off to Charles, and she went with him, as Meredith followed Tyla into the ambulance. They pulled away with lights flashing and siren screaming, and she saw Charles close the front door, and then head up the hill to her house with both children. After that her whole focus was on Tyla.

“How bad?” she asked one of the paramedics working on her. He shook his head in answer. She barely had a pulse, and was hardly breathing. Meredith heard one of the paramedics say that she had a severe concussion. They took her to the trauma unit of the nearest hospital, and Meredith never left her side for a minute. Meredith gave them all the information they needed that she knew, and when they asked her relationship to her, Meredith said “mother” so they wouldn’t send her away.

It took them half an hour to assess her, superficially, and by then her blood pressure was a little more stable. They sent her for CT scans then, an MRI and X-rays, and by four A.M. they knew that her skull was intact, and not crushed or fractured, but she had a severe concussion. Her nose, cheekbone, and jaw were broken, and one arm. She had internal bleeding from where Andrew had kicked her in the stomach, but she was alive and was going to survive. She had surgery for the nose, cheekbone, and jaw performed by a plastic surgeon. They set her arm, and she looked like a mummy when she came back to the room swathed in bandages. They told Meredith that they had photographed all her injuries, since there would be criminal proceedings. Tyla was heavily sedated, and they told Meredith that her “daughter” would sleep now for several hours. They suggested that she come back around noon, but to expect her to be groggy for the first day or two. They were giving her morphine for the pain.