Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

Tiffany cupped her ring-covered fingers around her mouth and yelled toward the stairs, “Oh, Grace!”

Rip reached up and seized Tiffany’s bare arm, pulling her off the sofa. She landed like a cat on its paws.

Michael’s voice rolled across the room like thunder. “Hey!”

Leigh was still slumped in Tenzin’s arms, quietly weeping.

Nicole said, “Josh, I need you to go to the car and get the bags now .”

Rip released Tiffany’s arm and stormed across the room to the front door, throwing it open so that the screech of the cicadas filled the room.

Then he was gone.

For a beat, the room was silent. Tenzin rubbed Leigh’s back. The mommy finally wasn’t shaking so much.

Then Allie bounded down the stairs.

“Dash!” she yelled, piercing the lull, “Dash isn’t there! He’s not in the bed!”

Susanna appeared behind Allie, plodding down each step with effort, clutching her belly. Her face, Tenzin saw, was bloodless.

Tenzin heard the patter of footsteps, and a thin voice call from above. “Mama? What’s happening?”

Levi. Standing in his PJs at the top of the stairs. With Wyatt and Harper.

Tenzin gently detached herself from Leigh. Now she could really help.

“Hello, sleepy babies!” she called, hurrying up the stairs.

Allie yelled, spewing disorganized orders, “Check the deck! The rocks! Check the basement!” Was there a basement?

Why were they still standing there in the living room, staring at her? Why weren’t they moving? They had to find Dash before he fell into the rocks, under the rocks, before the sea took him, and he floated away. Alone. They’d already put him through swimming lessons, hadn’t they? She couldn’t remember. She almost turned to Susanna to ask.

They were staring at her. Josh, his hands resting protectively on Nicole’s shoulders. Leigh, red-eyed on the couch. Michael, his hand latched to his beer bottle.

No one moved.

“Go!” Allie said, “Go find Dash. Please!”

And like a hammer hitting glass, they splintered, Nicole running toward the kitchen, calling out, “I’ll see if he’s in the basement.” Michael, his voice thunderous, “I got the deck and the rocks.” Josh, taking the stairs in long strides, “I’ll check upstairs.”

Susanna had dropped into a chair and was crying, a sound that made Allie think of an animal. A keening.

Tenzin helped the children downstairs, and they crowded around Susanna, their arms goose-bumped, their eyes unblinking.

“Mommy,” Levi said to Allie, on the edge of tears, “where’s Dash?”

“Do you know where he is, sweetie?” Allie knelt in front of him and cupped his cold elbows in her palms. “If you do, tell us right away. So we can get him and bring him here where’s he’s safe.”

Levi began to cry.

“Levi! Listen to me!”

Then she looked at Susanna, whose eyes were open but unseeing and remembered that afternoon on the beach right before Susanna threw up, Susanna demanding Allie comfort the boys.

“Everything will be okay,” Allie said, wiping at Levi’s cheeks with her thumbs. “Stay here with Mama. I’ll go get Dash.”

She remembered the windows upstairs. Did they have screens? Definitely not bars. Oh fuck, what if she left the windows open?

As she took the stairs two at a time, she heard Tenzin say, “Come, Levi, put your hand on Mama’s belly. Feel your new baby kick.”

Allie tripped and righted herself at the top of the stairs, remembering that friend of Susanna’s whose three-year-old had fallen through a window screen to his death and how Susanna had cried in the bathtub for hours after she’d heard the news. His head on rocks. A splash of blood. Still alive when they made it to the hospital. But not for long. They had planted trees in the park in his memory. Fucking trees for a beautiful boy.

She saw that the bedroom windows were open just a few inches, and yelled up at the top floor. “Josh? Anything?”

“Nothing,” he called back.

No Dash on the deck.

No Dash in the basement.

No Dash in the bedroom closets and the bathrooms.

No Dash anywhere, Allie thought, and the lines of one of the boys’ favorite bedtime books hopped through her mind, like an absurd tic:

Goodnight stars

Goodnight air

Goodnight noises everywhere

“Do you want me to call the police?” Josh asked.

“Yes!” Susanna cried, and then Levi was wailing again, “Mama! Mommy! I want my brother now!”

“Motherfucking shit,” Allie whispered, running her hands through her hair, tugging at the roots. Think, she told herself, trying to focus through the two glasses of wine she had drunk. Was this happening? The cops?

“Sure. Call the cops. Do it now.” She barreled down the stairs and leapt out the front door. As gravel spit out behind her, she heard Susanna’s bellow, “You find my baby!”

The moon was high and full, an immaculate white, animating every shrub, every stone with shadow. A world of secret hiding places. Her boy could be anywhere. She spun in a slow circle, searching for movement, for the sound of pebbles under little bare feet. A giggle. Anything. Something. Please, Dash.

She sprinted to the weathered shack on the side of the house and threw the door open, so that the hook fell with a ping on the gravel behind her. She yanked on the string overhead. It tore off in her fingers, and the explosion of light revealed clear plastic bags filled with old teddy bears and stuffed animals. Like some demented carnival, and it made her think of the state park and the town beach, both just a short walk from the path she had chased Dash down that day, and what if some fucking pervert had seen them. He could have seen them, she thought, trying to measure the distance in her mind, couldn’t he? And then lay in wait like some predator, maybe even lured Dash out that night, maybe he had her boy somewhere right now, somewhere dark and distant and cold and fucking terrifying. Right now.

She yelled toward the front door, “Call the cops!”

Allie ran to the cars that lined the driveway. She opened the doors on the two closest to the house, not bothering to close them, and as she fell to her stomach to check under each car, the pebbles pressing through the thin cotton of her shirt, the ding-ding-ding sounded. She climbed to her feet and paused to look up at the house, the bottom windows glowing gold under a moon-tinted cloud-streaked sky.

There was one more car to check, a dark SUV. She jiggled the handle and the alarm went off, a blaring siren punctuated by a honk. No Dash in there, at least not as much as she could see in the flashing taillights.

“Dash!” she screamed over the alarm. “Dash! Where are you? Come here now!”

“Hey! It’s all clear up front!” Michael shouted from the deck. “I’m going down on the beach to check the boats.”

“Did you check the rocks?” Allie called back. “Check the rocks!”

The rocks. Oh fuckfuckfuck, she chanted, and a sob lifted from her belly and stuck in her throat and she thought she might choke if she didn’t let it loose and she screamed, dashdashdashdash. Until her throat felt raw.

Then, suddenly, she knew where he was. The woods. That afternoon.

“I need flashlights!” Allie yelled at the house, then whirled to face the tree-and-bramble-lined path that led to the dunes, and beyond them the woods. The car alarm stopped. She stood for a moment, listening as her ears rang. Maybe she could hear her boy, the shush of his pajamas rubbing together, his sniffles, the little clucking noise he made when he laughed, his cry for help, but there was only her pulse screaming in her ears— move, fucking move, you moron.