I first noticed the extra money when Ted started bringing home takeout from Boston Market. I had made a whole meal for dinner: pulled pork with buttered rolls with sweet corn and tall glasses of Coca-Cola. I had stared at him when he came home with the plastic bags from Boston Market, beaming like he had done us a giant service to bring home dinner.
"I'll just pack this up for lunch tomorrow." I had told him in the sweet voice I reserved for him, beginning to put everything into tupperware containers for his lunch. Ted came up behind me and kissed the back of my neck.
"You're welcome for bringing dinner home." He said. Ted reached around me and grabbed the three paper plates I had set out and he took them to the table. Ted had looked down to Nora, her five year old eyes wide eyed at the takeout. "See, kiddo, I thought I'd bring you ladies a special dinner."
Had he gotten a promotion? He made about fifteen dollars an hour at the industrial park, which was barely enough to keep this house with three mouths to feed. Ted had always had a small amount of extra cash that I didn't like asking where he got it from, but it was never enough to make him happy enough to buy takeout.
Ted started bragging about five minutes into dinner that night, telling me how he got an assistant manager position, so now he was making twenty dollars an hour. But I noticed that the right side of his mouth creeped up as he said it.
Ted was lying.
If I asked about the money, I knew what would happen, so I stayed silent and ate dinner. Nora told him everything I had tried teaching her today. She wasn't allowed to go to daycare, so until kindergarten, our five year old had to stay at home with me while I cleaned and cooked and tried to keep busy.
"You know what, Nora," Ted said, that sly smile on his face again. "If you do a good job this year in kindergarten, we'll be able to take a trip to Disney World."
My head had shot up at the sound of this news. Nora had gasped extra loudly before turning to me. "Hear that, Mommy? I've never been to Disney!"
How the fuck could we afford Disney World?
I put my fake smile on and tried to look excited. "That's amazing! I didn't know your raise was that much, sweetie."
Ted had shrugged. "Well, we'll have to save up some. But I think our little girl deserves it. Don't you?" He reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
It went on like this for almost two months. Ted would randomly bring home dinners from various fast food places, and I'd put the dinner I had made away for his lunch the next day. I never had an idea for when he did this, and Ted liked eating almost the moment he came home from work. I just wished I knew when he'd bring it home.
God forbid I don't make dinner one night and he comes home empty handed.
In January, Ted brought home some coworkers. I had stared at them all for a long moment; Ted had never brought home anyone before.
"It's no problem, Jane." Ted had said, a slight edge in his voice. "Just set some more places at the table." I did so fast, and I couldn't stop Ted when he grabbed Nora and sat her on his lap. A man I didn't know sat right beside Ted and gave my five year old daughter a smile that made me terrified.
"Ted?" I said quietly as the four strangers took places around my kitchen table.
"Sit down, Jane." Ted had said, a little more obvious with his impatience. "We're hungry."
Nora was talking to the stranger sitting next to her. Ted's arm was holding her in place and the stranger was leaning in a way that made me want to rip my daughter out of her father's hands. Ted wasn't paying attention, he was watching me as I made place settings.
"Thank you so much, Mrs. Sheridan." One of the men said, flashing me a smile with a gold tooth front and center. I nodded at him and gave him a brief smile, trying to get Ted's eyes off me.
That's when I saw that stranger put his hand on Nora's thigh.
I left the kitchen and went into the master bedroom, going to the closet where I knew Ted's handgun was hidden. I grabbed it and rushed back into the kitchen and pointed it at the head of the man who still had his hand on my five year olds fucking thigh.
"Get the fuck out of my house!" I shouted at him. "Get your filthy hands off my daughter, you sick fuck!"
"Jesus fuck, Jane!" Ted screamed, pushing Nora off of him and standing up. The stranger scrambled to his feet and held his hands up, edging towards the front door. Everyone was standing up.
"Nora," I said and my little girl ran to get behind me, hugging the back of my legs as I kept the gun trained on that pedo.
"Learn to control your old lady, Sheridan." One of the men snapped before leaving the house. They all followed him, hands up and watching me with annoyed looks, as if I had just ruined their dinner for no reason.
Once the door was shut, Ted turned to me with a darkness in his eyes that made me want to start apologizing. I started to lower the gun.
"Go to your room, Nora." Ted said in a deathly quiet voice. Nora hesitated. Ted tore his gaze from me long enough to shoot his daughter a heated glare. "Now!" He screamed. Nora let go of me and ran. I lowered the gun entirely as her bedroom door slammed shut.
"That man had a hand on her-" I started, pointing a finger at the shut front door.
"Do you really think I was going to let someone molest our daughter?" Ted said, his voice still quiet. "Do you really think that low of me? Give me the gun."
He ripped it from my hand before I could react and he checked the chamber, letting out a dark chuckle. "There're no bullets in here, you dumb cunt." I opened my mouth to say something just as Ted slammed the handle of the gun down on my temple.
I fell to the ground just in time to catch Ted's foot in my gut. I curled up like a dying bug as Ted got down to my level, his fist coming down hard on my face and head. I screamed and tried to block his blows, but his left hand grabbed my arms and tore them out of the way, all while never stopping his right fist from hitting me. My head hit the hardwood floor several times, and eventually he figured out that he could just slam my head into the floor and that'd work just fine too.
I don't know when I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I couldn't open my right eye because it was swelled shut. Ted brought home some doctor he knew to the house to patch me up. I ended up getting two stitches on my face, one close to my jaw and the other on my cheekbone. This doctor said I should be fine, but if I felt worse than I did right now I should come back to him. Not go to a hospital, just come back to this guy. After he was gone, I thanked Ted for bringing someone in to take care of me.
"I do love you, Janey." Ted had told me. "You just can't get me mad like that again-you know how I get." He then kissed the top of my head and brought me ice water with a straw. After we watched a couple of episodes of 30 Rock, we got into bed and Ted said we didn't have to have sex if I didn't want to.
Ted was asleep in about twenty minutes. I waited for ten minutes after that before creeping out of bed and into the bathroom. When I saw my face, I broke down crying.
The right side of my face was swollen and dark red and purple, the skin around my stitches looking like they were stretched tight. I even had a dark red bruise on my neck...I didn't even know he had hit my neck. The left side of my head was also badly bruised and my belly had a wide bruise on it from his foot.
Before I went back into bed, I checked on Nora. She wasn't in bed, but she was hiding under it. I carefully pulled my deep sleeping daughter from her hiding spot and tucked her into bed. As I tucked a ratty looking teddy bear underneath the blanket with her, a plan started to formulate in my head.
It took six months.
One of the duties I had was going to the bank on Ted's payday and depositing the check so that I could buy groceries. He didn't get direct deposit from work, and now I thanked God that he didn't. I didn't take much when I deposited the checks, just ten or fifteen dollars, and then I'd buy a few packages of food on sale so that even if Ted did notice the lighter grocery run, he'd think it came from the three boxes of Shake-and-Bake I bought on sale.
I didn't hide money in the same place more than twice. One bundle of fifty dollars was hidden under the couch, sewn into a pocket of the material. Another bundle of twenty dollars was hidden far back in the air vent of the kitchen, while another air vent in the master bedroom hid a bundle of seventy dollars. Another bundle was sewn into one of Nora's lesser favorite toys when she was in the backyard playing in the sprinkler. And another was tucked in the corner of a coffee table. I carved out the pages of a romance novel (something Ted would never touch) and hid a bundle of a hundred dollars in there. I hid bundles of random amounts of money all over the house for four straight months.
Ted never noticed. I started making his favorite meals more, cooking chicken and dumplings in the Crock Pot so that it tasted richer and making his favorite carrot cake for dessert. I had unprotected sex with him almost every night, anything to make him happy. It didn't stop him from raising a hand to me every now and then, but it never escalated to that night in January where he nearly killed me.
Ted had never been clever. When I had started dating him in the later years of high school, my older sister had said he was nothing but a dumb jock. But Ted was arrogant, arrogant enough to think that he was getting his way, that I finally wanted another baby and that I wanted us to be as happy as he wanted us to be.
One night after sex, I convinced Ted to let me make him a more expensive meal, so he gave me permission to use more expensive ingredients. I just bought generic branded ingredients that were cheaper than normal and took fifty dollars out of the check that pay period.
Nora kept talking about finally going to kindergarten in August. To keep everything seemingly normal, I had approached Ted after Nora had gone to her room for the night.
"You know," I started. "With Nora going to school, I'll be able to get a part time job. Make us some more money? For that Disney trip you told her about."
Ted grunted, not interested. "Jane, if you get pregnant, you're not gonna want a job. Most part time jobs want you on your feet all day every day. Won't be good for you."
"But it'd be just some extra money around the house and it'd give me something to do."
"You already have that garden in the backyard you love working in so much." Ted said, finally looking at me. "I don't want you getting a job, sweetie."
"Teddy-"
The back of his hand flew out and struck me across the face and I fell down again. Ted stood up and knelt down, putting his hand on my bruising cheek.
"Janey, I love you." Ted said softly, almost gently. "But you've got to stop with this job nonsense. When you get pregnant, I don't want you losing this baby."
You're the reason I lost our second baby, I thought with fury but didn't say. He hadn't known I was pregnant when he got mad at me and beat the shit out of me again. Nora had only been two years old and witnessed the whole thing, bawling and screaming the whole time while I started bleeding as I lost that baby. Then Ted had blamed me for not telling him about the pregnancy and getting him mad again.
Finally in July, I had about three thousand dollars hidden around the house. I had a plan in my head and nothing else keeping us here.
That morning I kept everything as normal as possible. Nora was eating cereal in the living and watching cartoons. I made Ted's coffee and had his lunch prepared when he came out of the bedroom, his brown hair spiky and wet from his shower. I handed him the lunch and coffee with a smile and Ted kissed me.
"You're making poppy seed chicken tonight, right?" He asked, looking down at me with a smile on his face.
I nodded. "Just the way you like it."
"I love you." Ted said with another sly smile and he kissed me deeper this time. I didn't leave the kitchen until I heard the front door shut and then I rushed to the front window, barely opening the curtains to peek through.
Ted drove the only car out of our driveway and disappeared from. I counted to twenty in my mind. That's how long it would take for him to get to the stop sign and drive out of the neighborhood. Now I could only hope and pray that he didn't forget anything.
I rushed to Nora and sat next to her. "Nora, go get dressed and pack your Barbie backpack with as much clothes as you can."
Nora frowned at me, swallowing her mouthful of cereal. "Why?"
"We're going on a road trip." I said vaguely. "But you've got to hurry or we'll miss the bus."
"We're taking the bus?" Nora sprang to her feet.
I nodded and smiled, trying to look excited for her. "Yeah! Now go get dressed fast and put as many clothes in that backpack as possible."
"Can my toys come to?"
"Just a couple okay. We've got to catch that bus!"
Nora left her half full cereal bowl and I dove under the couch and started collecting the bundles of cash from all over the house and backyard in my garden.
When all the cash was found, I piled it on the table and ran to the master bedroom. There were files on the three of us, birth certificates and social security cards and important documents like that. I took my file and Nora's, throwing them both into a Ziploc gallon sized bag. Then I took our toothbrushes and toothpaste and shampoo and body wash in another gallon sized bag. I took the clean bedsheets and towels I had done in the laundry and rolled everything so it barely fit in another gallon sized bag. I took Ted's military style backpack (an expensive one I had been shocked to see him buy and I winded up with a black eye for my concern) and shoved everything into the biggest pocket. Then I shoved as much clothes as I could fit into the next two pockets before getting dressed into dark jeans and a gray hoodie, tying my hair up into a bun and putting an baseball cap on.
Nora had gotten dressed. She was wearing black and white striped tights with a red tee shirt and bright yellow rain boots. I looked inside her backpack and was so relieved to see that she had just scooped clothes into the backpack until it could barely fit at all. In either arm she had her raggedy teddy bear and a smaller sized plush of Totoro. I put Totoro into the front pocket of her backpack and said she could play with him later. For good measure I grabbed two books of hers at random and put them in there too.
The entire process of gathering everything took a little over thirty minutes. When we walked outside the house, we left the half eaten bowl of cereal on the table in the living room with the TV still on. I locked the door to the house and grabbed Nora's hand.
"C'mon." I said in what I hoped was a reassuring voice. "We've got to hurry."
"To catch the bus?"
"Yes."
We walked as fast as I could without alerting any neighbors. Nora seemed excited, her backpack was bumping on her body and she kept her grip on my hand tight. I just kept looking over my shoulder and prayed that no one was really noticing us.
The wait for the city bus to take us to Clearwater was about twenty minutes. I paced the whole time while Nora sat on the bench, looking happy to be on an adventure. When the bus finally arrived, I paid for our tickets and Nora was excited to be a bus for the first time in her life.
I bought a car when we got off the bus for five hundred dollars. It was an old Dodge Stratus but I loved the fact that it had a working engine and four tires. As I got on the highway heading north, Nora had her face pressed against her window.
"Where are we going, Mommy?" She asked.
"On a road trip."
"To Disney?"
"No, that Disney trip is after kindergarten, remember?"
"How come Daddy isn't coming on the road trip with us?"
"Daddy doesn't like road trips."
We stopped at one o'clock at a McDonalds for lunch. Seven hours into driving and we had just made it to Pensacola, Florida. Nora was still on the initial excitedness, staring out at the world like it was brand new. For her, this was just a fun road trip her mom decided to take.
We crossed the Florida state line around two and that was the first time I relaxed all day. We drove through Mobile, Alabama and kept going into Biloxi, Mississippi. By that time it was three in the afternoon and Nora thought it was cool that we had suddenly gone through two states.
"When are we turning around?" She finally asked somewhere near Hammond, Louisiana. It was four thirty in the afternoon in Saint Petersburg where we left.
"We're not turning around, Nora." I said in a quiet voice. "We're going to go live where I grew up. Won't that be cool?"
Nora frowned, a crease coming between her eyebrows just like Ted's. "Is this because Daddy hurts you?"
I flinched and cursed myself for thinking that Nora was naive enough to not notice her father beating the shit out of her mother. After a moment's silence I simply said, "Yes."
Nora didn't say anything else until we were in Baton Rouge, Louisiana about forty minutes later. "When are we stopping for dinner?"
"In a bit."
I was nervous again. It was past five in Saint Petersburg and Ted would be walking inside the house any moment now. He would see that we were gone and I was terrified to see what happened next. I had paid for everything in cash, and he would probably look into the checks and see that I had been taking money from him every time he got paid.
But we were in Louisiana and by the time he started thinking rationally after the initial rage, we'd be even farther away and on our way to Charming, California.