Page 56 of In This Together

‘Couldn’t they have jumped from a bridge or a building or something?’ another said.

‘All I want is to get home on a Friday night with my bottle of wine,’ said another.

Whoever said humanity was dead?

Though, despite having a little more compassion, Hannah couldn’t disagree with the inconvenience they had all been caused.

It was the first week of Rod’s new job in Queens. She was frantically trying to get hold of him, wondering where he was and when he would make it home for the kids, since the sitter got off at 5.30p.m. She wasn’t worried about Luke, or even so much about Jackson – they were old enough to fend for themselves for a few hours – but TJ was not.

Rod finished work earlier than Hannah, but he also had to pass through Penn Station and she had no idea if he had already made it through.

She tried calling his cell again. No answer. She called home. No answer. She called the sitter. No answer.

‘Doesn’t anyone answer their goddamn phones?’ she shouted into the station, her voice lost in a mass of noise.

As if the big man upstairs had heard her taking his name in vain and wondered what the heck was up, her cell phone rang.

‘Rod! Whereareyou?’

‘Babe? You there? Han?’

‘Rod? Can you hear me?’

‘Hold up, one sec.’

‘Rod?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I can hear you, babe. Whatssup?’

‘I’m stuck at Penn Station. Are you with the kids?’

‘No, babe. My first week, the guys wanted to take me out for a drink, you know, welcome me to the team.’

‘That’s great, Rod, but the sitter finishes in…’ She checked the digital clock on the train departure board. ‘The sitter finished twenty minutes ago.’

‘No, babe, I got her to stay until six.’

‘I hate to state the obvious here, Rod, but neither of us will be home by six.’ At that moment, God was definitely looking in on her because the departure board refreshed and gave her four minutes to get to the platform for her train home. ‘Rod, I’ve got to go, the train is coming.’

She ran toward the designated platform, pushing and shoving other commuters, feeling like Kevin McCallister’s mom inHome Alone,eventually making it onto her train in time.

Squished like a sardine in a can, she managed to dial the sitter and bring her phone to her ear. After a broken conversation, the sitter, Hannah thought, agreed to stay until 6.40p.m., at which time she absolutelyhadto leave.

Hannah watched the minutes tick by on her cell phone, working out with each passing second how long her kids might be left unattended between the sitter leaving and her arriving.How much harm can come to them in five or ten minutes?A teenager, an eleven-year-old and a baby…Oh, hell.

She had visions of TJ choking to death as his brothers played computer games. Or worse, lying in a heap at the bottom of the staircase, where they had fought on the landing and tumbled to their deaths.

When the train pulled in, Hannah ran from the station, hardly breaking stride – despite her heels, despite the fact she had not run the distance since track in high school – until she arrived home.

She burst through the front door to the house. ‘Kids?’ she managed, panting.

Music was blaring upstairs – some godawful rap; the teenager’s latest fad. That she couldn’t hear any child was disconcerting enough to make her energy-drained legs carry her up the staircase.

She followed the rhythmic expletives to Luke’s bedroom, where he was lying on his bed, playing computer games.

She picked up his headset and plugged it into his stereo, stopping the racket. ‘Is everything okay? Where’s TJ? Where’s Jackson?’

‘They’re fine. They’re making potions or something in the bathroom.’ He snatched the headphones from her, pulled them over his ears and continued playing the game he hadn’t paused.

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