Page 44 of Exchanged

“There’s someone downstairs,” Emma whispers.

Trevor and Katrina stare at each other, frozen in their seats. My body grows hot and rigid, my brain skipping like an old scratched record. Someone’s downstairs, it says. What if they come upstairs? What if they have a knife? What if they have a gun?

We’re being robbed.

Call the cops.

Robber.

Cops.

Like that old game, I think dumbly. Cops and robbers. I almost laugh.

“What do we do?” Katrina whispers.

But Garrett has already leaped off the bed and is rushing out of my bedroom.

He’s only wearing socks, my brain notes. The intruder might have a knife or a gun, and Garrett has only socks and shorts and a sweatshirt.

Katrina has her phone out, forcing her trembling hands to dial 911, and Emma is shouting Garrett’s name, and Trevor is up and peering through the window.

I jump off the bed and chase after Garrett.

By the time I tumble down our steep stairs onto the second floor, Garrett is halfway down the main staircase, hurling himself into the darkness of our store. I hear a man’s voice and the sound of running and then Garrett is shouting, calling him a fucker, telling him to get the fuck out of our store, that he’ll beat the shit out of him.

Glass shatters.

I reach the staircase as Garrett bolts through our front door into the night.

Dear God, don’t let him have a gun, I think with each step. Don’t let him have a knife.

The window of our front door lies in shards across the entryway. I skirt around the glass and out onto our front porch in time to see an SUV screeching down the street. When I reach Garrett, he’s standing at the end of our pathway, chest heaving, eyes wild.

“That fucker got away!” he says.

Relief floods through me. He wasn’t hurt. Our store just got robbed, and Garrett is able to be angry about that because he isn’t lying on our path with a bullet in his stomach. Emma is safe and Trevor is safe and Katrina is safe and everything will be okay.

Then I notice the dark trail of blood dripping onto Garrett’s white socks.

Dad clutches Emma and me against his chest in the flashing lights of the police car. He arrived after the ambulance, rushing from his truck without bothering to kill the engine or close the door. Trevor, Katrina, and Aunt Liz stand nearby, speaking with a police officer.

Dad releases us and turns to look at our front door hanging open into the gaping darkness of our entryway. He steps onto the porch, and Emma and I follow. Our Packers flag hangs limply in the still night air, our chairs and potted plants resting pleasantly in their usual places.

We move inside, avoiding the bits of glass scattered across the parquet floor, and Dad flips on the overhead light. I’m shocked at how ordinary everything appears. Aside from the glass, there seems to be no evidence that someone broke into our shop. Then I notice that the glass cabinet housing our small collection of old jewelry is hanging open, its contents missing.

My brain begins calculating the loss. Several of the rings and lockets from that case were worth hundreds, which means we lost thousands of dollars. For a larger business, this would be bad but manageable. For us, with our razor-thin profit margin, it’s devastating.

But Dad’s focus is not on the jewelry case. He stands at our front desk, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

The cash register. It’s gone.

“How much was in it?” I breathe.

“We had our biggest sale of the year today,” Dad says quietly. “Scott Makela is turning that old apartment building on Iron Street into a bed-and-breakfast. He bought the dining table and chairs from the basement. And two mahogany cabinets, along with a set of hand-painted china. It was right at the end of the day. He paid with cash, but the bank had already closed, so I thought I’d go tomorrow…” He trails off, his voice pleading and defeated.

“How much?” I ask again.

“Five thousand. Give or take.”