Chapter 9

It was a birthday party, so I had to be nice. That was her message. “You have to,” my sister Addie repeated. “Even though I know that since she’s a Gemini, she’s in square to you as a—”

“Are you talking about astrology again? I’m not interested in that star stuff,” I said, and then watched her cheeks get red and felt bad about it. I wasn’t interested but I shouldn’t have said that to Addie, who didn’t have a mean bone in her body.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “Go ahead.”

“I’m just saying that I know you get upset around Mom,” she answered, speaking quietly. “But since you came to her party, you have to try to be nice. Let’s all try it,” she suggested to Sophie, Grace, and Juliet, but only JuJu seemed to concur.

“We all should,” she said, nodding. “We already started out ahead because Nicola’s here. If you hadn’t shown up, then we would have heard about it for the next six months,” JuJu mentioned to me, and patted my head like I was the younger one. “So thanks, Nic. We appreciate it.”

“Yeah, thanks, Nic,” Brenna said in a sing-song voice as she walked out to join us on the sunporch. She carried a huge slab of cake with her, because the Brat had the biggest sweet tooth of everyone, and I knew this was piece number two because we’d all had our share after singing “happy birthday” to our mother. Mom had blown out the candles and then she’d opened the presents we’d brought as my dad sliced up the giant cake. I’d given her flowers, Sophie had presented a gift card, Addie had given her a book about astrology, Brenna had provided a bottle of wine, and JuJu had gifted her with a purse that looked as if it might have cost as much as the roof that Eddie needed. Grace had forgotten to get any present at all even though she lived in this house and had watched my dad hang a “Happy Birthday!” banner over the door.

“What did Nicola do for you now?” Brenna asked Juliet, nudging with her hip so that they could share one of the chairs. The cake almost fell off her plate as she wedged herself in. “Did she cut out her kidney with a dull spoon because you needed an extra?”

“Brenna, don’t be a brat,” Sophie told her, and Addie tried to intervene and calm everyone down. I waited until they were done talking over each other.

“I’m not going to start an argument with Mom right now,” I announced. “Ok? I promise. I came over here because I wanted to see everyone and wish her a happy birthday, that’s all.” The free lunch hadn’t been bad, either, and I’d also taken an extra piece of cake. It was for Jude.

JuJu stared at me. “And?” she prompted. “Is there a catch?”

“No, no catch. I’m going to be nice like Addie asked me to. Is that so hard to believe?”

Apparently it was, because now everyone stared at me like my bruises were showing. They weren’t, because it had been long enough that they had faded to almost nothing and anyway, another ED nurse at Presbyterian named Cora had showed me how to cover them really well. She was great with makeup and had some amazing tips. That was why I was also wearing this color lip gloss, which Juliet had already admired (and borrowed, of course).

“I don’t want to start an argument but I’m not sure what to do to avoid it. I have definitely reached my limit with her complaints about my lack of a boyfriend. You guys weren’t all stuck in the car with her on the way home from Liv’s wedding,” I reminded them.

“I was,” Brenna interjected, but Sophie reminded her that she’d been wearing noise-canceling headphones.

“Unfortunately, I could hear every word,” I continued. “I timed her on my phone, and minus the bathroom breaks and when we stopped for coffee, she talked at me for one hundred and two minutes. I don’t think I can take another word from her about my love life and I bet that no one else wants to hear about theirs, either. Right?”

Three other heads nodded vigorously and then Brenna concurred, and I couldn’t think of the last time she’d agreed with any of us about anything. Even Grace seemed to be paying attention.

“I don’t know if it’s because of Liv’s wedding, but she’s been crazier than ever,” Sophie said. “She got some burner phones to text me since I have her regular number blocked and she’s been coming by, too, and knocking on my windows. The neighbors have called the cops twice.” She sniggered.

“Sophie, don’t get Mom arrested!” JuJu pleaded.

“That would be mean,” Addie agreed. “But can we all make a pact? If Mom starts talking about us getting married…” She thought for a moment, her forehead furrowed. “I don’t want to start an argument either, so how can we stop her?”

“We can tell her to shut up and stay out of our lives, and that no one cares about her opinions,” Brenna suggested.

“No, that would also be mean,” Addie admonished. “How about we all pretend like we don’t hear her?”

“We’ll block her in real time,” Sophie said, and sniggered again. “JuJu, I know you and Mom are besties—”

“We are not!”

She was and we were all aware of it, so we nodded again. She stuck out her tongue at us.

“Anyway,” Sophie continued, “I’m assuming that Nic is right and that this relationship obsession is because of Liv’s wedding, but if you know something—”

“It’s because of Patrick,” Grace said, and we swiveled en masse to look at our youngest sibling. She returned to staring out the window in silence.

“What did you say? What about Patrick?” I asked her.

“He got fired from his job in San Francisco and his new girlfriend dumped him. I overheard it a few weeks ago and ever since then, Mom has been crying a lot and saying that she’s a failure. She told Liv’s mom that we’re all messed up and we’ll die alone.”

“He got fired? He didn’t tell me anything!” Juliet said, and as his twin, she usually did have more of a clue about his life. “But I knew that the woman was going to dump him. Mom said that one time when they went out, his girlfriend got annoyed by how he was acting and she took off in her car without him. She left him at some place that had bad cell service and he had trouble getting a ride. Mom wanted to call the police and report a kidnapping or child abandonment or something.”

In my opinion, he’d probably deserved to be ditched and at twenty-four, he was not a child. “Grace, why didn’t you tell us about Patrick?” I admonished. “You knew that stuff about our brother and you kept it to yourself?”

“Did you want to know? Last summer you said that Patrick was an idiot and you didn’t care to hear another word about him,” she reminded me, and that was the thing about our youngest sister. She missed a lot of what was happening in life, but not everything. Then she would recall annoying details and throw them in your face.

“Of course we want to know about Patrick,” Brenna said angrily. She and Grace had rarely gotten along because for a little while, Brenna had been the youngest. Even twenty years later, she fully resented the loss of that position. “You’re withholding information on purpose because you’re weird.”

“If I’m weird, then it’s not on purpose,” Grace answered. “If I’m weird, I’m withholding information because I’m weird.”

“You’re purposely weird! You wear it like a badge of honor, you freak! Get a job.”

“You sound like Dad,” Sophie mentioned, and that set Brenna off on her.

“Girls!” I said, using my big sister voice, and they finally stopped and listened. “What are we going to do about Mom right now so that we can safely get through this party? Do we want to go with Addie’s suggestion and ignore her when she mentions our lack of relationships?”

Addie raised her hand. “Aye.”

“Yeah. Aye,” Juliet agreed, and also held up her arm.

There were three more ayes from Sophie, Brenna, and Grace, and I added my own. For once, the vote was unanimous but I wasn’t sure that this approach would help us. Silence might have only given our mother more space to fill with her own words, but I also knew that I wouldn’t last long if she started harping on me. I wouldn’t last without arguing back, anyway, and Addie was right: it was a birthday party. We had to try a new strategy because wasn’t fair to—

“Here you all are,” Mom said as she sailed through the sliding door to join us. “I was just telling your father that it’s so quiet, it’s like someone’s baby is down for a nap. Not any of yours, of course. With how you girls are behaving, that’s not happening. Ever.” She looked from face to face. And one by one, we filed out of the room without speaking.

“It didn’t work,” I said at the nurses’ station at Presbyterian Hospital later that night. “We tried to be deaf to it but she didn’t care if we responded or not. Eventually, we all left, although first I had to reassure her that she doesn’t have oral thrush.” JuJu had been the last to leave and she’d texted that when she finally closed the door behind her, our mother was still going strong. Poor Dad.

“Your mom is a trip,” Jamila said. “I’d go crazy if I were her kid. Why is she pushing this so hard on you? No one needs to jump into the traditional wife-and-mother stuff if she doesn’t want to.” She gestured to herself. “Take me, for example. I’m child-free and loving it.”

“On the other hand, there’s me. I’m four kids deep and losing my mind,” Cora told her, and they both laughed. “No, I’m glad to have them. I had to remind myself of that today when my youngest son got into the bag of flour.”

“Addie did that when she was two,” I said. “I remember it so well because Sophie thought she was a ghost. She was already reading by herself and somehow she’d gotten ahold of some really scary books. She ran out of the house screaming that the spirit of Minnie Quay was in the kitchen.”

“Who the hell is that?” Cora asked.

“Cora, your guy with the broken toe is screaming again,” another nurse called. He sounded a lot like four-year-old Sophie when she’d spotted the ghost.

“Honestly? That behavior from your mother would drive me crazy,” Jamila said as Cora walked off. “It’s exactly why I’m low-contact with my own dad, because I got so tired of him asking when he could give me away at my wedding. My ass belongs to me, and no one’s giving away anything. And I like my boyfriend for now, but I don’t see any reason to try to make it some kind of forever thing.”

“That’s how my sister Sophie feels,” I agreed. “She won’t entertain the idea of a long-term relationship. Although actually, she says she’s done with guys in general. Long-term, short-term, all the terms.”

“What about sex? Because you could say no to marriage but, I mean…”

I shrugged. “She doesn’t talk about that subject.” It wasn’t like it was necessary, after all. Breathing was, water was. Many people could survive without sex. “Anyway, I think the constant harping on marriage makes my other sisters anxious. They want it all, the big white dress and the whole nine yards—at least, Brenna, Addie, and Juliet do. I don’t know about Grace. Grace probably doesn’t know about Grace, either.”

“The big white dress,” Jamila echoed. Even the idea of that made her shudder, so her feelings were very clear. “Are you after that, too?” she asked me.

“At one point, I was,” I admitted. “I wasn’t actively chasing it, but I did have everything mapped out and marriage and kids were part of that.” It was my life plan. “Then for a while it seemed impossible, but lately…” Wait, what was I doing? I was talking to this woman, this person who was not really a friend, as if she really was. “I’m not sure anymore,” I concluded and we were too busy to stand around and chat anyway, so the conversation ended.

I was still thinking about it, though, the next day as I went grocery shopping. I had a long list of things to get for Eddie and a slightly shorter list for my own house. I was trying to chip in more with food purchases, since Jude was cooking so much and I was partaking, but the additional dings to my budget were rough. But I’d been making regular payments to the bank and as long as I wasn’t hit with anything catastrophic, I was going to be able to keep making them. For right now, my house was safe.

I pushed my cart to the end of the aisle, concerned about how much was loaded into it and concerned about my budget as a whole. The problem, of course, was that there always seemed to be something catastrophic teed up for you. Every time you felt like, “Ok, I’m going to make this work,” then you got kicked in the face with a new problem. Like it was waiting just around the corner—

“Nicola?”

I yanked the cart to a halt as I made the turn into the frozen food section. “Oh,” I said aloud. “Hi, Grayson.”

“Hi,” my ex-boyfriend answered. It had been several years since I’d seen him, but he looked pretty much the same. I glanced down at his hand holding a basket of groceries. Yes, he still had those little fingers.

In turn, he glanced over my scrubs, and I remembered exactly how he felt about them and the hospital smell that came off them. “Still nursing?” he asked.

“Yes, this is still my career. Still working for your dad?”

“I’m now a partner at the firm,” he snapped back, and I also remembered quite well that he hadn’t liked to be reminded of how he’d gotten his job. He returned to pleasantries. “How are you?”

“Doing great,” I said, and as I spoke, a little girl walked up and tugged on the hem of his shorts.

“Daddy, I’m cold. Can we get ice cream?”

He bent and picked her up. “What did Mommy say?”

Daddy? Mommy? “Is this your daughter?” I asked incredulously.

They both turned to look at me out of nearly identical faces, except that hers was smaller and cuter. Yes, she was definitely his daughter.

“I got married six years ago,” he told me. “Nice to see you.” And he and the little girl walked off. She watched me over his shoulder with the same eyes that Grayson had.

I stared at his back until I realized that I was also cold, and I had to get home. I thought about our chance meeting the whole way there, because it was just strange. It was weird, wasn’t it? “I thought that it was so odd,” I mentioned later to Jude. “Wasn’t it?”

He sat at the kitchen table and was involved in drawing something as I cooked. “Yep, it’s funny to run into people after you haven’t seen them for a while. I bumped into someone from high school the other day, too, and the guy looks exactly the same. It was uncanny.”

I shook my head, because that hadn’t been what I’d meant. It was odd that I’d gone to my mother’s party and the main topic had been marriage and children, and then I’d talked about it to my “friends” at work, and then I’d run into an ex and he was, in fact, married and had a child.

“Everything’s about that,” I muttered. “It keeps showing up, that’s what’s strange.” Addie would have found some cosmic connection, like of course I was seeing it because Pluto was in my greenhouse or something like that, and that answer would have satisfied her. I was very unsettled, though. Grayson was married? I never would have thought he’d go in that direction, never. He’d certainly never considered marrying me. Never Nicola.

“What was the story with the guy?”

“Huh?” I asked, and Jude repeated himself. “The story with me and Grayson?” I frowned. “Nothing, really. We didn’t get along very well so eventually we broke up, but there was no big…well, I did tell him how disgusting I thought nepotism was, and that made him upset due to the fact that his job is with his grandfather’s company. We did have a big fight, but I was right that he didn’t deserve that position. No other firm had wanted to hire him. And there was the problem with his fingers…never mind.” I’d remembered how critical my mom had been about the various rationales behind my break-ups, and Grayson’s tiny hands were not relevant here. “He’s a normal guy, I guess, but him, with a daughter? That part was so unexpected. I was shocked.”

“Why? He was allowed to date other people after you, wasn’t he? Having a daughter—” He stopped. “Speaking of break-ups, Sergio’s girlfriend dumped him again,” he told me. “I know how invested you are in their relationship.”

“I’m not invested! But did she really? Did they get into another argument about him making her car payments? He shouldn’t be doing that. Did you tell him what I thought about it?”

“No, and I also didn’t delve too deeply into why they split, but I think it might be permanent this time. He’s scowling and playing death metal so loud that I have to wear earplugs,” Jude answered, and pointed to the pot on the stove. “Is that almost done?”

“You should wear ear protection anyway,” I reminded him and he said that he did, mostly, and came over to check on the progress of the meal. I didn’t mind if he tasted as long as he used a clean spoon that went immediately into the sink and wasn’t reused.

But my thoughts were still on this weird confluence of relationship stuff, and I brought it up again as we finally ate. “Are you against marriage because your parents were so dysfunctional?”

He finished chewing and swallowed, and then he took a drink of water before he answered. “Did I say I was against it?”

“I know that you’re thirty-four and you told me that you’ve only gotten close to it one time,” I pointed out. “To me, it’s a signal that you’re opposed.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” But he took another bite and finished the meal on his plate, and he didn’t say anything else, either.

I watched him and realized that I had something to add to his list of flaws in my journal. So far I had crossed out most of them, like “hair too short,” “too thin,” and “pries into my business,” because they were either no longer true or I didn’t believe that I’d been entirely correct in my judgment of him. But there were still a few items remaining on the page, such as “terrible laundry folder” and “leaves seat up,” and now I was going to add another one: “annoyingly taciturn on occasions.”

“So you’re not opposed to marriage,” I stated, and he didn’t have much of a response until I reached over and tapped his hand.

“May I help you?” He smiled at me.

“Answer, please.”

“No, I’m not opposed to marriage. No, I’ve never been married, but I don’t have anything particularly against it. It may work for some. No, it didn’t for my parents and from what you’ve said, it doesn’t for yours.”

“You told me that you asked a woman to marry you but you didn’t want to go through with it, and you knew she’d say no. Why did you do that?” I could think of several reasons and I’d made another list of those in my journal, but he’d deflected my questions about the situation before.

I thought he would again, but this time he spoke right away without preparation, and he didn’t seem to dissemble. “I asked her to marry me because she was pregnant. She got pregnant but we weren’t…” Jude finally put down his fork and rubbed his hand over his longer hair. “We were friends, mostly. Neither of us was interested in being together for anything more than fun. We had a birth control failure, and there we were.”

“What happened?” I asked and waited again for him to clam up and then give me only a smidgeon of information instead of the entire truth. Again, he surprised me.

“She wanted to have the baby. She said that she might not get another chance and she was ready to be a mother. She told me that I didn’t have to be a part of anything, but I was already a part of everything. The baby was our responsibility, both of ours. I wasn’t involved just because I felt like I had to be, though. I really wanted to be a part of my daughter’s life.”

I was stunned. “Are you serious? You’re a father?”

“I was. I used to be,” he answered.

I watched his fists clench on the table and saw his chest start to rise and fall faster as his respiratory rate increased. His eyes widened and his cheeks greyed.

“I used to be,” he repeated. “Nicola, I can’t talk about this.”

“Ok,” I told him. I reached across the table again but instead of tapping his hand, I took it in mine. “Ok, that’s all right. We don’t have to.” I shook my head slowly and he mimicked the movement. “No, we don’t have to. I can see that you’re feeling anxious, but it’s all right.”

He nodded and his fingers wrapped around mine, holding on. I put my other hand on his arm and gently rubbed his skin. We sat quietly like that for a long time and I watched him carefully, noticing when his pallor decreased and his breathing slowed down.

“Want to go take a walk?” I suggested.

He cleared his throat. “There are dishes. Our plates and silverware.”

“That’s ok. I’ll get to it later,” I answered. “How about a walk?” He nodded, and we went out the front.

It had rained earlier and the street had some puddles, but it had turned into a nice evening. We went along the sidewalk and I covertly observed him for any additional signs of agitation. I talked desultorily about my sister Juliet and the purse she’d gotten for our mom’s birthday, because Brenna had reported to Addie and Addie had reported to me that it had cost upwards of a few hundred dollars. “But it was a really nice purse. JuJu has expensive taste,” I finished, and snuck another glance at him.

“Nicola, I’m ok. I know you’re monitoring me.”

“I’m only checking in.”

“I’m ok,” he repeated.

That was obviously something that someone would say if he were lying and planning to go drink, which would lead him to spiral and ruin his life again. He’d told me things about being the only person responsible for his alcoholism, but if he fell off the wagon then I would know exactly why and I knew who I would blame for it.

“If you’re worried that I’m going to drink and ruin my life again, I won’t,” he told me. “And if I did, it wouldn’t be your fault for making me talk about something hard.”

“I’ve told a lot of people that they’re not responsible for the behavior of others,” I answered. “I’ve said that to a hundred different moms, dads, spouses, and kids. Friends and girl- and boyfriends, too.” We walked a few paces. “It’s easy to say those words but it’s hard to be on the other side, the side where you’re worried about someone. It’s not a lack of trust,” I added. “It’s not. It’s…” It was complicated.

“I could tell you not to worry about me, but I bet that you would anyway no matter what I say.”

“I would worry,” I agreed. “But you don’t need to, because what we were just talking about after dinner—you don’t ever have to discuss that topic again. We never have to bring it up, never.” I was pretty sure that I already knew what had happened, anyway, because I’d seen parents in the ED… “Never,” I repeated.

“No, I want to, but not right now. I will want to talk to you about it someday but it’s hard. I don’t ever bring it up, not in my meetings, not ever.” His voice was quiet as he said those words.

“Want me to tell you more about the birthday party instead?”

“You’ve shared a lot of information about that already. I know more about purses than I ever thought I would.” We kept walking, toward a house that was undergoing major renovation and was basically just a shell at the moment. We paused to examine the progress since the last time we’d passed by and he suggested, “Let’s talk about Eddie’s house and the work that needs to happen there.”

I glanced over at him. “Work at Eddie’s? Ok. What’s up?”

“Cal, a.k.a. Body Art Gandalf, has a friend who’s a roofer. I went over to Eddie’s place with him yesterday to take a look, and he said it’s in bad shape.”

“I thought so,” I sighed. “What’s the damage?” How much was I going to have to spend?

“Well, that’s the thing. There is a lot of damage to the structure,” Jude said. “Eddie let us into the house to check the attic and it’s not just the roof that needs work. All the sheathing needs to be replaced and also some of the rafters. He needs new insulation and the bad news is—”

That wasn’t the bad news?

“Water leaked into the upstairs ceiling and into the walls. It’s not the kind of thing that’s going to get better if we leave it alone, but it’s going to be a job, even if I help out with it to keep the costs down.”

“You don’t have to help with that,” I said automatically, and felt sick to my stomach. “I better get to it soon because you’re right, it will only get worse, not better. It has been deteriorating but I never went up there to look at it.”

“Well,” he said again, “there are lots of spiders in that attic. It makes sense that someone wouldn’t want to go and poke around.”

I also hadn’t wanted to see, because there was nothing I could have done about it. I’d had to pay both of our property tax bills in January and that had been when I’d missed another mortgage payment, because Eddie’s house had also suffered a huge problem with the pipes and they had to be repaired so that he could use his sinks, shower, and toilet. It was all a mess.

“I’ll figure it out,” I said hollowly.

“We’ll work it out.” He nudged me and we resumed our stroll. “Eddie was asking me a lot of questions about you. Sounds like you’ve known each other for a while, but he’s been a little in the dark.”

“What do you mean? What did you tell him?” Now my voice sounded nervous.

“I talked about your siblings. I told him how I liked meeting Sophie when she came over for dinner and I bet I’d like the rest of them.”

“You might even be able to take Brenna,” I said absently. If water had leaked into Eddie’s walls, then there might be mold—there probably was. Mold, with his lung problems? Sugar.

“He didn’t know you had so much family. He didn’t know that you work two jobs, either. He was complaining that when you come over, you’re always running right back out to go somewhere else, and I said of course you were. You’re doing more in a week than one person can handle, so you’re always on the run.”

“I can handle it,” I answered. “What did he say about that? I don’t want him to think that I can’t do it all.”

“He didn’t say much. He was more thoughtful.”

So was I, and my own thoughts were focused on Jude and his revelation about his child and also how I would solve the problem of Eddie’s roof. We’d now turned four corners, so we were almost back to my house. As we approached, Tamara and Michael shot out of their front door and only skidded to a halt on the opposite sidewalk when I used my big sister voice to yell at them to stop.

“Can we come over?” Tamara asked.

He missed his daughter. No wonder he liked being with these guys so much. “Yes,” I answered before he had a chance to speak. “I went to the grocery store today and I think we have all the ingredients for cookies. Would you want to help make them?”

“You have to wash your hands, a lot,” Jude warned. “Only say yes if you won’t complain about that.”

“We can wash our hands,” Michael said. They were both leaning over the curb so I waved them across and they darted over to join us. “I already did that before, but I could do it again.”

“And you have to tell your mom where you are,” I directed, because now that I knew Shannon a little bit better, I had the idea that she would have been concerned if she wasn’t aware of their location. Michael, the responsible older brother, was already typing out a message on his phone.

I’d forgotten what it was like to bake with kids, because it had been a long time since Grace was little. Between Jude and me, we managed to keep the mess down and to keep Tamara from burning herself in the oven. Yes, in the oven, because she stuck her head in and the heat didn’t deter her from starting to climb further.

But the cookies were not too bad. “They’re delicious,” Michael told me, and put another one into his mouth.

“Be careful! Don’t eat so fast that you choke. Chew,” I ordered, and poured him another glass of milk.

“They’re not as good as my mommy’s, but I like them a lot,” Tamara said. “I like them a real lot.” She also ate another, and then another.

“Let’s make up a bag for your mom, and then I’ll walk you home,” Jude suggested. “It’s getting late.”

It was, and as always, I was so tired. I watched them cross and then he returned alone. “You going to bed?” he asked me.

“Are you going out or something?”

“No, I’ll probably watch a movie.” He had gotten an old tablet from his boss at the woodshop, and the cracked screen didn’t seem to disturb his viewing pleasure.

“I was going to stay up too,” I responded immediately. “I don’t feel like sleeping yet.”

“Really? Because you’ve been yawning a lot.”

I stifled another one. “No, I’m awake. What are you watching?”

It was another ancient science fiction thing, which was his favorite. It sounded dreadful.

“That sounds great,” I said. “I love time travel and aliens. Let’s watch that.”

Jude stared at me for a moment, and he seemed to be about to say something. But then he nodded and went to the couch. I joined him there but instead of relaxing, I sat up straight, which was one of the techniques I always used to stay awake. If you let your back lean into a chair or the driver’s seat, you were much more likely to conk out. I also pinched myself pretty hard, and tried to make mental lists of things to get done. Pain and brain activity helped me to keep alert and there was plenty to go think about tonight after everything I’d heard today.

“Why don’t you go up to bed?” he proposed after a while.

I was leaning, I realized, somewhat like the famous tower in Italy but at a much more severe angle, and I was precariously close to falling onto the floor. “No, I’m into the movie,” I answered, and then realized that the screen was black. “It’s over?”

“I think I’m going to turn in,” he said. “I’m pretty tired.”

“Oh, ok. If you’re going to bed, then I will, too.” We both stood and then I had to sit again, and when I walked toward the stairs, I had to take a moment to hold onto the back of the couch because I felt so dizzy.

“Let’s go together.” He put his arm around me and we walked just like he’d done when I’d come home with the bruises. “Thanks for staying up with me, Nicola. I appreciate it.”

“I was into the movie,” I told him. He didn’t need to think that I was still monitoring, even if I was, and he didn’t need to know that I planned to sleep with my door open so I would hear if he went back downstairs and went out. I stopped and rested against the door frame.

“I’ll walk you in,” he suggested, and further accompanied me over to my bed.

“You did this when I came home after I got kicked,” I mentioned.

“Yep. I guess we both worry.”

“I guess so, but you don’t need to about me,” I told him as I lay across the comforter. I was too tired to pull it down.

“You don’t need to, either,” he said, and I was asleep before he made it out of the door, so I couldn’t tell him that of course I would. I always worried about the people I loved.