6. Nora #2
By the third question, I’m laughing softly while draining pasta into the sink before signing toward him, Go wash your hands.
He groans dramatically, but obeys anyway.
We eat cross-legged on the floor because the folding table broke three months ago and replacing felt stupid when we already barely fit in here. Paxton signs through half the meal while shoveling spaghetti into his mouth too fast.
Slow down, I sign automatically.
He signs back immediately, I am slow.
I shake my head while signing, You absolutely are not.
He laughs silently at his own joke before taking another giant bite, curls falling into his eyes while spaghetti sauce smears faintly at the corner of his mouth. I reach over automatically with a napkin and wipe it away while he grins at me completely unbothered by the mess he’s making of himself.
For a little while, things almost feel normal again. The apartment is warm from the stove, cartoons flashing muted colors across the TV, while Paxton keeps signing random commentary at me between bites of dinner. It’s enough distraction that I almost forget the phone call from work entirely.
Then dishes happen.
The bills sitting on the counter catch my attention again while I scrub spaghetti sauce off chipped plates in the sink. My chest tightens slowly the longer I stare at the overdue notices propped beside the microwave.
Five thousand dollars due by Friday.
Three days.
No job.
Cold panic starts creeping back in, harder this time, while water runs over my hands. Maybe I can find another housekeeping job quickly. Maybe I can pull money from the tiny emergency savings account I’ve been pretending still qualifies as savings.
Maybe—
My phone rings and when I glance at it I freeze, because it’s an unknown number, but I recognize that Nevada area code.
Everything inside me goes completely still.
For one irrational second, I genuinely consider letting it ring out. I haven’t spoken to anyone from Nevada in years. Black Rock exists in my brain like something buried alive on purpose, something I keep contained by refusing to look directly at it.
Then the phone keeps ringing.
Something ugly and instinctive twists low in my stomach while I dry my hands on a dish towel and answer anyway.
“Hello?”
“Is this Nora Martin?”
My grip tightens around the phone automatically. “Who’s asking?”
“My name is Daniel Mercer. I’m an estate attorney in Black Rock, Nevada. I’m calling regarding the recent passing of Sharleen Grady.”
The room tilts slightly around me.
Mrs. Grady.
Dead.
I lean harder against the counter because suddenly my knees don’t feel fully reliable anymore. Across the room, Paxton keeps lining toy dinosaurs along the baseboard completely unaware that the name alone is enough to drag me backward a full decade in a single second.
“Oh,” I say quietly.
It isn’t grief. Definitely not grief.
Just shock maybe, because for so long Mrs. Grady felt impossible to escape completely. Like she existed in every version of my life whether I wanted her there or not.
“You were listed in her will,” the lawyer continues professionally. “Specifically regarding her residence and several personal belongings.”
I blink slowly. “What?”
“She left you the house.”
I almost laugh. Mrs. Grady spent our entire childhood telling us we ruined her life, and now she leaves me her house?
“There may also be additional documents and items relevant to you personally,” he continues. “We’ll need you physically present to complete transfer paperwork and inventory the property.”
Behind me, Paxton glances up from the floor where he’s now arranging the dinosaurs into what looks like some kind of prehistoric battle formation. His eyebrows pull together immediately when he notices my expression.
You okay? he signs.
I force a smile automatically before signing back, Yeah, bug.
The lawyer keeps talking while my eyes drift slowly around the apartment. The peeling paint near the radiator. The overdue bills. The mattress on the floor beneath Paxton’s loft bed. The tiny kitchenette, barely large enough for both of us to stand in at the same time.
New York is killing me slowly. One bill at a time. One impossible situation after another. One exhausted morning layered on top of the next, until I barely recognize my own life anymore.
And somehow the thought hits hardest now that I don’t even know why I’m still here.
Because Valentina wanted us to be here.
That realization lands so suddenly it almost knocks the breath out of me. For years, I convinced myself New York represented freedom. Opportunity. Independence.
But the truth is simpler than that. It was our dream. Mine and hers. And she’s been gone six years.
“Nora?”
I blink back toward the phone. “Yes?”
“If you intend to claim the property, we’ll need you here fairly quickly.”
I look at Paxton again.
He’s building a dinosaur war now, completely oblivious to the fact that our entire life may have just shifted sideways in the span of one phone call. His curls bounce every time he moves another dinosaur dramatically into battle, tiny hands moving fast and expressive even when he’s alone.
Black Rock means risk.
Memories.
Questions.
It means being back in Nevada and far too close to Vegas where memories stay buried.
Where three men’s ghosts still haunt the back of my mind.
I haven’t spoken their names out loud in years, but sometimes late at night I still see flashes of masks and whiskey kisses and rough hands against white sheets.
Sometimes I still wonder if they searched for me after, if they were good or bad.
Sometimes I hate myself for wondering at all.
But Black Rock also means something else now. A house. No rent. Maybe breathing room for the first time in years. A bigger place with a yard, and a town with a lower cost of living.
My eyes land on the tuition notice again. Five thousand dollars. I close my eyes briefly before opening them and looking at my son.
“We’ll be there in four days,” I say.