Chapter 5 #2
You, I thought. The promise. Mateo. The sound of your grief through these thin walls and my complete inability to do anything about it.
I didn't say any of that. Just held her gaze in the moonlight, two people who'd been suffering alone in apartments twelve feet apart, finally admitting they'd heard each other the whole time.
"We are partners in suffering, aren't we?" Lucy whispered.
Something almost like a smile crossed her face. Broken, exhausted, but real.
"Yeah," I said. "I guess we are."
I didn't leave. And she didn't ask me to.
Instead, I settled onto the floor beside the bed, my back against the wall, my eyes on the door.
She didn't say anything. But after a while, her breathing evened out, and the tension drained from her shoulders, and she slept.
I stayed awake. Watching. Listening.
Keeping the promise.
Morning came gray and quiet, light filtering through the curtains I hadn't closed.
Lucy was still asleep, her face softer than I'd seen it, the lines of tension temporarily smoothed away.
I kept watching her for a moment longer than I should have, then pushed myself up from the floor, my back protesting the hours on the hard surface, and decided to make some coffee.
She appeared in the kitchen doorway twenty minutes later, wrapped in the blanket I'd given her last night, her hair messy and her eyes still heavy with sleep.
"Coffee?" I offered it to her as I moved my arm toward her with the coffee pot.
She nodded, and I poured her a cup. Fixed it up without thinking: cream, no sugar, extra hot. The way Mateo used to make it for her, the way I'd watched him do a hundred times during Sunday breakfasts at the firehouse, the detail that had stuck in my memory even though I'd tried so hard to forget.
Lucy took the mug, wrapped her hands around it, and stood still.
"How did you know?"
I realized what I'd done. Handed her coffee prepared exactly the way she liked it, without asking, like we'd been doing this for years instead of hours.
"Lucky guess," I joked around.
She didn't believe me. I could see it in her eyes, the question forming, the suspicion that this was more than a coincidence. But she didn't push. Just took a sip, and some of the tension left her shoulders.
"Thank you," she said. "For last night."
"We should go to the sheriff's office after breakfast."
Her expression flickered, but she didn't argue.
Sheriff Daniels was a big man with a gray mustache and the kind of steady presence that made you believe everything would be okay. He'd been the sheriff in West Valley Springs for twenty years, knew everyone by name, and took his job seriously in a way that big-city cops rarely did.
He also owed me his life, from a fire in '09 that I never talked about again, but I’m sure he’d never forgotten.
"Cal." He shook my hand when we walked in, his eyes moving to Lucy with careful interest. "And Lucy—"
"It's Moreno now. Please."
He paused, something shifting in his expression as he read her face. "Ms. Moreno. I've seen you around town since you moved back. Didn't realize you two knew each other."
"We're neighbors," I said. "And she has a problem."
We sat in his office, and Lucy told the story again. The ex-boyfriend. The texts. Denver, the restraining order that didn't work, the break-in last night. I watched her face as she spoke, saw the effort it took to keep her voice steady, to lay out the facts without falling apart.
Daniels listened without interrupting, just taking notes, his expression growing darker as the story went on. When she finished, he set down his pen and looked at her with something I recognized: the particular determination of a man who'd decided someone who needed protecting.
"We're going to file a report," he said. "I'll call Judge Miller this afternoon. We can have a Temporary Restraining Order signed by the end of the day. I know you said they didn't work in Denver, but this is my town, and I don't let things slide."
"What if he violates it?" Lucy's voice was small.
"Then he'll spend the night in my jail, and we'll go from there.
" Daniels leaned forward, holding her gaze.
"Ms. Moreno, I'm not going to promise you that piece of paper will stop a determined man.
It doesn't stop anyone, but creates a record and gives us a record.
Gives us grounds to act. Also tells him that you're not alone here. That you've got people in your corner."
Lucy nodded, but I could see the doubt in her eyes. The learned lesson that protection was a promise that never got kept.
I put my hand on the small of her back. Didn't think about it, just did it, a steady pressure that showed her that I'm here without words.
She didn't pull away.
Back at the apartment, I installed a new deadbolt on her door, checked her windows, installed a chain lock for good measure, showed her how to use it, and made sure she understood the importance of the extra seconds it would buy.
I'd already left a message with the landlord that it was a safety upgrade, no argument. He hadn't called back to object.
"You're being thorough," she said, watching me from the doorway.
"That's the idea."
"Cal." She waited until I looked up from the drill. "I can't keep staying at your place. I need to get back to my life."
Something tightened in my chest. I ignored it.
"I know," I said. "But not tonight. Give me a few more days to make sure that this place is secure. Let Daniels do some digging on where your ex is. And then we'll figure out a plan."
She studied my face, searching for something. I didn't know what.
"Why are you doing this?"
There it was again. That question. The one I couldn't answer honestly without explaining everything.
Because I promised Mateo.
"Because you need help," I said again. "And I can offer it."
Lucy looked at me for a long moment. Then, softly said: "He used to say that too. Mateo. That he'd always be there when I needed help."
I didn't know what to say to that but "He would have wanted you to be safe."
It was the only thing I could think of. The only thing that felt true.
"Would he have wanted you to be the one keeping me safe?"
I didn't know if Mateo had imagined, when he made me promise, that it would look like this. That I'd be installing locks on her door and making her coffee and sitting on the floor beside the bed at three in the morning.
"I think he just wanted you to have someone," I finally admitted. "I think that's all he ever wanted."
Lucy's eyes glistened, but she didn't cry. Just nodded, once, and turned away and kept saying.
"Guest room tonight," her voice was thick. "After last night, you can't keep sleeping on the floor beside me. Your back will hate you."
It wasn’t permission. It wasn’t forgiveness. But it was the beginning of something I didn’t know.