Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Luca
She talks too much. She probably does it when she's nervous, words running over each other like she has to fill the air before I do.
I used to hate it in people. In her it's something else.
She apologizes for the bear. She apologizes for the hug.
She apologizes for the apologies, which is the part that almost makes my mouth move to a smile.
"Sit down," I say again.
"I told you I'm fine standing—"
"Gemma. Sit the fuck down."
She turns, looks at the stool, looks at me, says, "Yes. Of course. Sorry," and sits.
I'm thinking about that hug. A small body against my leg, arms not even all the way around, and the floor under me gone soft for half a second.
I told her to go back to the bedroom because if she'd stayed another beat I would have put my hand on her hair, and I haven't put my hand on a child's head in six fucking years.
I look up. She's holding herself like she's about to be told the rent's late. Eyes wet at the edges already, before I've said a goddamn thing. Her hands are in her lap.
"I'm not taking you to your parents' house," I say.
She breathes out. Nods fast.
"Oh. No. Yeah, of course. That's — I figured. I can take a bus, or — there's a Greyhound, I think, and I can pay you back when—"
"Gemma."
She stops.
"You're not going to your parents' house."
A beat. She laughs. Small, confused, like I've made a joke she didn't catch.
"Sorry, I—" She tilts her head. "I don't—"
She starts to stand.
My hand moves before I tell it to. Flat on her thigh, just above the knee, holding her where she is.
She looks down at my hand.
She looks back up.
Her face goes still in a way I know.
Fuck.
I pull my hand back.
"I didn't mean to scare you," I say. "I'm sorry."
She doesn't answer. Her throat works. Her eyes don't leave my hands.
"Gemma. Look at me."
She does. Slow.
"I'm not going to touch you again without you knowing it's coming. You hear me?"
"Okay," she says. Just that. The whole sentence.
I let the quiet sit for a second so she can feel the room go back to normal size.
"You can't leave from here," I say.
"Luca—"
"Not yet. Not today. Not tomorrow."
"What are you talking about?" she says.
"You stay here. For now."
She blinks at me. The wet at the edges of her eyes is gone. Something harder takes its place.
"Why?"
"Because I fucking said so."
The words land wrong. I hear them land wrong. Her shoulders pull back. Her chin lifts. The stool scrapes the floor when she stands.
"No."
Her finger comes up between us, level with my nose. The nail is bitten down to the quick. Her hand is shaking, but not from being scared. From the other thing. She's mad.
"I am not a goddamn dog," she says. "I don't sit and stay because some man tells me to. I don't take rules from a boss. You don't get to decide where I sleep or where my kid sleeps because you bought her a fucking bear."
I tilt my head to the right. Look at her past the finger.
Her hair is loose on one side, caught behind her ear on the other. Two pink spots on her cheeks. Her mouth is open a little because she's breathing through it.
She looks good angry.
The thought arrives like a slap I gave myself. I don't need to know that.
The corner of my mouth pulls. I can't stop it in time.
"Relax," I say.
"Don't tell me to relax."
"You need to. You're shaking."
"I'm shaking because I'm pissed off. Not because I'm scared of you. There's a difference, Luca."
"I see the difference."
The finger is still up. She doesn't lower it. Her eyes track mine and they don't slide off.
"Listen to me," she says. Her voice drops half a step. "Listen. I didn't see anything. Whatever you do, whatever your business is — I didn't see it. I won't go to the police. I will never say your name. I don't even know your last—"
"Farro."
"—I won't say it. I won't say Farro. I won't say anything. You let me take my daughter to the bus station and you never see us again and it's like none of this happened."
I don't answer.
"Say something," she says.
I keep my mouth shut. Because what I want to say is, You think this is about you keeping your mouth shut. You think the problem in this room is me, and that's almost funny.
What I want to say is, The men your dead husband stole from will find your mother's house by lunchtime tomorrow, and you'll bring them through her front door with a duffel bag and a four-year-old.
What I want to say is, Put your hand down before I take it.
I say nothing. For now.
"Luca." Her voice climbs. "Talk. Open your mouth and say words. That's how this works."
"Sit down, Gemma."
Gemma
"There. Sitting. Happy?"
"I had someone look into your husband," he says.
The room shrinks. I knew he would. He said as much last night. Still, the words land like a hand on the back of my neck.
"Okay."
"Dominik owed money. A lot of it. To people who don't write it off."
"How much."
"You don't actually want the number."
He's right. I don't. The number won't change anything. The number is just a shape to hang the fear on, and the fear's already hung.
"Who," I say instead.
"Albanians. Out of Cicero. Your husband was running a front for them and he took off the top for himself, and they noticed."
I nod. I don't know what my face is doing. I keep my hands flat where they are because if I move them I think they'll shake and I don't want him to see that.
"Okay," I say again. The word sits there like a coin on a table.
"They're still looking for the money. They've been looking for two years. They don't stop."
"Okay."
He uncrosses his arms. He walks two steps closer and stops, like he's measured the distance he's allowed. He looks at me the way he looked at the man in the motel right before he moved, that flat clean look that doesn't have anything in it I can name.
"You want to go to your parents' house," he says.
"Yes."
"Then I'm going to tell you what happens when you do."
"Luca—"
"You drive up. You take the kid in. Your mother cries because you finally came. Your father puts the kettle on, or whatever he does. You sleep there one night. Two if you're lucky."
"Stop."
"On the third night a car parks down the street with the lights off."
"I said stop."
"They wait until your father goes out for the paper. Or your mother goes to the store. Whichever's easier. They don't break the door down. They knock. Your mom opens it because it's the suburbs and people knock."
My stomach goes cold from the inside out. It's not a feeling, it's a temperature, and it spreads down into my legs and up into my throat until I can taste it.
"They take her into the kitchen. They take your father if he's there.
They don't kill them right away because dead people don't tell you where the money is.
They hurt them in front of you until you tell them what you don't know.
They hurt your kid in front of you until you tell them the same thing.
Then they kill all of you because by then you've seen their faces. "
I'm not breathing. It's like I'm already dead. I blink once and manage a small inhale.
He isn't saying it to hurt me. That's the part that makes it worse. There's no heat in his voice, no try at scaring me. He's saying it the way you'd tell someone the stove is on. He's saying it because it's the shape of what is.
"Okay," I say. The word's doing a lot of work today. "But Dominik's dead. He's been dead almost two years. Why now? Why me?"
Luca doesn't move from where he's stopped.
"And I don't have the money. I never had it. If they come for me and I can't give them anything, they leave. There's nothing to take."
He watches me like I'm a child explaining to him how doors work.
"I can call the cops. Before Wisconsin. I'll call from a payphone, give them the motel, the guy with the gun, the plate on the sedan. They'll have a name in an hour. There's a station three blocks from their house. I grew up next door to the deputy. His daughter and I—"
"Stop."
"I'm just—"
"Gemma."
He doesn't raise his voice.
"You don't want to see what this is," he says. "Or you don't know what it is. I can't tell yet."
"Then tell me what it is."
He puts a hand flat on the back of the chair across from me. His knuckles are scarred over the scars, old ones under new ones. I don't know why I'm looking at his knuckles. They feel safer than his face.
"A bank wants the money back," he says. "If you can't pay, they take the house. They send letters. They put your credit in the dirt. They can't fucking touch you."
"Right."
"This isn't a bank."
"I know it isn't a bank, Luca, I'm not—"
"You don't know. You think you do."
He's quiet for a second. He's choosing what to say next, and I can see him choosing, and it's worse than him saying it fast.
"They don't need the money back to come out ahead. If they can't get it from you, they get it out of you. There are ways to make money off a woman that I'm not going to put in your head."
The cold in my legs climbs. My mouth fills with the taste of pennies.
"And the kid," he says, and stops. He stops like he's hit a wall. He breathes in through his nose. "They don't care that he's dead. He stole from them. Somebody pays. The book doesn’t close until they close it."
"That's insane."
"That's how it works."
I swallow. There's nothing in my mouth but the taste.
"Why," I say.
He blinks once. He waits.
"Why do you care," I say. "You don't know us. You met me last night because I stole your car. You should've left me at the motel. You should've taken your keys and gone. Why are you doing this? If they find me you get hurt too."
He doesn't answer. He keeps looking at me and I'm completely sure that his eyes show a man that is in pain.
"Luca."
"I know what it's like," he says. "When a kid gets hurt. And a parent has to watch. That's all," he says.
He looks at me for one more beat, and whatever's behind his eyes pulls back so fast I almost miss it going.
He turns. He picks his coat off the arm of the couch. He's halfway to the door before I find my voice.
"Where are you going?"
He doesn't stop.
The door closes behind him.