LENA
NINE
I’ve started letting myself look.
The first week, I kept my eyes in the middle distance—took in the broad strokes, didn’t push on the details.
That felt like the right strategy for a woman who has walked into an arrangement with a man she doesn’t fully know, in a situation where knowing too much could be its own liability.
But it has been enough time to form habits, and one of mine is paying attention, and I can only suppress that for so long before it reasserts itself.
So, I start looking.
The silences are the first thing I clock.
They come on abruptly, almost always right after he’s come out of his office.
He’ll be fully present—eating, listening to Opal explain something, making coffee—and then his phone buzzes, or he steps away to take a call, and when he comes back, the silence is there.
Flat and hard, a wall that went up while I wasn’t watching.
It lifts eventually. Sometimes in minutes, sometimes not until the next morning. I start reading them like incoming weather, adjusting my trajectory accordingly. When he’s having a wall night, we don’t have sex.
I’m glad for it. I don’t know how to touch someone made of cold cement.
The visitors continue to come on some evenings. They arrive, stiff, injured. I’ve stopped offering any kind of hospitality. I’d rather they didn’t notice me at all. Thankfully, the path from the front door to Dario’s office gives them no reason to see me or Opal, most of the time.
I don’t ask Dario about them anymore either. His world is not my world, and it’s probably best for all of us that it stays that way.
That doesn’t stop me from wanting to ask questions.
I’m just not sure how to strike up the conversation.
Sometimes, it feels like Dario doesn’t want to talk about anything at all.
Other times, he’s perfectly jovial and congenial, and it feels like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation.
I never know which one I’ll get, so I keep my questions to myself.
What I’ve decided about Ed is that he’s probably some kind of rival or adjacent problem that Dario has decided to absorb, and clearing my debt is part of how that plays out between them.
Why else would he have jumped into this to help me out?
He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who is desperate for lovers, and he’s not the type to believe in charity.
Which means I must be revenge with a side of sex.
Or, he’s using me in some other way. That’s how connected people work. They don’t do anything out of the kindness of their hearts. Which is fine. I don’t mind being used. I don’t need the full explanation. I need the outcome, and the outcome is Opal’s health.
Opal goes back to school, which is a relief in some ways and a problem in others.
Alanda isn’t needed for daily care anymore, and the last morning is harder than I expected.
Opal spends breakfast drawing her a goodbye picture—Alanda’s face, complete with the reading glasses that always migrate into her curly hair, remarkably accurate for a five-year-old.
Alanda looks at it for a long time. “Baby girl, you have the best heart of anyone I’ve met.”
Opal grins, and Alanda pulls her into a big hug.
“I’m gonna miss you, munchkin. But I’ll be around when I can be. Dr. Spinelli wouldn’t know what to do without me.”
“We’ll miss you too, Alanda,” I tell her.
I hate that Opal has to say goodbye to another person in her life. She’s had to grow up so fast, and every time we say goodbye, I think it ages her.
Or maybe it’s just me.
The apartment feels different without her during the day.
Quieter. But Opal is healthy. That’s the whole point of any of this.
When she starts school, I have to adjust my work schedule, but that’s the only real big change on my end of it.
Thankfully, my supervisor, Reggie, likes me, so the adjustment isn’t a big deal.
Opal goes to school and comes home with drawings and small dramas about who said what at lunch. She’s giddy, and her color is good, and her voice is back at full volume, and she doesn’t press her hand to her throat anymore when she swallows.
That’s what matters. Opal is healthy, and it’s because of Dario, and I’m utterly grateful.
Reggie finds me at the coffee station at two fifteen on a Tuesday.
I hear him before I see him—the specific footfall I’ve been cataloging for weeks, the one that always arrives a beat too late after I’ve entered a space, the one that means he followed me. While I’m grateful that he changed my schedule at the drop of a hat, I don’t enjoy his attention.
He’s the kind of man who knows he’ll never get anywhere in life beyond where he’s already reached, and he’s bitter about it.
I don’t like talking to him one-on-one, so I’ll wrap things up in here in a hurry. I tell myself it’s a break room with a door that stays open, and there are forty people on this floor.
But he closes the door behind him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey, Reggie.” I keep my back to him, reaching for the sugar I don’t actually take, buying myself the second I need to assess the space. Counter behind me. Door behind him. Twelve feet between us. I’m fine.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says.
“What are you talking about? I’ve been working.” And I’m on break right now, so leave me alone.
“Rhonda says you put in for the supervisor position.”
I turn around because I won’t have this conversation with my back to him. That’s the first mistake—he reads it as an invitation, steps closer, and closes the distance from twelve feet to six without appearing to move deliberately.
“I did. Is there something you needed, Reggie?”
“Just checking in.” He smiles. “We used to talk more, and if you’re gonna be a supervisor, then we’re on the same level. That opens up all kinds of possibilities.”
“I’m too busy for a chat. The Harmon account—”
“You filed reports.” His voice doesn’t change. That’s the thing about Reggie—his voice never changes. It stays warm, reasonable, and slightly amused, no matter what he’s saying. “Two of them. HR told me.”
My stomach drops. I keep my face still. “HR is supposed to keep things private.”
“Right.” He takes another step. Four feet now. “The thing is, Lena—and I say this as someone who actually likes you, who’s always liked you—those reports make things harder for both of us. They put things on record that didn’t need to be on record. You know what I mean?”
I swallow. “Respectfully, I disagree about the record. But I know what you mean.”
“Good.” He smiles again. He has a good smile. That’s the worst part—he has the face of someone likable. That’s what tricked me into liking him when I first started working here. I was friendly back then, and that was my first mistake.
He continues, “So let’s just—reset. Okay? Forget the reports, forget the tension, go back to how things were.”
“How things were was also a problem. You’ve been harassing the younger staff.” And me.
Something shifts in his face. The warmth stays, but something underneath it changes, settles into something harder. “I think you’ve misread a lot of situations.”
“I don’t think I have.”
“Lena.” He says my name the way he does when he wants to sound patient. “I’m trying to make this easier for you. The supervisor position—I have some pull with the evaluation committee. I’m trying to help you.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want your help.”
He’s close enough now that I can smell his cologne. He moved again while I was talking, and I didn’t track it, and that’s the second mistake—I let him close the last two feet while I was focused on his face. The counter is against my lower back. There’s nowhere left to go.
“You’re being difficult,” he says, still in the patient voice, and then his hand is on my jaw.
I recoil for one second out of instinct, but then his mouth on mine, his hand holding my face still, the smell of his cologne, the counter digging into my spine—
My palms hit his chest, and I push with everything I have. He stumbles backward into a chair that topples over. I’m through the door before he finishes stumbling.
I don’t stop.
I don’t go back for my bag. I don’t go back for my coat. I don’t go back for the photo of Opal on my monitor that I’ve been looking at every day since I started.
I take the stairs because the elevator requires waiting, and I don’t have waiting in me right now.
Need to move. Need to breathe. I hit the lobby, and I hit the street, and I keep moving—fast and straight, not running, because running means something was taken from me, and I’m choosing this.
I’m moving toward something. I’m going to Opal.
I don’t remember the bus ride.
When I walk into the penthouse, Dario is there, and his face goes very still as soon as he sees me. The words grind out between his teeth. “What did Ed do?”
“Not Ed.” I tell him what happened. Factual, in order, because anything else would cost more than I have right now.
Dario’s expression doesn’t change much while I talk. That’s almost worse than if it did. “You’re not going back to that building.”
“I have a job—”
“You don’t have to go back there to keep it. I’ll handle it.”
Part of me knows I should ask what his version of “handle it” means. I should be the person who thinks carefully about this, who draws the line, who considers what proportionate looks like.
But then I feel Reggie’s hand on my jaw. His mustache burning my upper lip. The way he moved on me like a fucking serial killer in a horror movie—not stepping fast, but closing in all the same.
Panic tightens my chest.
I put in two reports that went nowhere but to the man they reported. The HR rep is clearly a friend of Reggie’s.
You’ve misread a lot of situations, said with the absolute certainty of someone who has never once been held accountable for anything.
The police would laugh at me. They have real crime to handle.
Who else am I supposed to turn to?
I nod once. “Okay.”
Dario gets his jacket and leaves.
I make tea I don’t drink and sit at the kitchen table and wait for Opal.
When she comes home at three thirty with her horse drawing, I tell her the legs are much better, which is true.
I watch her tape it to the refrigerator and step back and say good, and go get a snack, and I sit with my cold tea.
Let Reggie see what it’s like to be scared.
I can’t bring myself to feel guilty for whatever Dario’s about to do. In fact, just wondering about it makes me smile.