8. Cheese and Consequences #2
“What aren’t you telling me, Cole?” Her question is quiet, but it lands with the precision of the woman who raised me and knows exactly which boards are under pressure.
“Nana—”
“Don’t Nana me.” She glances up, and there’s no softness in her gaze now. But there’s no anger either. Just the steady eye of a woman who survived six decades of marriage, a recession, a global pandemic, and menopause without losing her composure. “You don’t get to decide what I can handle, Cole.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re protecting me from something the same way you’re still protecting her.” She tilts her head toward Junie’s apartment, and the air leaves the room. “How’s that working out for you?”
Badly. It’s working really fucking badly.
I’m shielding Nana Mae from the full extent of Devin’s betrayal and shielding Junie from the full extent of mine. The weight of both is compressing my spine into something that won’t hold much longer.
“Devin’s your only—”
“My only other living family,” Nana Mae finishes. “But I’m aware of who he is, Cole. I also have a pretty good guess as to what he’s done. You think I don’t see it, but I’m old, Cole, not stupid.”
I gape at her.
“I don’t have the details, and I don’t need them tonight. But I’m sure my nephew takes after his father, just as I know you take after yours. You wouldn’t look like this”—she gestures at my face with her teaspoon—“over a few misplaced invoices.”
If only Devin were the single issue. If Junie doesn’t find proof of my innocence, one theft will snowball into the other.
The urge to confess everything rises in my throat. But behind it, lurking with teeth and claws, is the other confession. The one that starts with Natalie and ends with a threat that could dismantle what little semblance of peace Junie has left in her life.
I swallow both.
“Junie’s good at her job,” I say to deflect while adding another beam to the structure I’ve built around the truth. “She’ll find the answers we need.”
Nana Mae studies me for a long moment. Then she reaches across the table and pats my hand twice, firmly, the way she does when she’s choosing not to push but wants me to know that she could.
“She’s good at a lot of things. Including seeing right through you.” She stands and carries her mug to the sink—she never even took a sip. “That girl has always seen you, Cole. Even when you’re trying your damnedest to disappear.”
Her slippers whisper against the hardwood as she turns to leave, then outside, where I hear the squeal of her golf cart as she makes the U-turn too sharply.
I sit alone with her words in my head and Natalie’s letter in my pocket. I don’t open them in public. Ever. But I always open them. I sit with the guilt, the fear, the pain of what she’s cost me.
Over the six years I’ve been receiving them, I’ve developed a protocol. I’m always alone, in my office, with the door locked because I never know how I’ll respond to whatever veiled threat she hurls at me through precise handwriting on thick white paper.
In my office, behind my desk, I open the ticking bomb.
Cole,
Marcus had a good month. His new therapist has been working on motor coordination, and the team says he’s responding well. He asked about you last Tuesday. He wanted to know if you were still building things. I told him yes.
The facility costs are increasing, but I’m sure you’re aware of the annual adjustment. I’m managing, but I wanted to remind you of our arrangement.
I hope you’re well.
Natalie
P.S. I read the article about The Haven in the regional press. It looked lovely. You always did know how to make something beautiful from nothing.
I read it twice, hearing the silent threat between each line. This has never been about Marcus. Then I fold it along the original crease and place it in the locked drawer with the others.
I lost count of how many letters there are. Each one is a reminder that I exist inside a structure of Natalie’s design, and every one of them is a load-bearing wall I can’t remove without bringing the whole thing down.
I wanted to remind you of our arrangement.
Arrangement. “Blackmail” would be too crass, too honest. And Natalie only speaks in lies and propaganda.
The memory of her betrayal lashes out at me in the dark—a quick one-two punch I never saw coming.
For the first few months, I wondered which loss was greater, my work or my family, and how she had managed to rip both away from me.
Six months in, and I knew which was worse. I’ve sat in the grief ever since.
Every once in a while, she’ll send me a photograph to keep me in line. A photo strategically taken of a twenty-three-year-old and his best friend’s teenage sister who look, when framed just right, like something they’re not.
Sometimes it’s a photo of the foreclosure notice Junie never saw.
But it’s not just the threat those pictures created that gutted my life and rebuilt it according to her blueprint. It’s the video—that my misplaced trust allowed her to acquire—that keeps me in line, tethered to her fiction, while the life I could have had moves on without me.
An arrangement.
Bile coats the back of my throat. Opening another of her threats is the only time my body betrays what I’ve gotten so good at hiding—the fear, the shame, the quiet rage that has nowhere to go because the only person I’m angry at is myself.
The blackmail works because somewhere, in the deepest recesses of my mind, it holds a truth I can never explain. It’s what keeps me jumping when she calls because it’s the only thing I can do now to protect Junie’s future, even if no one ever knows of the price I pay to keep her safe.
Natalie didn’t invent the guilt I carry. She found it, framed it, and handed it back to me in the shape of her cage.
I close the drawer and lock away her arrangement for another month.
Then I stare out my window and into Junie’s, willing her to turn on a light as though she’s been waiting for me too.
By midnight, it’s obvious that she’s shut me out again, so I head to the garage and quietly load up my wheelbarrow with LED strip lights that are waterproof and low voltage in a warm white.
I ordered them after Junie navigated her staircase in the dark. The railings are too low for my liking, and the landing has no overhead fixture. It’s been on my personal list since before she arrived, but my personal list gets even less attention than Marley’s written warnings.
The lighting became a priority when I saw her catch herself on the wall.
I think I lost five years of my life when she stumbled and I was too far away to catch her.
It’s a safety issue, and I would be a terrible landlord if I didn’t fix it. The fact that I picked warm white because it would be softer on her eyes when she climbs her stairs at night is irrelevant.
The installation takes just over two hours because I’m working in the dark, wearing a headlamp on its lowest setting.
Junie was always a light sleeper, and the last thing I need is her finding me on her staircase in the middle of the night with a screwdriver and asking for an explanation I don’t have to give.
I almost snort when that conversation plays in my head.
Why are you installing lights on my stairs at two in the morning, Cole?
Because you almost fell. Because the railing should be taller.
Because you work until your eyes cross and then you navigate these steps in the dark, and I can’t fix the twenty things between us, but I can fix this one thing, and I need to fix something.
I need to be useful to you in at least one way that doesn’t cost us anything.
Yeah. That would go over really well.
I mount the strips along the underside of each tread so they illuminate the path without being harsh. When that’s done, I add motion sensors to the wires and then test them.
The stairs light up one by one, each step outlined in soft light, then I pack up my tools and wipe down each step.
At the top, through the glass in her door, I can just make out the shape of her laptop on the kitchen island. Which means she’s still combing through The Haven’s books, and it’s only a matter of time before she finds more.
She always will—it’s who she is.
I only hope she finds proof before it’s too late. Because the destruction Devin left behind has the potential to lead straight to the trigger that blew up my world six years ago. And if Junie finds out the truth, none of our lives will ever be the same again.