Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gemma
Iopen my eyes and Nina is already looking at me.
She is sitting up. Cross-legged on the duvet, my t-shirt bunched around her knees, her hair flattened on one side from the pillow. Her hands are folded in her lap the way she folds them at the diner when she is being good.
She has been awake for a while.
"Hi, baby."
My voice comes out rough. The light through the blinds is the thin grey of early.
"Good morning."
She smiles. It is a small smile, careful, like she is checking whether smiling is allowed here.
I push myself up on one elbow. My neck is stiff from sleeping on the edge so I did not roll into her.
"How long have you been up?"
She shrugs.
I sit the rest of the way up. The duvet falls into my lap. Nina watches me, still cross-legged, still folded.
"Mommy."
"Yeah."
"I'm hungry."
She says it like she is sorry about it. She says it the way she used to ask for a second juice box at Mariela's, soft, ready to be told no.
"Okay."
I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. I try to think.
There is a kitchen out there. Through the door.
There is a man out there too.
I do not have a choice.
I will ask him. I will say it like it is normal. Do you have something she can eat. Like asking a neighbor. Like asking anyone.
He has helped us this far. He will not say no to a four-year-old asking for breakfast.
He will not.
"Come here."
I hold my arms out. Nina uncrosses her legs and crawls across the duvet and I lift her. Her arms go around my neck. Her cheek presses against my collarbone. She smells like the cheap motel shampoo I used on her last night.
"We're going to go and make something. Okay?"
She nods against me.
I stand. My socked feet on the floorboards. I shift her on my hip and her t-shirt rides up and I tug it down over the back of her thighs.
She lifts her head.
"Mommy."
"Yeah."
She looks at the closed door. Then back at me. Her eyebrows pull together, the small line between them that she gets from me.
"Is he a bad guy?"
I open my mouth.
He is. He told me last night he works for a mob.
He has tattoos up the side of his neck and he carries himself like Dominik's friends carried themselves and worse than that, like the men who came looking for Dominik carried themselves.
He is a very bad guy. He is the kind of bad guy that the rest of the bad guys are afraid of, and that is why we are still here.
"No, baby."
I say it without my voice doing anything.
"No. He's a good person. He's helping us."
Her eyebrows stay together.
"He's helping us get to Grandma's."
The line between her brows smooths out.
"Grandma?"
"Yeah."
"In the big house?"
"In the big house."
She thinks about this. Her thumb goes to her mouth, then back down — we have been working on the thumb. Her fingers spread on my shoulder instead.
"With the garden?"
"With the garden."
She smiles. A real one this time. The kind she does not check first.
She loves my mother. We do not see her often but Nina loves her anyway.
I shift her on my hip and walk to the door. I stop with my hand on the knob. I look down at her. Her face is right there, an inch from mine.
"Be quiet for a second when we go out. Okay? In case he's sleeping."
She nods, very serious.
I turn the knob.
The smell hits before the door is all the way open.
Eggs. Butter. Something warm and yeasty, like bread.
I stop in the doorway with Nina on my hip.
There is a woman in the kitchen.
She is at the stove with her back half-turned, an apron tied at her waist over a navy cardigan, her grey hair pinned up. She is older. Sixties, maybe seventy. She moves the pan with a small, neat wrist.
She turns at the sound of the door.
Her eyes land on me. They are very blue. Lined at the corners. She does not look surprised.
"Good morning."
Her voice has an accent I cannot place. Soft. European, maybe. She smiles at Nina, then at me, and the smile reaches her face the way real smiles do.
"My name is Megan."
I do not move from the doorway. My arm tightens under Nina without me deciding it.
"I am making you some breakfast."
She turns back to the pan. The eggs hiss. She nudges them with a wooden spoon.
"Where—"
I stop. I start again.
"Where's Luca?"
"Mr. Farro has gone out." She says it the way you would say a man has stepped to the post office. "He will not be long."
"Oh."
"He asked me to come and make you some breakfast." She glances back over her shoulder. The wooden spoon moves. "I did not know what you liked, so I made what my grandson likes. He is six. I hope that is all right."
Nina lifts her head off my shoulder.
"Yummy."
Megan laughs.
"Yummy. Yes. We will see."
I stand there another second. My hand on Nina's back. Megan does not look at me again. She slides the pan off the heat and reaches up for a plate from the cupboard. She has been in this kitchen before.
I walk Nina to the stool at the counter.
"Up you go."
I set her on it. I pull the t-shirt down over her thighs again. She puts both small palms on the counter and leans forward to look at the pan.
Megan slides eggs onto a plate. Not the rubbery yellow squares from the diner.
Soft folded eggs, the kind you see in pictures.
She adds a piece of toasted bread cut in half on the diagonal.
A small dish of something red — strawberries, halved, with the green tops still on.
Two slices of a pale cheese. A little glass of orange juice that is not the color of the orange juice from a carton.
She sets it in front of Nina.
"There you are, miss."
Nina looks at me first. She does this. She checks.
"Go on, baby."
She picks up the toast with both hands and takes a bite the size of her face.
Megan turns to me. She has another plate in her hand. The same as Nina's but larger. She sets it on the counter at the stool next to Nina's.
"For you."
"Thank you."
"You're very welcome." She wipes her hands on a dishcloth.
I sit.
The plate is in front of me. The eggs steam. The bread is cut the same way it was for Nina. There is a small white pot of coffee next to the plate, and a cup, upside down on a saucer.
I look at Megan.
She is at the sink now, rinsing the pan, her sleeves pushed up to her forearms.
Nina is chewing toast. Her cheeks are full. She is humming a little.
My stomach is loud.
I have not eaten since the half sandwich at the diner.
I pick up the fork.
The eggs are very good. I take another bite before I have finished the first.
If he wants to help, let him help, I suppose.
I will eat. I will feed Nina.
I turn the coffee cup right side up on its saucer.
Megan sees me from the corner of her eye. She comes over with the white pot and pours without me having to ask.
"Thank you."
"Of course, dear."
Megan won't let me near the sink. She waves me off with a tea towel and says she's done dishes longer than I've been alive, which is probably true. I let it go. Picking my battles is the only skill I have left.
I wet a corner of the tea towel and crouch down to Nina's height. Strawberry juice has dried in a pink smear at the corner of her mouth and a bit of egg yolk sits on her chin. She holds still while I wipe her face, the way she always holds still, eyes on mine.
I push her hair behind her ears and stand up. My back hurts from the way I slept curled around her. I take her hand and we are to go back in the bedroom when I hear the door.
Luca's here.
He looks at Nina first. Then me. He closes the door and stands by the couch with two paper bags at his hands.
"Hey," he says.
"Hi."
He sets the bags on the coffee table. "I didn't know what to buy. Or what size."
"What size of what?"
"Shoes. I got a few." He clears his throat. "Some clothes. For both of you. Different sizes, since I didn't know."
I look at the bags and I don't know what to do with that information. It sits wrong on my chest, like a shirt buttoned crooked.
"Thank you," I say. It comes out flat. I mean it, I think. I'm just not sure where to put it.
He nods. Once. He doesn't ask me to open them or try them on.
I pick up the bags. They're heavier than I expect. "Nina, go to the room for a minute, sweetheart. I'll be right there."
"Can I see them?"
"In a minute. Go on."
She looks at Luca. He doesn't look back, which I think is on purpose. She goes. The door clicks softly behind her.
I set the bags on the floor. My hands feel strange without them.
"I think it's best if we go to my parents' house," I say.
He doesn't move. He's standing on the other side of the table, hands loose at his sides, watching my mouth like he's reading the words off it.
"In Wheaton," I add, because the silence keeps going.
"Okay."
"I don't have money right now. For a bus or — anything. But when I get there I'll send you whatever I owe you. For the ride. For these." I nudge the bag with my foot. "Whatever the shoes cost. The food. I'll pay you back. I always pay people back."
The last part isn't true, exactly. I haven't had anyone to pay back. But I want him to know I'm not the kind of woman who takes.
"There's nothing to pay back," he says.
"There is."
"There isn't."
We look at each other. His eyes are that pale green that doesn't quite match the rest of his face, and they don't move off mine. I open my mouth to argue.
His phone rings.
It's in his coat pocket, the buzz loud against his ribs. He doesn't reach for it. He just keeps looking at me, and I understand without him saying anything.
"Okay," I say.
I pick up the bags. I walk past him to the hall and I don't look back.
Nina sits on the edge of the bed swinging her feet, my t-shirt pooled around her knees. She lights up when she sees the bags.
"Are those for me?"
"Some of them, baby."
I close the door behind us. Through the wood I hear him answer. Two syllables. The pitch is low and even and I can't make out the words.
I sit down on the bed and pull a shoebox out of the bag. My hands are shaking and I don't know when that started.