"You want some?" I ask since he seems to be watching me so intently. He's really picking up a lot of bad habits from my father.
"No, I'm just watching."
"Always watching," I mutter under her breath.
"Come sit with me after you fix your tea," he orders in a deeper voice than normal.
I kick off my shoes and enter his room with my tea cup. Slowly mixing my blossom honey in with a small spoon as I walk. It's already completely dissolved, but I'm nervous. So I stir.
“Were you able to ask your father about what he thinks those guys wanted from out of his safe?”
“He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it. He told me that there’s nothing in there. That the safe has always been there. It was already there back when his grandfather bought the place.”
“Hmm, that’s weird. It almost seemed as if they knew it was down there.”
“Well not exactly. They were asking you to open a safe. Notthesafe.”
Stone’s room looks almost exactly like it did when he moved in. Clean. Neat. Sparse. The sheets on his bed are smoothed and pulled tight with military precision, two pairs of boots sit by the base of his dresser, and his small collection of clothes are hung in his closet by type and color. When he notices me looking, he pulls the sliding door completely closed.
"What exactly happened to you?" I ask.
"What do you mean, Ariana?"
"How did you end up in prison."
"I was convicted for possession and intent to distribute."
"No, I mean what happened to you? Not what you did. How did you end up getting mixed up in drugs? Nothing about your personality seems like you would make a decision like that."
"I needed the money."
He motions with his hand for me to take a seat. I sit as far away from him on the brown sofa as I can. His bed looks too neat to sit on.
"For what?"
"What kind of a question is that. I needed it for everything. I grew up in foster care. Then Jack. He always took care of the bills. I knew a lot but not enough. I lost my way. Got in way over my head. I was desperate to save the house which went into foreclosure but the vultures were circling. The bank wanted that property. They wanted to sell it for twice what it was worth. They didn't want me to save it and they succeeded. I didn't have any decent income or credit history. I barely got out of high school when he died."
"What about Jack's pension? The army has great benefits."
"You had to fill out a whole bunch of paperwork. Like I said. I was grieving. I was lost. I didn't do what I needed to do, and there wasn't anyone around to ask."
"That still doesn't seem like you."
"You don't know me like you think you do."
That seems like a loaded statement.
“Maybe I don't know everything about you, but I know enough. I know that you are an observer. You watch and assess and then only make a decision after you've examined the situation. Like right now. You're calculating something in your head about this conversation. I don't know whether you're leaving something out of your story or you just told me a complete boldface lie, but there's something. I just don't have any idea what it is."
"And how do you know that?"
"Your stormy gray eyes give you away every time."
Those eyes.
He stares at me with such intensity, I start to blush.
"You want to know what I'm thinking about right now?"
