I could see that. I just hoped that he remembered our story. Even telling other children the truth about us could put us in danger.
We left Jennifer’s house shortly after that, driving to our new home. I passed three motorcycles on the way, making me think of Trainer. I’d never been on a bike before, and the idea of being on the back of his Harley, with our bodies pressed tightly together, made a warm pool in my belly.
So much for not thinking about it.
“So, how did you like Jennifer’s?” I asked Dominic, who had been quietly sitting in his booster seat, playing with an old Gameboy that had been mine when I was a child. I’d come across it when I was preparing to leave Jeff and gave it to Dominic to give him something to do on the long drive here.
“It was fun,” he said. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that he wasn’t even looking up from the game system in his hand. Well, I guessed that I couldn’t exactly expect to compete with the game for his full attention.
“And you liked the other kids? What did you guys talk about?”
Now he paused the game and looked up at me, probably hearing the concern in my voice. “I remembered everything you told me,” he assured me, sounding so much like an adult that I immediately wanted to end the conversation. But I couldn’t.
“Our name? Where we’re from? Who your dad is?”
“Yeah. Itoldyou.”
“Okay, I believe you.”
I had no choice. I couldn’t be with him twenty-four hours a day.
When we pulled up in front of the duplex, I got my first glimpse of my neighbor. In the days that we had been living here, I had heard the neighbors plenty, mostly shouting matches between a man and woman or a child screaming in the way that toddlers do when throwing a fit, but I hadn’t actually caught sight of a person.
The woman was sitting in a lawn chair on her half of the front porch, smoking a cigarette. Her hair was in a messy bun, and she was wearing bright pink pajama pants and a large hooded sweatshirt. She eyed us curiously as I helped Dominic out of the car. It came as no surprise when she spoke to me as we climbed the porch steps.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Go on inside,” I told Dominic, handing him the house key. I didn’t want to be stuck up, but I didn’t like the look of this woman. She had an almost predatory look in her eye that I didn’t trust. I would do the neighborly thing and talk to her, but I didn’t want Dominic to be a part of it. “I’m Erica. Erica Mills.”
I was holding my gym bag in one hand and my burner phone in the other, which were good excuses not to offer to shake her hand without seeming rude.
“Erica, huh?” she said, taking a long drag off her cigarette. “You don’t look like an Erica.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but it made a sliver of unease trail down my spine because it wasn’t my real name.
“I’m Talia,” she said, rising from her chair. As she moved closer to me, so that only the half-wall dividing the porch separated us, a cloud of smoke drifted toward me, and I couldn’t suppress a cough. “Was that your little boy?”
“Yeah.”Of course, it was.“That’s Dominic.”
“I’ve seen you guys coming and going. No man, though. His dad a deadbeat?”
I was surprised to hear that she’d seen us. Was she watching us through her windows?
“I’m a widow,” I said, following the story I’d made up and not elaborating.
“Damn, girl. That sucks. Even though I sometimes wish my old man would bite the big one,” she laughed like she’d told me a hilarious joke. My dislike grew.
I studied Talia. She might be around my age of twenty-seven, but it was hard to tell. She was rough around the edges, with dark circles under her eyes and dull, brown eyes. She was thin, almost too thin, and her skin seemed loose, the way it would if she lost weight very quickly. I knew it was shitty to make assumptions, but I couldn’t help thinking that she looked like she used some kind of heavy drugs. She was definitely not a healthy person.
“You live here with your husband?” I asked, wondering if that was the person I’d heard her arguing with nearly every evening.
“Nah,” she shook her head and dropped her cigarette butt onto her side of the porch, where it joined at least a dozen others. “We ain’t married, but he’s my kid’s dad. So, I guess I’m stuck with him.”
She didn’t actually sound sad about that. It was more like she was telling a joke. She clearly had no idea what it was like to really be stuck with a man. It wasn’t amusing in the least.
But I knew that she had no knowledge of my personal situation.
“What’s your story?” Talia asked. “Why did you come to La Playa?”
