“My enemies,” I correct. “And anyone who thinks you are a handle.”
She wipes the counter with a cloth, a movement for its own sake. It is also her cover. “I’m not a handle,” she repeats, softer.
“I know.”
“Then stop talking like I’m one.”
“Stop standing in the open.”You are too brave for your own safetyis what I want to say.
She looks past my shoulder at the front window and the smear of town that lives there. She straightens a stack of boxes and sets a ribbon on top to hide the shake in her fingers that no one but me would see. She tucks hair again that is already neat.
At the door, two boys in school coats cup their hands to the glass, their breath fogging little ovals of patience they do not have. Lila glances that way, then back at me, the meaning clear.
“It’s time,” she says, her voice edging toward nerves. She wants us out.
“We leave when we are done,” I tell her, not raising a thing but the temperature between us.
Lila watches Petro’s hands like she could make them move faster by will alone. “I didn’t invite you.”
“I know.” I take the counter at my back, one leg crossed, waiting. No footsteps yet. Upstairs is too quiet.
“You’re not welcome,” Lila says, her face taut. She feels my waiting.
“I know that too.”
“And yet?—”
“And yet I am here.”
She opens her mouth to cut me, then closes it and presses that lower lip again. I catch the smallest tremor when she pushes a ribbon into a neat coil. Her discipline is better than most soldiers I have trained. It is also built on a foundation made for other fights.
Petro gives me a nod from the hall. The landing lens sits where it should. He whistles once like a man who has found a quarter in a parking lot and needs no credit for it. He gives me the notepad, and I initial the page as if any of this is administrative. Lila watches him leave through the back alley.
“Walk me through the upstairs,” I request.
“No,” Lila replies immediately.
“Five seconds. I check the angle, then I leave.”
“You don’t cross that line.”
“It is a line I will keep for you,” I answer.
“You’ll keep it by staying here.” She moves for the door, towel in hand. Her fingers find the sign and turn it halfway.
“I’m opening,” she says over her shoulder. “My mom’s out getting eggs and ribbon. She’ll be here any minute. She doesn’t know any of this. It’ll scare her out of her wits. Please leave.”
The clock over the sink says 2:59. Three people have queued on the stoop, coats zipped to the chin, smiling through the glass and pantomiming the same question with their hands.When will it be ready? I count the seconds and say nothing.
“Lila, let me look at the stairs,” I advise without softness. “If it buys me an extra hour of sleep, I will take it. I can put a camerahalfway on the ceiling if it means I do not get a man at the bottom of the steps.”
Lila lifts her chin the smallest degree. “Fine. Halfway.”
“That is enough.”
The stair narrows as it climbs and turns left at a landing. The smells of cinnamon and old varnish live in the wood. I count steps and measure rise and run without needing a tape.
From above, a small voice pulls the house into a different shape.
