“They are also words that help build a plan,” he returns. “Panic builds a trap for you.”
I push away from the table and pace to the front window and back. The street outside is dark, the lamps throwing halos that make the snow look deeper than it is. I flatten my hands on the glass and fail. A strand slips, and I tuck it back.
“You brought this here,” I tell him. My fingers find a towel and twist it and untwist because they need work. The words are out before I can check them. “You and your world. I built something simple and small and someone photographed my upstairs window like it’s their right.”
He leans one hip on the counter and does nothing else. “Lila, I did not bring them,” he says, his voice calm, no defense in it. “They followed what they thought they saw five years ago, andthey learned your name without me. They sent packages to your home in the city before my people ever stood on your block.”
Brooklyn. The white box with the black ribbon, the image from Milan, the burned toy car. I taste that night again, bitter as burnt sugar, when I sat at my kitchen table with a black and white photograph in my hand. They came to my door there. Now they stand under my window here.
“They’re here because of you,” I press, stubborn as a locked door. Stubborn is my favorite shield.
“They are here because their pipeline closed and they want a handle,” he counters, patience held flat. “If I never touched your life, they would still want that handle. The difference is that I am standing here now.”
Upstairs, a board creaks with the weight of a small body crossing a familiar path. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s everything. I picture the radiators ticking in the heat, the crayons rolling into the crack where the baseboard meets the floor if I don’t check. I picture Marco’s socks, the striped ones, sliding on polished wood because he forgets and runs. I have to go, and Matteo has to go from here. This space is sacred.
I pick up the photograph and put it down because it feels like I’m touching a stranger’s hand. “You will leave,” I insist, switching tactics because anger’s easier than fear. “You’ll leave my door and my street and my life. I’ll call the sheriff and the state and whoever else answers the phone to make it so.”
“You could,” he agrees, and not a muscle moves. “They will drive by more often and tell you to keep your curtains closed. They will ask who you dated in Milan and what you did not tell them. They will put more officers at the pageant door, and Benedetti willwalk in through the kitchen with presents. You will hand them coffee. They will take what they came for and smile on the way out because they made you call men who cannot help.”
“I hate you,” I tell him, because part of me hates how his logic lines up.
“That is fine,” he says. “You can hate me after.”
“After what?” I snap.
“After your boy is safe and the men who watched his window are on a slab,” he answers so evenly, it chills me more than shouting would.
Around me, the room pulses with its regular sounds. The cooler hums. The case light buzzes. Somewhere outside, a plow passes and throws noise the way a man throws a coat on a chair. Inside me, the same noise builds against bone.
“You talk about slabs with a straight face,” I say, my voice low now. “You talk about killing like you talk about coffee orders.”
“I talk about ending harm so that it does not come back in another shape,” he returns. “You do not have to like the tools I use. You can judge me when your boy sleeps safe and your name stays clean.”
I wipe my hands on the knotted towel and keep my eyes on it. Looking at his face tilts the floor, and I can’t afford that.
“You’re so sure,” I mutter. “Like surety’s a jacket you put on and pull off when you want.”
“It is a jacket I paid for,” he responds, voice even. “You asked how I am calm. This is how. I do not guess twice. I decide and move.”
“Decide this,” I fire back. “You leave with your mess. Tonight.”
He looks at the card again. His jaw tightens one notch. “If I leave, they will still come on Christmas Eve. They will not see me across the street, only you and the boy. You become the soft target.”
“I’m not soft,” I argue.
“I know,” he replies, and there’s no smile in it. “But they do not. They see a woman with flour on her wrist and a son who laughs at cookies. They see a town that would rather put a tree on the square than a man on a corner. They think that gives them permission.”
I hate that this is true. I hate that I can see the pageant hall full of paper snowflakes and floppy costumes and men who do not belong sliding between people who do. I hate that I can see my son on a chair with chips of glitter on his cheek because he can’t stop touching the sets and a man I don’t know standing near the back with his hands in his coat pockets.
I press a palm flat to the photo. It shakes less when it’s pinned to something. “You sound like you practiced this in a mirror.”
“I have practiced this in towns that did not have your name on the glass,” he answers. He exhales once. “Lila, I did not come here to pick a fight with you. I did not come to claim,” he says, steady. “I am guarding.”
“You keep saying that like it’s different.”
“It is,” he says. “Claiming is for men who think people are objects. Guarding is for men who understand they are not.”
We stand like that, words stacked in the space between us, the photograph a small, cold rectangle in the middle of the table, thecard with its two words like a match head ready to strike. I can hear Marco’s small voice in my memory from earlier, the way he asked if Santa could bring a dad like he was ordering at a counter—matter-of-fact, hopeful, unafraid.
