Nodding to the bed, I said, “Hey. Come in. I need a break anyway.”
She sat on the end.
“How’s Levi?”
“Oh.” A softness came over her, one that was showing up more and more regularly when Levi’s name was brought up. I was happy for her. I was happy for Levi too. “He’s good. Getting better. A few more months and his jaw will be back to being a smartass.”
I snorted. “Only way Levi would not be a smartass was if he were ...” I gulped. Wrong word choice there. I couldn’t finish that statement.
“Yeah,” she said quietly, clearing her throat. “Good thing it didn’t come to that. For any of us.”
The people who died were Spence and his two brothers. West was fine. Walden was fine. Their people were all fine. Levi had fractured ribs and a broken jaw. Marshall’s family came up to take him to their home. As far as I knew, he was going to finish school online, at least for the semester.
“Have you been in contact with Marshall?”
She hesitated before nodding, then shrugging. “Just a phone call here and there. He’s okay. Being shot, being—what was done to us—it’s not normal. It can be traumatizing. You know?”
I almost laughed. “I’ve always been in foster care, but Miss Marcie’s house was the first where I felt safe. Before her place, the family—that foster mom shot herself.”
Palma gasped.
“I was in the room.” My throat was burning. “She killed herself because her husband was doing things. To her. To some of the other girls.”
“To you?”
“No.” A small blessing. “The family before that, well, they put locks on our doors, and we were only allowed out when our social workers showed up. I was lucky. I got a good social worker. He recognized something was wrong and got me out of there.”
“Did anything happen to either of those places?”
I wanted to tell her that my social worker helped shut them down, but that would’ve been a lie. They did get shut down, but it hadn’t been anyone legally doing it. I didn’t want to say the words. Add to the pile of bad things Creighton did for me.
I didn’t feel bad about those casualties.
I tried, telling myself that maybe they would’ve changed. In the end, though, I just couldn’t summon whatever emotion I needed to believe that.
“I’m glad.” Palma surprised me. Her voice was hoarse. She covered her hand with mine. “Seeing your boyfriend in action, seeing who he’s going up against, I know you’re a good person. You don’t likeshouldering what he does to protect you, but you’re not responsible for what another person does.”
“I am if he’s hurting others.”
“But is he really? Levi told me about the rules you gave Creighton. Only bad. Only the guilty.”
“He violated that when he took those four people.”
“But he didn’t hurt them.”
“He was going to.”
“But he didn’t.” She leaned forward, her hand gently squeezing mine. “The stories I’ve heard about him and that guy I’m seeing now, I don’t think he’s the same guy. I think he’s changing. He’s changing for you. That’s what I think.”
Yeah. Maybe.
He let me go into that office building alone. The following Monday, Satya and her sister came to the center. She informed me that her foster parents were able to take her sister in, said they got an emergency call Saturday morning that lined everything up. Creighton did that.
He hadn’t followed me the last week either. I didn’t think anyone else had either.
He’d been giving me space. He listened to me, actually gave me what I said I needed.
That was all in my head, just ruminating.
