I don't fucking know.
"She saved my mother's life," I say. "The least I can do is make sure she gets here safely."
It's not a lie. It's also not the truth.
Dante watches me for a long moment.
"Alright," he says finally. "Your call."
He pushes off the counter and heads for the door and then he's gone, leaving me alone with the uncomfortable awareness that Dante Castellani just saw straight through me.
Why do you care?
I don't have an answer.
That's the problem.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kristen
The pillow finally moulds to my head at eleven-forty-seven. Sleep hovers just out of reach, teasing me with that heavy-limbed feeling that never quite tips into unconsciousness.
My phone buzzes.
Of course.
I grab it without looking, already knowing.
"Mom?"
"Kristen." Her voice sounds like sandpaper dragged across gravel. "I can't come tomorrow."
I sit up so fast my head spins. "What? Why?"
"I'm sick." A wet cough punctuates the statement. "Started this afternoon. Fever, chills, the works. I can barely get off the couch."
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
"Mom, I have work tomorrow." I keep my voice low, glancing at Lily's sleeping form in the bed across the room. "You know daycare closes at three."
"I'm sorry, honey. I really am." Another cough. "But I can barely stand. I'd be no use to Lily anyway."
She's not wrong. A sick grandmother means a sick Lily in approximately forty-eight hours, and I cannot afford that spiral. But the alternative?—
"Can you ask someone else?" Mom suggests. "A friend? A neighbour?"
What friends? Jack made sure those disappeared years ago. And my neighbours? One sells drugs out of apartment 2C, and the other is an eighty-year-old woman who can't hear her own doorbell.
"I'll figure it out," I say, because what else can I say?
"Maybe Jack could?—"
"Goodnight, Mom."
I hang up before she finishes that sentence. The audacity. The absolute audacity of suggesting Jack as a solution to anything.
I stare at my phone. The screen glows accusingly in the dark, waiting for me to solve this unsolvable problem.
