My mom’s eyes scan over me as she gives James his coffee, and I step forward and grab a cup from the cupboard, busying myself by making some tea.
“Do you know he hit Sadie, Mrs. Turner?” James says suddenly, and my mom’s hand stills from where she’s smoothing down her apron, her eyes sweeping over my face and down my body.
I gawk at him. I wasn’t going to tell her that! Goddammit, I should have had a conversation with him before we got here. I was so embarrassed at the prospect of him seeing the place that I forgot there’s some stuff he knows that I wish he didn’t. That he hasn’t been imbued with the lessons of keeping quiet about things.
“Did he really do that?” my mom says, her hand fluttering up to her chest.
Well, I guess it’s out now. I pull up the picture of my bruised face on my phone, and she takes it from me, running her finger across the screen. Red climbs up her neck. “Jakedid this to you?”
“Yeah. He’s been turning up and asking me for money.”
Her eyebrows rise. He never gets off his ass to do anything, so when I think about it, it’s surprising he turned up at the office at all, never mind twice, three times if you include the first time James met him.
“Has he ever hit you?” James asks, swinging back to my mom, and my eyes bug out, fixing on the side of his face. He can’t ask her that!
But she shakes her head. “He’s always been an easygoing man. Inappropriate a lot of the time, but not a bad person, you know? He did what I asked him to do. Until this.” She stares down at the screen.
James scowls.
Could this have gone any worse? “Let me go and pack up my stuff,” I mutter.
“Jake moved into your room!” My mom says as I head out into the corridor. “I didn’t want him in my bed!”
God, I wish James wasn’t here. This is mortifying. When I step into my bedroom, my monitor is still on the desk, but everything else has beenrearranged, and worse, my bookcase is empty. When I fling open the closet doors, it’s full of Jake’s T-shirts and pants.
I head back to the kitchen where James is nursing his mug of coffee and talking to my mom about Williams Security. And now another alarm bell starts ringing. She could tell him all sorts of things I don’t want him to find out about.School. College.
“Where’s all my stuff? My books? My clothes?” I say to my mom.
“He put most of it under the bed.”
Mostof it?
I head back to my room and drop to my knees. All my belongings are haphazardly stuffed beneath my bed, and I drag everything out and place it on top of the comforter. My mom appears in the doorway.
“Half my books are missing,” I say, as I scan through the piles, my throat getting tighter and tighter.
My mom’s face scrunches up like she’s in pain. “I think he ditched some things, Sadie.”
I stare at her as something hot and tight takes over my chest:my books, my lovely books.My hands start to shake, bile rising sharp and fast. “What? You couldn’t have stored them in your room or your closet for a couple of weeks?”
“Sadie, honey …”
“You couldn’t have made sure he didn’t ditch half my stuff?”
She stares down at the floor. “He did it while I was at work,” she whispers.
“He has no right!” I shout. “I collected those books over years of reading; some were from when I was a little girl! They mean a lot to me! I had full series; older copies with covers they don‘t print anymore.”
I burst into tears. My mom flutters forward, like she’s not confident I’ll accept a hug from her. James appears in the doorway, blue eyes concerned as I bat her hands away. He steps neatly past her and wraps his long tentacles around me.
“I’m so sorry, Sadie,” he says, and he kisses the top of my head.
Before I can even process the fact that he’s kissed my head, or that I’m smushed against his enormous chest, my mom’s hand reaches out and grabs mine, and when I look at her, her eyes are watery, too.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I wasn’t here. He told me when I got home. I can’t seem to do right by you.”
She sacrificed so much for me, of course she did right by me, but how isthisokay? I take a deep shuddering breath, tears still leaking down my face.
