Page 85 of Justice

I folded that paper the way the lady in the video did, creased it down sharp with my thumbnail, drew a little red cross on the front with one of Dream’s markers. Set it on top of her freshly-done hair.

She turned to the hall mirror. Went quiet.

“…Ooh.” Small and surprised. “That part’s kinda cute.”

“Kinda cute? You look adorable. A real vintage nurse needs a white dress.” And that’s where I stopped. Because I knew exactly where something like that might be in that house, and the second I thought of it, everything in me locked up.

Monica’s closet. She had to have a white button-up that I could fashion into a vintage nurse costume.

I had never touched that door. Not once, all these months.

Everybody in that house knew the rule without anybody ever saying it out loud. You didn’t go in Monica’s closet. Justice kept it exactly how she left it. Three years and counting. Every blouse on its hanger, every shoe in its box, a room holding its breath for a woman who was never walking back through it. Even Storie’s tennis bracelet had come out of there like something lifted off an altar. That closet was sacred. And I wasn’t family. I was the help with a fake name, and I had no business on the other side of that door.

The driver was coming in ten minutes.

I put my hand on the knob and just stood there a second, feeling like a burglar, feeling every wrong thing about it. Then I saw my baby’s face falling apart in that laundry room all over again in my mind, and I turned the knob.

Her perfume was still in there.

That got me. Three years gone and the woman was still in the air of that closet, something soft and powdery worked so deep into her clothes it wouldn’t let go. I stood in the doorway of a dead woman’s life, hung up in neat color-coded rows, waiting on her like she’d just stepped out for the afternoon.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. To her. To the empty room. To nobody. “I just need to borrow something. For your baby. I’ll bring it right back, I promise.”

I found a crisp white button-up, the kind that would hit her at the knees and belt up into a proper little dress.

I got Dream into that blouse, rolled the sleeves up, cinched the waist with a white ribbon leftover from her birthday party, popped the collar. I slipped the cap on. Grabbed the toy stethoscope I bought for her. Stood her in front of the mirror.

My girl lit back up like somebody flipped a switch.

“Well, well, well.” I stood behind her in the glass. “If it isn’t Nurse Dream.”

But her face was doing something complicated. Bright eyes, mouth still a little down at the corner.

“I wanted to match you, though,” she said, quiet. “I wanted to be a nurse like you. In the blue ones.”

Lord. That one went in deep and twisted.

Because it wasn’t about a costume. This baby wanted to be me. Wanted to grow up and be the woman standing right behind her in that mirror. And she didn’t have the first idea she was pointing at a ghost. There was no real me to grow up and be like. The woman she loved didn’t exist. Even the name she called out a hundred times a day belonged to nobody.

And I was going to leave her. Soon. That’s what near about took my knees. This child was gonna wake up one morning and I’d just be gone, no note that made sense, no goodbye that told the truth, and she’d spend a long time wondering what she did to make Miss Skye disappear on her.

I knelt down and straightened that little paper cap on her head so she wouldn’t see my face do what it wanted to do.

“You look cute. Go in there and kill it,” I said.

“Ugh come on! The driver is here!” Storie called out.

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes at Storie in front of Dream. I kissed the top of that paper cap, threw her backpack over her little shoulder, and marched my one-of-one nurse out the door to career day.

I had a feeling that Storie bleached those scrubs but I couldn’t prove it. And there was no point in bringing it up to her father without proof.

Then the house went quiet, quiet like it only gets after the kids are gone, and I was left alone with the thing I’d been dodging all morning.

I needed to get out of here before shit hit the fan with Roman.

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JUSTICE