Page 6 of Mountain Target

The urge to feed the girl, to take care of her, was strong, but if Val had learned anything in the last few weeks of tiptoeing around each other, it was that Ren didn’t respond well to commands.

Val turned away from the girl so she wouldn’t see her face. “Toast or cereal?” she asked. Val didn’t eat breakfast, but she’d bought so many things over the last weeks in her attempts to figure out what Ren liked … in her attempts to get her to eat anything … that her cupboards now resembled the breakfast aisle in the local grocery store.

“Toast, I guess.”

As usual, the girl waited listlessly for Val to put some food in front of her. And it’s not like Val had a problem with that. She’d happily make breakfast for Ren every day for the rest of her life. What Val wanted, though, was for Ren to stop behaving like a guest and start acting like she lived here.

Finally, the toast was ready. Val brought out butter, honey, Nutella and two kinds of jam. The cynic in her cried out at her pathetic attempt to provide Ren with some choice. As if she were a toddler.

Ren picked up the honey and spooned a bit onto the first piece of toast.

“You ready for today?” Val asked, regretting her words almost as soon as they were out. But she couldn’t not say anything.

Ren put the spoon down and held Val’s gaze firmly.

“Relax, Aunt Val. It’s my first day in this school, but it’s not my first day of school.”

If Ren’s hazel eyes hadn’t looked so much older than her years, the girl’s words would have made Val smile.

As it was, she just nodded. “Yes. Of course.”

“School’s going to be fine,” Ren said. And in the girl’s words, Val heard what the girl wasn’t saying.

School’s going to be fine.

That doesn’t mean anything else is.

Val had a good feeling about the school. She’d enrolled Ren in a bilingual program, as similar as possible to the school she used to attend in Paris. The cost of the private school was going to make a big dent in her salary, and she still didn’t know if her sister’s life insurance would pay out, but she would make it work somehow.

Val made a note to speak to the school counselor again. She’d already met with the lady a couple of weeks earlier to prepare for today.

It’s going to work out.

We’re going to process these feelings, and everything’s going to be fine.

One day, the two of us will sit down together, and we’ll smile for real.

“You okay, Aunt Val?”

Val nodded sharply. “Of course. I’ll pick you up in the afternoon.”

“You don’t have to, Aunt—“

“I want to. Please.”

Rena nodded calmly and went back to her piece of toast, which was still only half-eaten. “I’ll wait for you.”

4

Beau

Beau curled his legs and gripped the bar tightly, stretching his thick neck and shoulders and enjoying the decompression in his spine.

He held the stretch for a minute, then jumped off.

Looks like it’s going to hold.

Tension-mounted pull-up bars weren’t Beau’s favorite, but he didn’t think the owner of the apartment would appreciate the holes left behind a set of wall-mounted bars, so they’d have to do.