Chương 12
I had imagined excitement.
Instead they stood in the doorway.
Maya began shaking.
Leo noticed first.
“No.”
He backed her into the hall.
I stopped.
“What?”
“She doesn't like it.”
“I can change it.”
“No.”
“What doesn't she like?”
Maya covered her ears.
Leo said, “Beds.”
I stared at the bunks.
“What about them?”
“The fire was at night.”
The entire room changed.
I had spent four days building something I thought would feel safe.
To Maya, I had built elevated traps.
I wanted to tear them down immediately.
Mrs. Ellis must have seen it on my face.
“Don't decide yet,” she said quietly.
Maya whispered something.
I crouched.
“What?”
“Down.”
“She wants to sleep downstairs,” Leo said.
“Okay.”
“All of us.”
I looked toward Mrs. Ellis.
She shrugged.
“First night.”
The beautiful bedroom remained empty.
We carried blankets into the living room instead.
Leo chose the space closest to the front door.
Maya lay beside him.
June and Ben argued over couch cushions until they constructed something resembling a collapsed fort.
Ellie's portable bassinet went near the sofa.
I ordered pizza because the chicken I had planned required forty minutes and competence.
Ben ate the cheese off two slices and left the crusts.
June ate one of his crusts.
Maya ate nothing.
Leo claimed he wasn't hungry.
I watched him slip half a slice into a napkin.
He folded the napkin and put it in his sweatshirt pocket.
I pretended not to see.
At eight fifteen, Delaney called for the required check-in.
“Everyone alive?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“That was partly a joke.”
“I know.”
“You don't sound like you know.”
I looked at the broken lamp.
“They hate the bedroom.”
“Why?”
“Bunk beds.”
Another pause.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Don't force it.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
“Where are they sleeping?”
“Living room.”
“All five?”
“Four and the baby.”
“And you?”
“I hadn't gotten that far.”
“You need sleep.”
“I've heard rumors.”
“Bernard.”
“There are children on the couch.”
“Floor.”
She sighed.
“Call if anything changes.”
Something changed fourteen minutes later.
Ellie started crying.
I changed her diaper.
She kept crying.
I offered the bottle listed on her feeding schedule.
She turned her head.
I checked the diaper again as if diapers sometimes regenerated problems.
Still crying.
Leo sat up.
“You're doing it wrong.”
“Probably.”
He came over.
“Walk.”
“What?”
“Mom walked.”
So I walked.
Kitchen to living room.
Living room to hallway.
Hallway to kitchen.
Ellie screamed through six circuits.
“Bounce a little,” Leo said.
I bounced.
“Not like that.”
“How?”
He demonstrated with his hands.
I changed rhythm.
Ellie's crying softened.
Leo watched.
“Keep going.”
I did.
Ten minutes later, she was asleep against my shoulder.
My back hurt.
My shirt smelled like formula.
The pizza was cold.
I had never felt less triumphant.
At nine forty, June wet through the borrowed pajamas the emergency center had packed.
At ten ten, Ben cried because the bathroom fan was too loud.
At ten thirty-two, Maya woke screaming before she had fully fallen asleep.
Leo reached her before I did.
He climbed beneath her blanket.
“I'm here.”
She grabbed his shirt with both fists.
He looked at me over her head.
I sat on the floor beside them.
“You can sleep.”
“No.”
“No.”
“You don't trust me.”
His jaw tightened.
I expected denial.
Instead he said, “I don't know you.”
That hurt more because it was perfectly fair.
“You're right.”
He looked surprised.
I leaned against the sofa.
“You don't.”
Maya's breathing slowed.
Leo remained awake.
After several minutes he whispered, “How long?”
“What?”
“Fourteen days.”
My chest tightened.
He had heard more in court than I realized.
“What happens after?”
“We go back to the judge.”
“And then?”
“He decides whether this is working.”
“What's working?”
I looked around the room.
One broken lamp.
Pizza boxes.
Blankets everywhere.
A baby bassinet blocking the coffee table.
Ben sleeping with the wooden bowl beside his head.
June wearing one of my old T-shirts because we had run out of clean pajamas that fit.
“I don't think tonight is our strongest evidence.”
Leo's mouth twitched.
Almost a smile.
Then it disappeared.
“If we're bad, do we go?”
“No.”
He looked at me sharply.
I corrected myself.
“Being bad isn't the thing.”
“What is?”
“If you're not safe here.”
“We're safe.”
“You've been here four hours.”
“We're safe.”
His certainty frightened me more than doubt would have.
I studied his face.
“Leo, you don't have to make this work.”
He frowned.
“Yes I do.”
“No.”
“You said—”
“I said I'm trying to keep you together.”
I kept my voice quiet.
“That doesn't mean you have to be perfect so adults let you stay.”
He looked away.
Maya shifted beneath the blanket.
“You don't have to take care of everybody tonight.”
His eyes stayed on the dark television.
“Yes I do.”
“No.”
“You don't know.”
He said it without anger.
That made it worse.
I waited.
Finally I asked, “Know what?”
He pressed his lips together.
For several seconds I thought he wouldn't answer.
Then Maya moved again, and his hand automatically settled against her shoulder.
The same careful twice-pat he had demonstrated in the courtroom.
He stared at his own hand.
“When Mom got tired,” he whispered, “she didn't wake up.”
I didn't move.
“What do you mean?”
His breathing changed.
“She was tired a lot.”
The fire report had called the parents' deaths accidental.
Electrical origin under investigation.
Smoke inhalation.
Both adults found upstairs.
Nothing in the county paperwork had mentioned anything else.
Leo's fingers curled into Maya's blanket.
“I used to wake her.”
He looked at me then.
“If I didn't, nobody did.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was Ellie's soft breathing from the bassinet and the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.
I kept my voice low.
“What happened when she didn't wake up?”
Leo stared at Maya's hair.
“Sometimes I got Dad.”
“And sometimes?”
He shrugged.
That shrug frightened me more than any answer.
May you like
“Leo.”
“I shook her.”
