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“If you insist,” she murmured.
We lay drowsily entwined. She fell asleep, her body growing heavy above mine. I stayed awake, taking in the moment I’d waited so long to have. Holding her was my destiny. Spending every day making sure she knew how loved she was was my purpose.
I’d had no idea the day she arrived late to an interview that it would be Elliot who would scare away my demons and fill the empty places inside me. I finally understood what it meant to offer myself to another, giving up my long-held belief that I was a lone wolf guarding my tender heart from harm or hurt. I was in now. Elliot was my one and only. She’d found me at long last under the big skies of Montana.
The End
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21
BONUS CHAPTER, ELLIOT
Iwas the one who found her. It was an ordinary day. No reason for me to think anything would be different from the one before.
When I first came into our apartment, I was surprised to see my mother’s purse by the door. She worked as an administrator for a small business in the afternoons, not arriving home until six. Fighting traffic and a boss who often gave her a last-minute task that had to be completed before she left work were daily occurrences.
I stood just inside the door, listening. Normal sounds. A baby crying in the apartment across the hall. The thumping of bass coming from the stereo of the tenant above us. He was a waiter and worked at night. During the day, he often had his music playing just loud enough that the sound of the beat traveled through the ceiling. His music was a source of tension among the eight of us who lived in the old apartment building in our Ballard neighborhood. It didn’t bother me. In fact, on lonely afternoons while I did homework and prepared dinner, the beat comforted me like an old friend.
A creak in the floorboards in the hallway drew my attention, and I turned to see Mrs. Hartwell carrying two bags ofgroceries up the stairs. Scents of the mildew wafted up from the perpetually damp carpet that lined the hallway between apartments.
I set my backpack inside the door. "Do you need help with your groceries, Mrs. Hartwell? I can carry them the rest of the way up the stairs for you.”
She set them down at her feet. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d be awfully grateful.” She peered at me with watery eyes through thick bifocal glasses. A splotch of pink stained the end of her nose. She wore her tattered wool coat and the walking shoes my mother had gotten her for Christmas. After noticing the holes in Mrs. Hartwell's only pair, Mom had fretted for days. She couldn’t let it go, fixating on it until I suggested she simply buy her a new pair. We could ill afford to be giving out random gifts, but Mom couldn’t rest until she’d done something to help. She had made up some story about finding them at a thrift store for nearly nothing.
I closed the door to our apartment and picked up a bag in either hand. We trudged up the stairs slowly. Mrs. Hartwell was in her seventies. We were lucky she could still make it up to the third floor. There was an elevator, but half the time it was closed for repair. “Did you walk up to the store?” I asked when we reached the door to her apartment. “I could have gone for you. It’s cold out there.”
“No need. This new arthritis medicine is working wonders. Plus, there’s no rain. I figured I should make hay while the sun shines.”
“It’s not sunny,” I said.
“You know what I mean.” Mrs. Hartwell took her key out of a coat pocket and stuck it into the lock with a shaky hand. “A little mist never hurt anybody.”
In Seattle during winter months, at times the rain fell so heavily it was like walking into a cold shower. Other times, adamp gray layer of mist and fog that drifted in from the Puget Sound crept into my bones when I walked to the public bus I took to school. Today was one of those days.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said.
“Why are you home so early? Doesn’t school go until three?”
“We have early release on Wednesday, remember?” I asked.
“Right, it’s Wednesday. I lose track of days now that I’m retired.”
Mrs. Hartwell had been retired for twenty years.
“My mom’s purse is on the table,” I said. “Did you see her come home early?”
“No, I haven’t seen her all day. Dear me, I do hope she’s not sick. She works so hard for that awful man.”
“Don’t let her hear you call him that.”
She tutted. “I know. I know. She’s loyal because he always welcomes her back after one of her…down times…and blah, blah, blah.”
Mom worked as the officer manager for a small, family-run landscaping business. The owner, Carl Nesom, was an old curmudgeon who vacillated between surly and lecherous. That is, unless his long-suffering wife happened to be in the office. Then he was on his best behavior. I wanted Mom to find something new, but she’d been working for him since she graduated from high school. She’d had me not long after starting to work for Carl. She had never forgotten that he’d let her bring me to work until I was old enough for day care.
I followed Mrs. Hartwell into her apartment. Despite her age, she kept everything tidy. Once a week, I came to clean for her, earning a little “pocket money” as she called it. She'd lived in the same apartment since the passing of her husband. Ten years, which was about the same for Mom and me. I was only a baby when we moved into the Metropolitan and had no memory ofanywhere else. The tenants in the building came and went, but not us or Mrs. Hartwell.
I set the groceries in her small galley kitchen. Identical to ours except for on the other side of the room from ours, because we had a two-bedroom and this had only one.
