They were halfway up the outside stairs when Louis stopped, dug into his backpack, and held out a folded piece of paper to his father with both hands, formally, like a treaty.
"What's this, son?"
"A list."
"What kind of list?"
"Of the people who hurt Mama."
Aislinn gasped and snatched it away so fast the paper cracked, her face going hot, because she'd caught a glimpse, that was the horrible part, a glimpse of neat pencil columns with names and dates, her seven-year-old had been keeping records, but Valerio only smiled.
"It's fine. I've already memorized the list."
"You're lying," she said, half-laughing despite herself.
"Do you think our son is a genius by accident?"
"Well, he takes after me, of course."
"Of course," Louis and Valerio said, in perfect unison, right away.
She made a face at the both of them. "Very funny."
The apartment was one room and a half, if you were generous about the half. Aislinn had scrubbed every inch of it into submission, and none of that scrubbing changed what it was. A water stain on the ceiling shaped like Australia, a window painted shut by some previous decade, a space heater standing in for a furnace that worked when it felt spiritual about it, and akitchen where you could touch both walls at once, which Louis had once described as efficient and she'd loved him so much she'd had to leave the room.
She watched Valerio see it.
She watched his eyes go around the room once, cataloguing, the stain, the window, the heater, the neat stack of secondhand textbooks, the twin mattress and the smaller mattress beside it, and she watched his face turn to stone by degrees, and it was Louis who cracked first, because apparently their son could not stand that face any better than she could.
Three years, she'd lived like this. Three years of flinching at a particular knock, of keeping the chain on even during the day, of doing the math on rent a week before it was due because being a day late meant a visit, and a visit meant standing very still in her own doorway being told how patient he was being, how understanding, how not every landlord would put up with a single mother, while his eyes stayed on her a beat too long, the way a man looks at something he believes he's owed and is simply waiting to collect. She had never told anyone how small that made her, not even Stephanie. She'd folded it up and carried it the way she carried everything, so it wouldn't become one more thing Louis had to be brave about.
Not once had she let herself think the actual word for what it was. She let herself think it now, standing in the doorway with Valerio's fury a live thing beside her.
Fear.That was what three years under this roof had actually been.
"It's warmer than it looks," Louis said quickly. "And the water stain is Australia. We named the spider in the bathroom. Mama makes the best rice in the world on that stove."
"The rice is legendary," Aislinn confirmed, aiming for bright and reaching at least dim. "And the commute is wonderful, the bus stop is right—"
Someone started banging on the door.
Not knocking. Banging, fist-first, the whole cheap door jumping in its frame.
"Open up, it's me! Open up, I know you're in there!"
Louis paled. "The landlord."
His name was on the list. Aislinn knew it was on the list; she'd seen it in the pencil columns, third from the top, with dates.
Valerio set down the one-eared rabbit he had, for the past minute, been holding with unexplained care, and his voice, when it came, had gone somewhere cold enough to keep meat.
"Let me handle this."
GUMWOOD HAD BEEN GOODto her. That was the thing nobody appreciated. Hadn't he been good to her?
Three years that woman had lived under his roof, three years of him being patient about the rent when he didn't have to be, well, patient enough, a few days here and there, and did she think other landlords would do that? For a single mother? With a kid who stared at you like a little judge? Other landlords would've had her out on the street. Gumwood had let her stay. Gumwoodhad come by, personally, to check on things. Fixed her sink once. Well, looked at it. He'd looked at a lot of things over three years, the way she came up the stairs tired with her hair falling down, the way she smiled at everyone, even him, especially him, a smile like that wasn't free, a smile like that was a down payment on something, and Gumwood had waited, patient, generous, three years of layaway on a woman who owed him.
And then today.
