Page 28 of Justice

“So what about the other one? It’s two girls, right? You told me about the little one. What’s the big one like?”

I took a slow sip. The professional in me sat up, the part that used to read a courtroom for a living.

“You know I can read people,” I said. “That was the job, Bree. Twelve years reading juries. Reading witnesses. Reading a client’s face to know if he was lying to me before I ever put him on the stand. I built a career off knowing what’s sitting underneath. And that girl.” I shook my head. “Something is off with that child.”

“Off how?”

“For one, she never speaks to me. She always seems to be lurking around and spying. And she’s only nice to her daddy. She’s pretty indifferent to everyone else. I don’t know, something is weird about her.”

“Mm.” Aubrey’s face shifted. “That’s a lot, Skye.”

“I’ve seen it before.” I met her eyes. “In grown men. The kind you read about in a headline later. I have never in my life seen it sitting inside a fifteen-year-old, and it stands every hair on my arm straight up.”

Aubrey was quiet a beat. Then she went where a good friend goes.

“You sure you not just being paranoid, though? I gotta ask. You out here living in a stranger’s house, sleeping with one eye cracked, running from what you running from. That’ll put a boogeyman in every corner, baby. It would for anybody.”

I sat with that. Honestly. Because she had every right to ask it.

“Maybe,” I admitted.

“And didn’t that girl lose her mama? Young?” Aubrey pressed, gentle. “That right there will turn a child clean inside out. Grief wears a lot of faces, Skye. Cold is one of them.”

“That’s true.” I let it breathe. “That’s fair. She did lose her mother.” I picked the glass back up. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m out here seeing ghosts. But I’ma keep an eye on her regardless. Can’t help it. It’s how I’m built.”

“Mm hm.” And just like that the weight slid off Aubrey’s face and the devilment climbed right back on. “Okay. Now. You really gonna sit up in my backyard and not say one word about the fine one? Because you gave me the grandmother, you gave me the baby, you gave me the scary one, and you skated clean past Justice like I wasn’t gonna clock it.”

And my mouth did the thing. That thing it did now, all on its own, before my brain could get a hand on it.

“See!” Aubrey jabbed a finger at me, delighted. “That! Right there! Your face just did an entire monologue about that man!”

“It did not.”

“You are grinning like a schoolgirl who just got passed a note.”

“I don’t even know the man.” I could not get the smile back down. “That’s the God’s honest truth. He’s fine, but he’s so secretive, Bree. Locked up tight as a bank. There’s a side of that man don’t nobody get to see. Every time I think I caught a piece of him, he closes it right back up on me.”

“Baby, everybody got secrets.” Aubrey laughed into her wine. “Shoot. Maybe that’s the thing right there. Maybe y’all supposed to crack each other’s codes.”

The smile came off my face.

“No,” I said, quiet now. “Trust me on that one. That man ever cracks my code, he won’t fall in love, Bree. He’ll fire me. And that’s if I’m lucky.” I looked off into her dark backyard. “If I’m not lucky, a man with reach like his hands me right on over to the people I been running from for five years. So no. He can keep every secret he’s got. Because God knows I’m keeping mine.”

Aubrey didn’t laugh at that one. She reached over and squeezed my knee. We sat in the string lights a while longer, two grown women who’d known each other since before either one of us had a single thing to hide, listening to a grown man commit murder on a showtune through the basement window.

It was late by the time I made it back.

I came up that long driveway with my headlights cut, quiet out of habit. I don’t know what made me look up. But I did. Up at the second floor, where all the windows sat dark and sleeping.

All but one.

Storie’s room. Light on. And she was standing dead center in the window looking down at me. Just standing there. Still as a photograph. Watching me roll up the drive in the dark like she’d been posted up waiting to see what time I’d come dragging in.

Something cold walked straight up the back of my neck. But I did the normal thing. The harmless thing. I lifted my hand and I waved up at her, friendly and light. Hey. It’s just me.

Storie didn’t wave back. She held me in her eyes one more second. Then she turned and walked off from that window, and the light clicked out behind her.

I rolled my eyes at my own self, standing out there in the dark all spooked by a moody teenager in a window. Get it together, Skye. I let myself in, threw the locks behind me, and headed up the stairs.