Page 18 of Peaches & Pistols

A double check of our backpacks reveals exactly what my initial check did five minutes ago, clean and neatly folded clothes I didn’t have to wash.

The girls skitter into the family room, where I’m awkwardly waiting for my new boss to take me and my daughter back to his house. This is the most bizarre situation I’ve found myself in but is infinitely preferable to the life I fled.

“Where’s Daddy? I’m hungry.” Harper hugs Cecelia’s leg, who caresses her granddaughter’s hair.

“Should be here any minute, love.”

From what I gather, Greyson and Harper aren’t biologically related to the Andersen family but are treated the same as any blood relation. For all intents and purposes, Cecelia and Walter are Harper’s grandparents.

Truck tires pull up the gravel drive, sending a metal rod through my spine. I can’t fill my lungs around Greyson—but not in the same way I held my breath around Carter. Around him it’s from anticipation, not dread; and I don’t know what to do with it.

The front door swings open and I tense, heart beating double time.

“Daddy!” Harper runs into her dad’s arms, not a hint of hesitance.

I worked tirelessly to ensure Everly wasn’t exposed to Carter’s cruelty—but I think a part of her knew. Because never once did she run into his arms like this. She’d hug him briefly if he initiated but always kept a healthy distance from him.

“You girls ready to go home?” The rod in my spine vibrates with recognition Everly and I are included as the girls he’s referring to, and the home is now ours.

I gather the backpacks and hold my hand out for Everly to grab.

“Where’s your luggage? I’ll toss it in the truck bed.” Greyson looks around the family room to find no such thing.

“This is all we came with,” I say flatly.

His thinly veiled anger burns me, but the heat dissipates when he tears his eyes away. I get the feeling he’s not mad at me, but for me.

“Alright ladies, load up.” Greyson claps loudly, making me flinch. People’s eyes crawl over my skin like spiders, the sensation nearly drives me to madness.

To shake the spiders off me, I force my legs to move and walk with Everly out the front door into the stifling summer heat.

Not for the first time, I wish I could ask Charlie what to do.

The sun seems to set later in the mountains, as if we’re on the jagged edge of the earth right before the sun drops into the dark abyss.

As Greyson’s truck crawls down Main Street, it sinks in that he literally lives above the hardware store. He pulls his truck down a small alley between his store and the next. Behind the buildings, the small alley turns into a hidden street, where shopkeepers can park their personal vehicles.

Looking up, all the stores on Main Street are two story with apartments above each business, I presume.

Greyson parks the truck and climbs out to unbuckle Harper. I follow suit and unbuckle Everly from the second car seat he somehow had time to install during his work day.

He gathers up our backpacks in one hand and follows a bounding Harper up an intimidating flight of stairs to the second story. I shuffle Everly ahead of me so I can bring up the rear and be there to catch her if she slips.

Each step closer to Greyson’s front door clouds my vision with unwanted memories. Charlie and I didn’t have a conventional childhood. We had the type of childhood where we lived month-to-month, our parents jumping from one temp job to the next.

I lost count how many “new homes” I had over the years, and life only became more unstable and unbearable after Charlie died.

My parents kicked me out the day after graduation. Something about finally being burdenless and free of their parental responsibilities. I couldn’t hear much over the roaring terror in my ears.

The fear of finding a safe place to sleep was suffocating, until he came along.

When I married Carter, a substantial factor in my decision was stability. I was eighteen when I married him, desperately seeking safety. In retrospect, living in one house, with one man, with the same routine, day in and day out appealed to the lost little girl inside me.

“Hey, you alright?” Greyson’s deep baritone rips me from the past.

“What?”

“Been waiting for you to come in, but you’re glued to the landing.” He gives me his back and retreats into his apartment.