Page 83 of Close Quarters

“Say whatever you want, but despite everything, I think you know very well why I told you that story.”

I grit my teeth. “Maybe I do.”

“I’ll add one little part of it because I’m already trusting that you understand me and won’t go telling anyone what I told you.”

“I won’t.”

“Not even Elliot, I imagine.”

“Understood.”

“Once, my mama and I had a few drinks, just the two of us. She wasn’t much of a drinker. I’m sure you can imagine why. But we got in our drinks, and I was feeling…a little bold, I guess you could say.”

“You asked about your grandfather, didn’t you?”

“All I did was ask about his accident. How it could have happened.”

“And she said what?”

“She said that accidents happen all the time in out-of-the-way places like my original hometown. And if some drunk has himself a nasty accident, a drunk who likes to visit the rooms of his granddaughters,” she slid her gaze to me. “Or his daughter…then well, sometimes God can be a little slow to sort things out, but when he does, it can be in the strangest ways.”

“Like strange accidents.”

“Exactly. You get it.”

I thought I did. That monster had taken advantage of his daughter, Mona’s mother, while growing up. Maybe she had convinced herself it had stopped with her and wouldn’t happen with her daughters. It wasn’t something I was a stranger to. I’d seen it happen more than once in my old neighborhood, where the scum of the earth roamed around like they owned the place.

Yet, her mother had done what I rarely heard happen in my neck of the woods. She’d heard her daughters and had… ensured it would never happen again. She took the necessary steps to make sure her daughters would always be safe from the monster of her own childhood.

“Yeah,” I grunted, looking down. “I think I know why you’re telling me.”

“Good. Then you know why I championed for you to come here in the first place,” she said, standing up and puffing on her cigar. She turned to peer down at me, smiling slightly. “And why I let Leon argue so passionately for you to stay…well, that was one reason. The others…that’s between Leon and me.”

Only then did I notice Elliot standing a few yards away in the shadows of one of the buildings. I didn’t know how long he’d been leaning against that wall, but his cautious, watchful expression told me he’d been there long enough to realize Mona and I were having a conversation that didn’t involve him. It was a good reminder that he wasn’t nearly as dense as I, or even he thought he was.

“You’re safe now,” Mona called with a glance as she walked away, apparently aware Elliot was there.

“Evening,” Elliot muttered as he reached the stairs as she descended.

“Hey,” I said as he glanced at the chair beside me.

“Is this…something I should ask about or leave alone?”

“What?”

“What you two were talking about.”

I looked up, seeing the anxiety on his face, and smiled at him, knowing it would ease his nerves. “We were talking about…something I need to tell you about one day soon.”

“That bad, huh?” he asked, sitting beside me, scooting the chair closer to mine.

“It was kinda like how life can be, some bad, some good, and the mess in between all of it.”

“Wow. That’s uh…are you sure everything’s okay?”

I looked at him, knowing that even if Mona hadn’t said it, she was right. I was going to have to sit him down and tell him. To tell him my story, one I didn’t technically owe, but…well, he deserved to hear all the same. If Mona could tell her own story, with all the horrors and shame that probably came with it, then I could tell my story since it paled in comparison to hers.

But that could wait, and I reached over to squeeze his wrist in a rare gesture of open affection. “You’re here. So it is now.”

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