Page 50 of Wicked Arrangement

“That’s for the police to look into, are you sure it couldn’t be anyone else? There’s no disgruntled ex? Some guy who took a rejection badly?” he asks, his eyes searching my face, his hand still warm and solid on my leg, grounding me.

“No, nothing like that.”

“Could Noah be capable of doing something like this?” he asks gently.

The thought hadn’t occurred to me but suddenly I’m asking myself if he could be. “After what he did to Gran I’ve no idea what he’s capable of. It’s possible, I guess. If he thought he’d get some money from it. But the meager insurance policy we have is in Gran’s name, we wouldn’t get a penny of it unless something happened to her,” my eyes widen in horror, and I jump up frantically. “Oh my god, Gran! We have to get to mygrandmother, if she’s the target and not me, she could be in danger!”

Yaroslav stands up and gently takes my hand, “It’s alright, I already sent some of my men there to keep an eye on the place, the police will be sending a protective detail too. The care facility is incredibly secure, no one gets in or out who isn’t on their list. She’s safe,” he says soothingly, guiding me to sit back down.

I breathe a sigh of relief. My hands are shaking, and I feel faint. Yaroslav must sense I’m on the verge of breaking down, he wraps his arm around my shoulders guiding me to rest my head on his chest. I let the tears come.

“Shh, it’s okay, it will be okay. You can stay here for as long as you need to, and I’ll make sure your grandmother is taken care of at the care home. I’ll make sure no one hurts either of you, I promise. You don’t need to worry,” he says, gently stroking my hair, “Besides, it’s possible this isn’t about you at all,” he adds.

“What do you mean? How can it not be if it was only our home targeted?” I ask, my voice thick from sobbing.

“The police are exploring the option that perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity, that the target was someone else and your apartment was hit by mistake. It could be that those junkie neighbors you mention ripped off the wrong dealer,” he says with conviction, it’s clear he seems to believe that perhaps we weren’t the intended target.

Although the thought of someone else being hurt isn’t a nice one, it is comforting to know this could all be a big mistake,that there isn’t someone out there trying to hurt me or my gran. It’s only now that a thought occurs to me.

“Yaroslav, how did you find out about this? Surely the police would have called me first?” I ask, tilting my chin up to look at him.

“I’m friends with the chief of police, I asked him to notify me should anything untoward happen in your apartment block while you’re staying with me,” he says before adding, “I just wanted to make sure no one tried to break in, your apartment block isn’t the safest and if people noticed it was vacant for a long time they might try to.”

It’s a reasonable enough explanation, thoughtful even, so why do I get the impression he’s lying to me? All of David’s wild claims about Yaroslav being an organized crime boss suddenly don’t feel too far-fetched. Could it have been someone trying to get to Yaroslav through me? I dismiss the thought almost immediately, why would anyone do that? I’m a nobody, and certainly not someone important enough to hurt Yaroslav with.

I keep my thoughts to myself, allowing Yaroslav to comfort me and enjoying his solid presence. I shouldn’t let myself think such crazy things.

“The police are waiting downstairs to speak with you, I thought it would be better for you to do it here than at the station. Do you feel up to talking with them now? I can send them away and tell them you’ll come to them tomorrow?” he asks, his eyes full of concern.

I shake my head, getting up slowly as I reply, “No. I want to help, the quicker we catch the person responsible the better.”

***

It’s been a long, emotionally draining day. After speaking with the police, who didn’t offer any further information than what Yaroslav had already told me, we went to visit Gran followed by Abigail at the hospital. Thankfully they both seemed well. Abigail was her usual self, seeing the bright side of things and simply commenting that she was just happy we weren’t home. Gran wasn’t having the best of days, so I don’t think she really understood what happened. At least with her illness, her long-term memory is excellent, the past is more tangible to her than the present, so she was able to provide the police with a list of names of people who may hold a grudge against our family.

Yaroslav has remained by my side all day, supporting me through this in his calm, stoic way. He reluctantly left me about half an hour ago to go do some work and I’ve been trying to distract myself by sketching. I can’t say it’s working. I keep thinking of all of the things I’ve lost. The only photos I have of my parents, all of Gran’s beloved records, my artwork. We may not have been rich or had much, but the sentimental value of what was in that apartment is immeasurable.

Almost without thinking about it, I start to draw our apartment. I lose myself in my work, trying to bring back to life everything I’ve lost. I used to hate living there, I felt it represented how badly things had changed for us since Gran’s diagnosis, but now I realize it isn’t the building itself that makes somewhere a home, it’s the people and the atmosphere you create there. Somewhere along the way, that crappy little apartment had become a sanctuary.

I add myself and Gran to the sketch, placing Gran in the kitchen, rolling out dough to make festivals—sweet cornbreaddumplings from back home—something I recall her often doing when I was young before the illness took the joy of cooking away from her. It isn’t safe for her to be in the kitchen now in case she forgets to turn off the stove and starts a fire. The irony that the apartment burned down anyway isn’t lost on me. In this imaginary apartment, I want the Gran I remember to be there.

I draw myself in my room, working on a pot. On impulse, I add in more rooms. Noah’s bedroom from our home in Charleston, with him in there playing music, the dining room we never used but that I’m told Mom and Dad loved to host parties in. I add them in too, dancing and laughing surrounded by friends, the parents I know only through stories. I draw the big yard our old home had, with the tire swing in the big tree that Noah and I would spend hours playing on. The tire swing is long gone, Gran wouldn’t let us put it back up after the rope snapped and Noah broke his arm playing on it.

I’m so absorbed in my work that I don’t hear David come into the room.

“What are you drawing?” he asks, making me jump.

“David, you startled me!” I say, turning to face him, “To be honest, I don’t know. I started to draw the apartment but then it sort of become more than that, almost like a memory log of rooms in my life,” I explain, talking him through the various rooms I’ve drawn.

“I’m sorry about your apartment, but at least now you can stay with us longer,” he says with a smile. “Our house is much nicer than a small apartment,” he adds confidently.

I’m not surprised that David’s being a little insensitive, it’s not like I’ve expressed any particular fondness for myapartment, if anything when I have mentioned it, I’ve bemoaned it. I also know that David struggles to fully comprehend the gravity of things, to him, my house burning down is a good thing since I will be staying longer, he won’t have considered the fact that it means all my worldly possessions are gone, that I no longer have a home to go back to. I’m officially homeless.

“Yes, though I have no idea what I’ll do once your brother gets bored of me and kicks me out,” I say, mortified to find tears welling up at the thought.

How I will survive once that happens?

David shakes his head fiercely, a frown furrowing his face, “No. I won’t let that happen.”

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