Page 123 of Limbo

I reach up with my casted hand and give the door a push. Stale air from inside bombards us, surrounding us in years’ worth of cigarette smoke and hostility.

Honey, I’m home.

My grip on his hand tightens, and he squeezes back as he leads me inside. We walk past the living room, Jordan not slowing down, but I glance in. You wouldn’t guess anything happened unless you knew a lamp was missing. The dent in the wall from my head has been patched and painted, the blood cleaned from the carpet. My bedroom door has been replaced, too. It looks the same as the old one and yet entirely out of place.

Jordan stops there, but I tug him farther down the hall to Graham’s room. He beats me to the knob, pushing it open without hesitation this time. Whatever I thought relief felt like was wrong. I’ve never known it until I see the twelve-by-twelve room with nothing but brand-new carpet and bare, freshly painted walls.

“Kevin must have stayed up all night to finish,” Jordan says.

The kitchen door bangs open and shut a few times, and a bunch of voices bustle in. Loud and playfully arguing about something nonsensical. Jordan starts down the hall toward them, but I step farther into the room. I scan around, searching for anything that reminds me of my father. But there’s nothing familiar, no sights or scents or heaviness. The rest of the house is stained, and somehow, it’s like he’s never touched this place.

When he realizes I’m not following, Jordan comes back for me. He meets me in the center of the room and holds his arms tight around me. “What are you thinking?”

“He’s really gone.”

His forehead rests against mine. “He is, baby.”

I sigh, that newfound relief coursing through me. Jordan kisses me, soft and slow. Just us, his lips on mine while laughter floats down the hallway. Everything’s bright and light, and it’s the only memory I’ll have in here.

The only moment.

And it’s a fucking perfect one.

On my eighteenth birthday, I woke up with a smile on my face. For my nineteenth, I wake with a six-year-old on my back. I grunt, pretty sure it’s time we have a personal-boundaries talk. Cate giggles and wiggles, and then someone lifts her off me.

Jordan tosses her to the other side of the mattress. “Scat, cat.”

She hisses at him and dives off the bed.

He crashes down next to me and pulls me to him. “Happy birthday,” he whispers, his lips grazing my ear.

“Uh-huh,” I say, still half-asleep. “Why is my baby sister a cat?”

“She’s a tabby actually. And we’ll blame it on Trey for leaving milk in his cereal dish.”

I put the rest together on my own, picturing Cate up on the counter, lapping the milk out of the bowl.

Jordan presses his lips to mine. Once. Twice. “Stay,” he says, rolling out of bed.

I stretch and do what I can to fully wake up.

I’m nineteen. It seems rather anticlimactic, considering the buildup. All those boxes crossed off on a calendar, not that I kept up with it after the attack. The day represented freedom from Graham, but I’ve already gotten that. All three of us won that fight when the court terminated his parental rights a few weeks ago.

We took another step forward last week when I filed for guardianship over Connor and Cate.

Some people have profound realizations brought on by tragedies, such as your ex-husband trying to kill your daughter. They strive to be better, examining their own lives to see what changes they can make. Our mother is not one of them. Having her children full-time scared her so much that she begged me to take them. Even offered to pay child support every month. Now we wait for the judge to approve everything.

Jordan’s bare feet pad over the wood in the hallway, and he slips into my room, quietly shutting the door behind him. When he turns around, my eyes zero in on the cup he is carrying.

“God, I love you.”

“The coffee loves you, too,” he says dryly.

He’s playing hooky from his internship to spend the day with me. It’s incredible how few questions anyone asks when you use the wordpinkeye.

I greedily take a sip before he steals the mug back and sets it on the nightstand. I would complain, but he peels off his shirt and crawls back into bed.

“Con left for his pickup game, and I parked Cate in front of the TV, so we have at least twenty minutes to ourselves.” He hauls me against him, a serious look on his face. “You ready for your present?”

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