Page 61 of Top Shelf
My heart did something complicated. Did she know? She must know. I waited a beat to see if she was going to call me out on falling for her son, but when she didn’t, I let out a breath. “Manisha,” I tried out, and she smiled encouragingly. “I just want to say thank you. And that I’m sorry this was sprung on you.”
“Listen, I know you’re taking care of him,” she said, hovering beside the car as I put the last bag in the back seat, “but who’s taking care of you?”
I laughed and shrugged, a little startled by the question. “I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “Your parents are gone, aren’t they?”
“Ferris told you?”
She chuckled and shook her head. “I can tell. My husband was just like you. His parents died a few years after we got married. Except he had siblings to take care of. You don’t even have that, do you?”
I really didn’t want to get into my tragic backstory because, really, it didn’t feel that tragic. It was lonely, but I was a content person. The only reason I was feeling any of it now was because Ferris made my life fuller than I thought it could be.
And he was—maybe, probably—temporary.
“I promise I’m okay. Your son is good company.”
Manisha hummed and looked over her shoulder. When her gaze returned to mine, I could see there was something in her eyes. Something she was holding back.
“He’s an easy person to care about, but I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are things important to him that most people don’t understand. Even I don’t understand them most of the time.”
“Yeah. It’s not that hard though. He’s very good at being vocal about what he needs.”
She laughed softly. “He’s always been, from the moment he started speaking. Do you know what his first words were?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“Duck in the water.” Manisha smiled and looked down at her feet. “He was four years old. We were at a park to feed the ducks, but we couldn’t find them. It was one of his favorite things. I think he liked the way the duck bills sounded when they ate the seeds after we threw them into the pond. I’d given up looking, but Ferris was…determined. I was getting ready to leave, and he touched my hand, then pointed and said his first words.”
“Did you cry?”
“Not until I got home. I didn’t want to scare him. I think most people would have wanted their sons to say ‘I love you, Mommy’ or something like that, you know?” She shrugged, her breath edging on a sigh. “But I didn’t. His words told me he’d been paying attention this whole time. He understood. He was just waiting until he was ready to be heard.”
Something twisted in my chest because he was still like that. So much. I didn’t know him that well, but I could already see that.
“I promise to take good care of him.”
Manisha took my hand and squeezed. “I know you will.”
For whatever reason, those words hung on my shoulder like a weight—powerful, but comfortable. For the first time in my life, I trusted myself not to fuck it all up.
Ferris didn’t say anything on the ride home, and I thought about his mom’s words.He waits until he’s ready to be heard.It was instinct to fill the silence, and I didn’t think Ferris would have minded if I blabbered on about whatever was in my head.
But the quiet was nice too. He let me hold his hand and stroke a touch over his knuckles, and he was smiling by the time we pulled into my parking spot and headed in.
The door shut firmly behind us, and the entryway was a little warm from the hints of humidity letting us both know summer was on the way. His stuff was still in the car, but Ferris didn’t seem like he was in a huge hurry to bring it all in.
Maybe the weight of moving in here was hanging off his shoulders too.
He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. A folded bit of paper…was it a swan?
“Did you make that?”
“Mm?” He frowned, then looked up at me. “Oh. No, Eli did. He does this a lot when he’s anxious. Like the way I crochet. He leaves them all over the house, but I think someone collects them because they’re never there by morning.” He stroked his thumb over the swan’s wing. “I think my friends like me.”
Reaching out, I grazed a touch over his jaw and waited for his eyes to flicker up to what I was pretty sure was his favorite spot on my face: the dip in my chin. “Your friends definitely like you.”
“In high school, jocks like them would put me in lockers and trip me down the stairs. Why are they so different now?”
