Page 107 of Ruby Mercy

“A pendix,” she repeats. “When Aunt Nat had an emergency, she had a pendixitus.”

A laugh bubbles out of me unexpectedly. “That is definitely a type of emergency, but not that one I had. I still have my appendix. This was a non-medical emergency.”

“Okay.” She shrugs. “I kept your drawing. It’s in my room.”

“I’ll make sure to get it next time I’m there.”

Her eyes snap back to mine. “You’re coming back to my house?”

“As often as your mom will let me.”

I say that mostly not to frighten her, even though there isn’t a goddamn thing Rayne can do to keep me from this little girl. I’ll kick in that flimsy door as many times as I need to.

Quickly, Yuliana gets tired of chit-chat and goes back to playing on the playground. I follow her around, keeping my distance but staying close enough to offer my opinion on things and answer her questions.

“I think you might fall and crack your head open if you try to do a backflip off of the bridge.”

“You could probably cook dandelions into a soup, but I wouldn’t eat them raw.”

“No, butterflies can’t hurt you.”

Yuliana delivers her questions with a monotone sincerity I could never mimic. She asks the most absurd things as if they make one-hundred-percent sense. Which, to her, they do.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the world through such a rosy set of lenses. The crazy part of this whole thing is… I don’t ever want to take them off.

After a while, Yuliana jabs her chubby finger at the top of the playground. “I’m going up there to make a fort.”

I have to squint against the bright sky to see the netted enclosure at the top. “That’s high.”

She nods solemnly. “Grownups can’t come.”

With that, she ducks under a metal bar, skips up a set of stairs, and climbs up a rope ladder. By the time I make it back to the bench where Rayne is sitting, the only thing I can see of Yuliana is her flashing sneakers peeking out beneath the plastic walls of the fort.

“She likes to be by herself,” I remark, dropping down into the spot next to Rayne.

“Some kids like to be by themselves. It’s not weird.”

I arch a brow at the defensive tone of her voice. “I never said it was.”

“I know. I just… I was an introvert when I was her age, too. With no siblings living at home and no one but my mom around, I got used to the quiet.”

“Is that why you didn’t tell me about her? Because you grew up without a dad, so you thought she didn’t need one, either?”

She sighs. “I don’t want to keep talking about this. I already told you.”

“It bears repeating, apparently.”

Her hands tighten in her lap, so tangled I’m not sure she’ll ever get them undone. “You don’t get any more confessions from me.”

“Unless I have you on the edge of an orgasm, right?” I whisper conspiratorially. “You know, there are subtler ways of telling me I need to stop by your hotel room later for a proper interrogation.”

“That’s my way of telling you that the past is in the past. There’s no point in reliving it. We both made mistakes—plenty of them. Yuliana is all that matters now.”

I can see Yuli’s shoes flashing a path from one side of the fort to the other. A firefly, precious and unbothered.

“She matters a whole hell of a lot. But other things matter, too.”

“Like?” Rayne asks.

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