Page 37 of The Woman on the Jury

It felt wrong, given the circumstances, but I found myself glad that he was in the hospital, being forced to rest and recover. Clearly, he needed it.

I didn’t stay long, wanting him to get as much sleep as possible, and wanting to get home to my apartment finally.

It wasn’t much, my apartment. None of them were. But mine was a studio, unlike my grandfather’s, where at least he had a separate bedroom.

The walls were an off-white that I’d been meaning to paint. But given all the holes and the cracks where the wall met all of the baseboards, to paint, I would also need to spackle and grout. And I just never had the time.

The little L-shaped kitchen had the most hideous yellow laminate countertops, and white appliances that weren’t quite white anymore, no matter how much I scrubbed them.

Because the living and bedroom space was so cramped, I’d foregone having any sort of dining table. As it was, the corner of my bed was butting up to the end of my couch. And I couldn’t move around my coffee table without slamming my leg into it.

You’d think after living for years in a dorm that I would be used to small living. But I was pretty sure all my former dorm rooms were larger than this apartment.

Still, it was mine. And I was thankful for it. I didn’t have to share a bathroom, or label my food in the fridge. I could rip off my bra and not feel weird about anyone seeing me without it.

I followed my stomach to the fridge, realizing that my dinner would consist of Greek yogurt, some cheese, and some questionably overripe strawberries.

After I ate, I showered, and changed, before settling down with my antique books and my notebook full of colorful tabs and an index.

What can I say? You weren’t a perpetual student without getting really good at taking intricately detailed notes.

Sometime around midnight, my middle shift guard knocked at my door, and informed me that Venezio was downstairs, but he refused to come up because then ‘eyes wouldn’t be on the door.’

“You’ll know him when you see him,” the guard said. “He’s got one brown eye. The other eye is half brown and half green. He’s wearing a leather jacket and Timbs,” he added.

“Okay. Thank you,” I said, giving him a smile.

“Yep,” he said, then turned and walked away.

Like I said, nothing like Miko.

Or even Cosimo, for that matter.

I ended up not actually meeting Venezio, my night guard, for three full days of having round-the-clock security, though I saw him out front, sometimes pacing a bit, body likely restless from standing in one spot for so long.

Occasionally, I would see guys dropping by to bring him food or coffee. They never stayed to talk, though.

As the weather grew colder and colder, I couldn’t help but feel guilt tug at me as he stood out there, keeping his post, while I was upstairs in the heat.

It wasn’t until the fourth night that I finally got to meet my mysterious nighttime guard.

Unfortunately for both of us, it was in the middle of an attack.

And he was bleeding all over the place.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Halle

I felt awful eventhinkingit, but the shop was in so much better shape within a few days of my grandfather being away.

Suddenly, you could walk around without making tables wobble, or knocking things off of shelves.

Items that were too expensive to risk jostling, I had secured with museum putty. My grandfather had balked at that, wanting to know what a customer was supposed to do if they wanted to pick the item up.

I argued that no random person should be picking up an item worth thousands and thousands of dollars just because they wanted to. Only interested customers could be allowed to pick them up, and I’d done enough experimenting with the putty to know it could relatively easily be dislodged to pick up the item.

Everything had been thoroughly dusted, cleaned, and polished.

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