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“My room has one window, but it’s high up and faces an alley,” I replied. “You have two windows in here. It’s… it’s too much.”
I took a deep breath as I prepared to tell him what had happened. It had been years since I had confessed any of this to anyone. While I had been in therapy as a child, there was only so much those sessions could do to help me cope. Especially when it happened when I was young.
Gabe didn’t push me to say anything before I was ready. I appreciated that much. It was going to be difficult to share with someone I hardly knew… though that didn’t account for the fact that I wanted to get to know him better.
“When I was younger, someone broke into our home,” I finally said. “They found their way in using one of the windows in a room that had windows much like this. That room… at the time, well, it was my room.”
I took a deep breath.
“I know that doesn’t sound like much, but to a little kid, to have someone you don’t know come into the room through the window and then use you to make your parents do what they want… it was terrifying. I still get nightmares about it,” I admitted. “I mean, after years of therapy, I’m okay with rooms with one window, which is good since most bedrooms are required to have one for escape purposes. But I still can’t sleep in a room with more than one because it still freaks me out,.”
Gabe stopped moving his duffel bag at this and then moved it back to where it was.
“Then, perhaps I should sleep on that side of the bed so that if someone does come through the window, they’re just as likely to trip over me as they are to land on solid ground,” he said. “With the way the snow has piled up out there, I don’t think you have anything to really worry about, but there’s no reason for me to make light of your situation.”
I smiled a little.
“That would be nice, thank you.”
I didn’t know what else to say to him. He had been so accommodating already. To ask for more felt like a colossal imposition. That was, honestly, the last thing I wanted to do. He spread his blanket out on the floor as I thought about it. Without even asking if he wanted a pillow, I offered him one that I figured he had been using anyway.
“Thanks.”
He took it and set it on the floor.
“Now…” He looked at me before sitting on the floor. “Is there anything I can do to help you feel safer? Or do you think my sleeping on this side of the bed will be enough?”
“I’m honestly not sure,” I replied. “It’s been so long since I tried to sleep in a room like this that I don’t know how I’ll do.”
“How about we use some clips I brought and shut these blinds here?” He motioned to the window beside him. “That will give us some more darkness to sleep in, and it’ll make it harder for anyone to come in. If they want to come in, they’ll have to try this window, which has a lot more snow built up against it. And we could use whatever is left to set up a trap in case they do get the window open.”
“I think that’d be a good idea.”
I started to relax. This is when I realized that after sharing the bare minimum of the story with Gabe, I had started to shake. Perhaps that was why he had started to offer other things to help me out. The idea of being stranded here without a way to easily contact those I cared about was also putting me on edge, but not nearly as much as the extra window in here.
He pulled the clips out of his duffel bag before clipping the curtains together at the top and the middle of the panels. That helped significantly with the light. I was glad to know that he’d brought those. I didn’t know why he had them, but they were helpful now.
As far as setting up a trap went, I didn’t think we’d need one, but he jerry-rigged some string across both windows so that if someone did try to come in, we would hear them stumble over the string. He had it in multiple places, and even had me help put it up to make sure that it wouldn’t come off easily.
“There we go. I think we have sufficiently burglar-proofed this room.” He smiled at me when we were done. “Now, is there anything else you can think of that would help you feel safer tonight?”
“I wish the power would come back on completely, but that’s a pipe dream right now with the snow continuing to fall,” I admitted. “Maybe just another round of Egyptian Rat Screw to help me work off the adrenaline?”
He nodded and pulled out the cards that he had put away when we had finished dinner.
“That, I can oblige you with. Why don’t we move to the table for now?”
We moved over to the table. I shuffled the cards and dealt them out. It wasn’t that hard to get into the game. The more we played this round, the more I realized that Gabe was going out of his way to help me in this moment. He could have easily pretended to be asleep and ignored the tap on his shoulder when I went to see if he would be willing to come in here to give me a sense of safety.
I wondered if there was a reason that he had come to help me at all, other than trying to be nice despite the circumstances I had gotten us into by insisting we go to Corinth as soon as he could take me there. Then again, I partially blamed Mr. White for this mess, too. If he hadn’t given me an end-of-the-month deadline, we could have been able to avoid the worst of the storm.
Once we finished the round, which he won, I smiled at him a little.
"I really appreciate this. I know I probably sound so stupid, but –”
He interrupted me before I could finish. “Nope. Not stupid. You had a terrifying experience, and your body is just trying to protect you by doing its best to not let you be in that situation again. You can try to rewire that fear, but you can’t ignore it.”
I nodded. I’d never heard it put like that, but it was certainly true.
