Page 19 of Justice

I believed it, too. My chest let go. It had been clenched so long I’d forgotten it could open. Five years. That’s how long. I felt safe. But should I?

10

SKYE

“Do you want to store your things in my garage?” Aubrey asked as I sat outside of Rita’s house.

Today I was supposed to be packing a few things for her to come stay at Justice’s home. Serenity and Sarai have to leave for New York soon, so she was running around town getting ready.

“I was thinking about selling it all. I won’t be needing these things once I get enough cash out of this gig with the Banks family.”

“Just let me know.”

“I will. And thank you again for this gig. I’ll still give you your ten percent now that I’m getting double.”

“Appreciate it, but you know I wasn’t going to hold you to the non-compete like I do my other staff.”

“Girl, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have this gig. I’m giving you your just due.”

“That’s why I love you, Skye.”

“I love you too, Bree-Bree. I gotta get in here. We’ll link up soon.”

Once we were off the phone, I headed toward the house. I couldn’t lie. I was going to miss this home. It had so much character, and the neighborhood had wrapped itself around me warmer than any place had in years.

But there was a part of me that was excited about being in Justice’s space. I shouldn’t be. I hated how he made me feel. He was so distracting. And nothing was going to stand between me and this money. Not a damn thing.

Packing Rita up was like trying to move a cat into a bathtub.

“I don’t know why everybody keep acting like I’m on my deathbed.” She stood in the middle of her bedroom directing me to the wrong boxes on purpose, I was almost sure of it. “I raised four kids and a mess of grandkids in this house. Buried a husband out that front door. And now I’m supposed to pack it up in a weekend because my grandson wants me where he can watch me like I’m a pot about to boil over.”

“He loves you. That’s all it is.”

“Love.” She said the word like it tasted funny. “Love is how they get you to agree to things you got no business agreeing to.” She lowered herself into the chair by the window, breathing a little harder than she let on, and looked around the room at fifty years of her life in cardboard. Her voice came down soft. “I been just fine in this house on my own. No offense to you, Everly. You know I love having you. But I don’t need nobody. I never did.”

Everly.

She’d called me by her dead best friend’s name, easy, certain, no idea she’d done it. I’d learned by now not to correct it. On a good day she caught herself. On a day like this one, sliding, I just stepped into the name and let it hold her.

“None taken, Miss Rita,” I said gentle, and kept folding her sweaters. “A woman like you was never gonna need anybody. Doesn’t mean you can’t let folks love on you anyway.”

She looked at me a long moment. I could see the confusion scrambling around to make sense. Then she was back. She knew exactly who I was, exactly what she’d called me, and she didn’t say a word about it. Neither did I. That was the deal between us, unspoken and holy. I caught her when she slipped, and I never made her feel it.

“Don’t forget my throw.” was all she said, and looked back out the window. “My grandmother crocheted it.”

Justice’s house was not a house.

It sat behind a gate at the end of a long private drive, all clean stone and glass and old trees, the sort of place that didn’t announce its money because it had never once had to. He gave us the tour himself, Rita on his arm, and I walked a step behind, cataloguing exits and sightlines out of the habit that had kept me breathing for five years.

He showed Rita her rooms first. A whole wing, near about, ground floor so she never had to fight a staircase, big windows looking out on the back garden, a sitting room off the bedroom so she could have her own company when she wanted it.

“I had them put your chair by the window,” he told her. “The high-backed one. Figured you’d want to see the yard.”

Rita didn’t say anything to that. She just squeezed his arm, and I watched the fight go out of her a little, because a man who moves your favorite chair before you arrive has already won an argument you were planning to keep having.

Then he showed me mine.

A room down the hall from Rita’s, bigger than my apartment, with its own bathroom and a window seat and a lock on the door I clocked before he finished the sentence. One door. I checked. One door in, one window, and the window looked out on an open lawn with no cover. A person would have to cross forty feet of grass to reach it. I hated how fast my mind ran the math, and I hated worse how safe the answer came back.