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She pressed her lips to my chest before she continued. “That's why I hate dark places. And the reason I can’t handle being smothered. I felt powerless and scared. Until recently, I hated my thoughts and closing myself off, but it made me feel safe. Does that even make sense?”
Tucking her head under my chin, I said, “You did what you had to do to get over the trauma. No one, especially not me, judges you for it.”
“You’re not scared of anything,” she mumbled.
I snorted a sarcastic laugh. “Oh, Frances. You’re so wrong.”
On the dresser in front of my bed sat a photo of my brothers and me with our parents, two weeks before they died. My heart pounded and the memory made me shiver.
“I’m terrified of trusting people. I’m scared I’ll trust someone and they will hurt the people I love.”
She rubbed her fingers along my forearm, warming up the goosebumps that had risen on my flesh. “What happened?” she asked.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“I’ve got nowhere to go.” She snuggled closer to my body, strumming her fingers along the ridges of my stomach.
"When my parents passed away, my uncle and aunt took us in. He was my dad’s brother but we had spent little time with him. Maybe I saw him at Christmas. It didn’t matter. I was so relieved that someone would take us in and they wouldn’t separate us in foster homes that I didn’t care how often we had seen him before, just as long as we were all together now.
“After they moved in with us, they weren’t around much. My brothers and I had to fend for ourselves. It didn’t bother me, but Ryan questioned it a lot. Wondered why they would even bother taking us in. I told him to stop being ungrateful and just be happy we weren’t on the streets or worse.”
“That sounds pretty reasonable to me,” she said.
Recalling several conversations with my brothers when we were younger, I added, “They never saw it that way. Luke would beg our uncle to watch him play baseball after school, but he always declined.”
I ran my fingers along her back while my mind drifted to one particular memory.
*
The August sun blared down the windows and sucked all the air from inside the playroom. Beads of sweat gathered on my forehead, but I hardly noticed. I was too busy building a skyscraper with Lego.
My uncle walked in and I held still, wondering what Luke and I had done now and how to fix it. But the words that came out of his mouth shocked me.
“It’s a hot one out there. A good day to go for ice cream. What do you think, Colton?” he asked. If he hadn’t addressed me, I would have thought he was speaking to someone else. My uncle had never offered to take us anywhere.
“I think that’s a good idea,” I replied, cautiously.
“Wonderful,” he exclaimed, then clapped his hands once. “Well, get up, boy. The ice cream won’t come to you. We’ll drive there.”
I stumbled to my feet, rushing to stand. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll go grab Luke. I think Ryan’s at a friend’s house, but I can call him.”
“No need,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder to stop me from leaving the room. “It will be just the two of us.”
I hesitated but didn’t want to blow the chance that my uncle was finally coming around. And maybe he would ask all three of us next time, so I agreed.
When we reached the ice cream shop, he let me choose three flavors, and when I brought that ice cream cone to my mouth, it was taller than my ten-year-old face.
“Listen, Colton,” he said, sitting in a steel chair in front of me, with no ice cream cone in his hands. “Your aunt would like to wear something of your mother’s to remember her by. Can you open the safe for us?”
My entire body froze and it wasn’t from the cold dessert. A niggling voice in my head warned me not to give it to him. “I… I… don’t know the code.”
He smiled. “Sure, you do. Your daddy always said how smart you are and how you’ll take over the business one day. You’re telling me you never figured out a tiny thing like the code?”
I didn’t have to figure it out. My mother had given it to me. I would fetch her earrings and bracelets before she’d go out for the night. But he didn’t know that. At least I didn’t think he did. So, I shook my head.
“Do you like staying in your house, Colton? Do you enjoy living with your brothers and attending the same school you’ve always attended? It would be a shame if your aunt and I couldn’t support you any longer.”
I knew my parents had left them a sizable income as our caregivers, but he could pull us out of school and make our lives miserable. “Why would you do that to us?” I asked.
