Hold Me Close

by Rosalind James

  “Oh.” He could see her swallow. “Maybe she was . . . taking a break.”

  “Taking a break, watching TV at her place? Not staying with him? You might want to check that out. Or, you know—” He stopped again. The free-lunch thing hadn’t gone over well, but he needed to say this. “There are programs for childcare assistance. If you’re on food stamps, for instance, Medicaid, anything like that, those can get you in the door easier. I could hook you up. I know the paperwork can be a little confusing, but, hey, paperwork is my life. So if I can give you a hand—”

  “No.” She stood up, then bent down for the vacuum cleaner and hoisted it hurriedly onto one shoulder, struggling to get the other arm through the strap. “I have to go. I have to work. I’ll get fired. Eli’s fine. We’re fine.”

  He stood up, too. “Kayla, wait. I’m sorry. It’s my job, though, you know? Finding solutions to problems. You’ve got a problem, but there’s an answer. And I was going to do the vacuuming, remember?”

  She wasn’t listening. She was halfway out the door, trying to yank a twisted strap loose, jerking on it so hard that she banged into the doorjamb with her elbow and uttered a startled yelp.

  “Wait.” He was at her side, reaching for her arm, turning her toward him. And she was flinching, just like that, the arm that had been fumbling with the strap flying up across her face.

  “Whoa.” He dropped his hand. He knew what that reaction meant. He’d seen enough kids like that. Kids who didn’t look you in the eye, who tensed when they were touched. He’d seen their mothers, too. “Whoa, Kayla. No. It’s all right.”

  She shook her head violently. “I need to go. I need to work.” There were tears shining in her eyes, trembling on the edges of those long lashes when she looked over her shoulder at him. And all of a sudden, something in her pose, in her look—it all fell into place, and he was the one frozen.

  “You’re kidding,” he said. “It can’t be.” His onetime cousin? Kayla. Kay.

  No. She’d have said.

  “What?” It was a whisper. “Eli’s all right. He’s all right. Please let me go.”

  “Kayla. I’m not going to tell anyone that Eli’s alone. I’m not going to report you.”

  She was trembling violently now, and he put his hands on the backpack straps, felt her stiffen again, and said, “Please let me—please take this off. Please talk to me. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to help you.”

  “I . . .” The tears had spilled over, were shining on her flushed cheeks. “No. I have to go. I have to . . . I’ll lose my job. I can’t lose my job. Eli—”

  “You’re not going to lose your job, because I’m going to help you do it. Please. Sit down and tell me what’s going on. I can help.”

  “You can’t.” The tears had come for real now, and with them, a recognition so strong, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it sooner.

  “Kayla. Please.” She was back in the chair, her hands pressed between her thighs, trying to stop crying, and succeeding, too. Because, he suddenly knew, she’d learned the hard way how to do that. How to keep it all inside. How to shut down.

  He ached to hold her. But he couldn’t hold her, because that wouldn’t comfort her. It would do just the opposite.

  Kayla was Kay. The little girl who’d followed him for weeks on end over that childhood summer. The sweet, exasperating, quaking little blonde thing with eyes too big for her face, as tender and helpless as one of the kittens in the barn. So afraid, until she’d taken a deep breath and done it, whatever scary thing it had been. Had swung on the rope swing, jumped off the diving board, climbed onto the trampoline, ridden her bike down the steepest hill in the fields. Her smile when she’d done it, when she’d been brave. And, always, the way she’d looked at him. Like he was her hero.

  A woman any man would burn to protect, and somebody had hurt her instead.

  “Those eyes,” he said now. “Aren’t you her? Aren’t you Kay? Little Kay? Am I wrong? Because I don’t think so. I think it’s you.”

  “It’s . . . it’s me.”

  “But . . . why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t even know if you’d remember. And what would I say? What would I—” She stopped for a second. “Ask?”

  “You mean, could you ask for help? Of course you could. Of course you can. You have to know you can.”

  She was shaking her head. “No. I can’t. Your family doesn’t have any obligation to me. My mom left your uncle. She cheated on him. I know how that must have felt for them. And anyway—” She stopped. “Really? You remember me?”

  “Yeah.” He wanted to hold her. But he didn’t. “Cal said I was in love. He used to sing that song. Used to make me so mad, I’d slug him.” He chanted it now, softly. “Kayla and Luke, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes the baby in the baby carriage.” He sighed. “Man, that made me mad. Can’t tell you how many times we ended up rolling around on the floor in our room. Trouble was, Cal was two years older, and he always won.”

  She’d lost a little of the frozen look, though she hadn’t moved. “I had a crush on you, too. I guess you know.”

  He sighed. “Now, see? How good is that?”

  “But that isn’t now. That’s just something from a long time ago. It isn’t now.”

  “Sure it is. My folks would love to see you. Cal would, too,” he lied.

  She smiled a little—just a little—at that. “I don’t think so. I was nothing but a pest. And your parents? Luke—”

  “Yeah. My parents. My parents definitely.”

  “Is your sister still around?”

  “Nope. Married a guy way over in the Tri-Cities. She’ll be here for Thanksgiving, though. So you see? We’re—well, we’re not family,” he said hastily. “No.” He wasn’t going down that road. He was in the Friend Zone already, because she didn’t have any other zone available, it was obvious. He sure as hell wasn’t getting stuck in the Cousin Zone.

  “Yes,” she said, totally misinterpreting his meaning. “We’re not. And that’s my point. I’m—I’m in a mess. And that’s not your problem. It’s certainly not your family’s problem. The last thing I want to do is drag anybody else in.”

  “Time for you to tell me. Time for you to tell me what’s going on with Eli and you.” And there was the frozen look, right back again.

  “No.” She stood up so violently she knocked the chair back. “I don’t have to tell you anything. I need to go.”

  “Kayla.” He was so close, he could have reached for her arm, but he didn’t. He couldn’t stand to see her flinch again. “I can help. Please. Or if you won’t let me help, at least let me hook you up so you can get help. What’s going on? Please tell me.”

  She shook her head, and her arms were around herself again. She was looking down, and if she’d had enough hair, it would have been in her face. But she didn’t, because somebody had cut it. Somebody had hacked it off. She’d said so.

  “Why did you cut your hair?”

  She looked up at that. Stared at him blankly. “What?”

  “Why did you cut your hair?”

  “I . . . we . . .” She was trembling, and she moved to the black rectangle of window and stood looking out at the church, still holding herself so tightly.

  “Somebody cut it,” he said. “Who?”

  She didn’t look around. “I don’t know his name,” she said, and his stomach turned over. What?

  “He hurt you.”

  “No. Not him.” She turned around again. “He was . . . he was in a pawnshop. He was kind. He cut it for me so I could . . . escape. So I could . . .” She was shaking. “Hide. So I could hide us.”

  “What happened?”

  “Just . . . just a bad . . . situation.” Her lips were trembling as she spoke. “I know what you think. You think I’m p
roud. Or stubborn, maybe, that I won’t sign Eli up for the school lunch program. That I’m letting him stay home alone.” Her eyes closed at that, as if she couldn’t bear to think of it, then opened again. “You think I care more about that than seeing that he’s taken care of. But you’re wrong. I’d do anything.” She was looking at him now, her eyes shining, her voice fierce. “I’d do anything to make things better for us. Not to be this close to the edge. I’d swallow any pride I had left—and there isn’t very much, let me tell you—to do that. But I can’t. I can’t sign up for food stamps. I can’t get Medicaid. All I ever wanted to do was take care of my son. I screwed it up so badly, and now it’s even worse, and I can’t see how it’ll ever get better, and it’s—it’s—”

  Her voice was shaking, her hands clasped together so tightly to hide the trembling, and it wasn’t working, because he saw it.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Still, she hesitated, her eyes huge, searching his face.

  “Please, Kayla,” he said. “Trust me enough to tell me what’s wrong.”

  She was trying to hold back the tears, he could see it, and his heart was aching with a pain he wouldn’t have thought possible. He wanted to hold her, but she had her arms wrapped around herself, her legs pressed together, her body language spelling “closed” all the way. She didn’t reach out, he suddenly knew, because she didn’t believe there would be anything there when she did.

  “We got out.” She was looking out the window, staring blindly at the church. The words were barely audible, but he heard them.

  He had a sudden image of standing in her tiny, bare living room, looking at her across a mattress. At a bruise on her face, another one on the back of her thigh. Big. Ugly. A week old.

  Car accident, he’d thought at the time. He’d known for a while now that it had been something so much worse.

  If you hurt my mom, I’m not going to play with Daisy anymore.

  “He hit you,” he said. “He beat you bad. Your husband.”

  “No! Not my husband. My husband would never—No. Somebody . . . somebody else. And it was getting . . . worse. I was going to end up in the hospital, or—or worse. And then what would’ve happened to Eli? He doesn’t have anyone but me. He’d have been there, in that house. Or he’d have been . . .” She broke off.

  “So you got out.” He did his best to dial it down, but the professional calm had never come harder. “You left. Left where?”

  “B-B-Boise.” She stammered on the word. Scared to say it, to tell him, to give up her secret. “He always said that if I tried to leave again, he’d find me. And that he’d . . . he’d kill me. I didn’t care so much for me. I know that’s bad to say. I know, but sometimes, I thought . . . I thought it would be easier. Except I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave Eli alone. So we got out, but he can find us. If we don’t hide well enough, he’ll find us.”

  “How? Through the food-stamp program? No. He’s not going to be able to search those databases. They’re confidential. I should know.”

  The expression on her face was so hopeless. “He’s a . . . he’s in a powerful position. He’s got cops who’ll search any database for him, do him any favor. I wouldn’t even have enrolled Eli in school if I’d had the choice. But what can I do?”

  That was bad. “And you think he’s still going to be looking?”

  “I know he is. He doesn’t like to lose. The worst times . . . they were when he lost. In his job. And losing me like he did, that I outsmarted him, that I made a fool of him—he won’t forgive that. And he won’t forget. He never forgets, and he never forgives.”

  “How did you make a fool of him?”

  “I left. I know how he felt when I did that, because I know what happened when I left before.”

  She was shaking again, and he tried not to think about that fist landing in her face, that foot being hauled back, kicking her slim little body when she was on the ground. But he failed. His body was tightening with the need to hit back, and he had to sit for a moment and breathe until the rage left him. Rage would be the last thing she needed to see. He wanted to tell her so much, but he didn’t want to say it wrong.

  “Right,” he said at last. “Right. We’ll just—I’ll just—is it all right with you if I tell my family?”

  “Your family?”

  “Yeah. You say he’s got connections, that he’s got power. Well, so do I, and so do they. We could go to the police right now, get a restraining order. You could report this. Put the heat on him, get some offense going.”

  She laughed, just a breath. “Yeah, right. Draw him a map and tell him where I am? No. You’re not listening. He wants to kill me. No. Nobody knows. I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “I’m the right guy to tell.” He knew that, too. “And you told me because you trust me.”

  “Did I?” She looked at him searchingly. “Maybe I just needed to tell somebody.”

  “Yep. Been carrying that burden all this time? I’m sure you did. So what do we do about it?”

  She smiled, then, a bitter twist of her pretty mouth. “You’re a man. You think there’s something to do, some way to fix it. But sometimes there’s nothing to do.”

  “There’s always something to do.”

  “Not this time.” She was grabbing her vacuum cleaner again, hoisting it, and he put a hand out in protest. He didn’t touch her, but all the same, she stopped and set it down again. He thought about how that obedience had been trained into her, and hated that he knew the answer.

  “Right,” he said, moving on. “Sunday dinner, then. My folks. We don’t have to tell them anything,” he said as she began to object. “Nothing you don’t want to tell. Nothing you don’t want to do. But, please. Come see my folks. They’ll love it.”

  “Are they still in the same house?” That was surely a wistful look on her face.

  “Nope. Cal’s got the house. But we can go by and take a look, if you want.”

  “Is that rope swing still there? In the barn?”

  “Yep. I’ll even give you a push.”

  “You were nice. I always remembered that, how nice you were.”

  “Still am. So—Sunday dinner? You and Eli? Eli’s going to love that barn,” he hurried to add. “You know he is. We’ll bring Daisy. She’s crazy about the farm. Got a boyfriend over there.”

  “You play dirty,” she said, but there was a little smile there, and at least she wasn’t shaking anymore.

  “Yep. I sure do.” He grinned at her. “Pick the two of you up on Sunday at one, how’s that? Give us some time to get good and dusty up there before dinner, because they do the country thing still. Sunday dinner before three. And by the way—I clean real good, too.” He hefted the vacuum cleaner in one hand, swung it onto his back before she could do more than make a grab for it, and loosened the straps. “I took a lot more than ten minutes of your time, so let’s go. Just point me in the right direction.”

  “Luke. No. I can’t.” She was laughing a bit now, the frozen rigidity gone, and he was glad. “I’m not supposed to let anybody in while I’m working. It’s a rule.”

  “Ah.” He pulled his ring of keys out of his pocket and jingled them. “You forget. I’m the boss.”

  THE FUNNEST PART

  Luke had been as good as his word, had vacuumed every office in the hallway, then come into the boys’ restroom to find her. He’d taken one look at her with the toilet brush and said, “Oh, hell, no,” before pulling it out of her hand, grabbing a pair of rubber gloves, and setting to work over her protests.

  How could her heart have done anything but melt? A man who scrubbed toilets for you—surely that was a good man. Surely even her radar couldn’t be that far off.

  “Just added a topic to next Friday’s assembly,” he told her when he emerged again to find her finishing with the sinks and mirrors and beginning to mop. “Respect for our custodians. A
nd not being a disgusting slob, too. Whatever they’re paying you, it’s not enough.”

  “Nope. But it’s a job.”

  “This what you’ve always done?”

  “No. I was a waitress, always. In diners, places like that. I didn’t go to college.” She might as well tell him, not that he wouldn’t have figured out by now that she was nowhere close to where he was.

  He didn’t seem too shocked. “So why aren’t you one now? You can’t tell me the pay wouldn’t be better. The hours, too.”

  “They sure would. References, that’s why. Who wants to hire somebody with no references? Nobody around here, I’ll tell you that. I tried them all.”

  “Because . . .”

  “Because I can’t. Because they’d call . . . where I used to work, and then the people there would know where I went.”

  “Ah.”

  She was mopping in the stalls now. “And you need to go back to work yourself,” she said. “Or go home, because you don’t work nights.”

  “I could do the girls’ room with you,” he suggested. “Every teenage boy’s dream, being in the ladies’ room.”

  She stuck her head out of the stall closest to the entrance. “You’re kidding. Why?”

  He shrugged and grinned. “Because teenage boys are disgusting? As I’m reminded every day. What, you never wanted to peek inside the men’s room?”

  She made a face. “Ew. No. And see how right I was? Go on home, Luke. I’m fine. I’m way ahead of schedule, thanks to you. I’ll be able to leave early, but you have to work in the morning.”

  “More important things than sleep.”

  “Really? Because when I get up with Eli in the morning, nothing seems more important than sleep.”

  “I’ll bet,” he said, his expression softening. “All right. I’m leaving, only because I think you want me to. But—Sunday. One o’clock. And, Kayla?”

  He stepped a little closer, the mop and heavy wheeled bucket between them. The pungent scent of ammonia filled her nostrils, and as a romantic setting, it left a world to be desired. All the same, she could feel herself leaning into him a little.