First, Last, and in Between

by Jamie Bennett

  She looked at me and blinked a little. “Nothing, I’m just tired. What should we make for dinner, honey? You must be tired too after doing four houses today.”

  I relaxed again, because she was back. “The last one took forever. It has been a long day. How about the rest of that pasta I made last night? Or did you have it for lunch?”

  “Lunch?” she repeated, and I knew she hadn’t eaten anything. She wasn’t ever eating enough, not if I wasn’t here with her. Tonight, I watched carefully as she had the leftover pasta that I heated on the stove, because Rella didn’t have a microwave, and then we talked more until she started nodding off in her armchair and I thought it was time for bed. For her.

  I walked up the four flights to my apartment, dragging my cleaning supply bucket and the few groceries that I had bought for myself, too, because the elevator was broken again. The last time I’d pushed the button to go up, it had smelled like something was burning and I’d hopped right out. But the stairwell never felt safe either, so I listened carefully as I went and kept my eyes open, but no one was creeping around tonight. I let myself into my apartment, neat and clean but just like the Tollman house: empty. I didn’t have any books or pictures, not even the Bible that Leighton Tollman hid her weed papers in or the posed family photo that Wilder Tollman had on his desk.

  I sat at my window, which was high enough that I didn’t have bars, and thought about things for a long time. I listened to the noises of the city where I’d lived for so long as it woke up in the spring, just like the pretty trees that were perking up for the new season at the Tollmans’ house. I’d wanted to leave here before, when I was a kid. I’d dreamed of beaches, trees, fresh air, quiet, and calm.

  But now I knew that my life was in this city. I knew that I’d never get away.

  ∞

  Rory

  I saw her before she saw me.

  How many years had it been? How long did it take for someone to change so much? She wasn’t the pale, skinny, dirty girl who I’d tripped over in the hallway of our old building, not anymore. If I hadn’t been sure that this was Isobel Starr, I might not have recognized her—but her blonde hair was the same, so light that it was almost white, and she still moved with the careful steps, like she was anticipating trouble ahead of her. I was too far away to see the blue eyes that had been huge in her face when she was a kid, huge and wary and scared.

  I watched as she walked along the sidewalk toward me with a tiny older lady wearing the biggest, fanciest hat I’d ever seen. They had their arms linked and it looked like Isobel was supporting her, keeping her upright, and she was also keeping an eye on the pavement to steer around sticks and broken concrete. I had watched them leave the church together, slowly descending the pair of steps. Then the old lady had stopped to talk to the priest or whoever he was, and Isobel had stood to the side, tapping her foot until the lady shot her a look from under that hat. When they had finally pulled away and started toward the apartment building, I had retreated so I’d be at the end of the block before they got there.

  Now I waited. I waited to see Isobel Starr.

  The old lady was scolding as they came up the empty street, and I could hear her reedy voice pretty clearly. “I taught you better manners than that. Why are you in such a hurry? To see that Kash?”

  Isobel answered something back that I didn’t catch.

  “I don’t know why you’d waste your precious time with a man who—why are we stopping? What’s wrong, Izzie?”

  Isobel stood stock still on the sidewalk, frozen. She had finally set her eyes on me. Her mouth opened and closed, like maybe she was working up to a scream.

  “Isobel,” I called, and started to approach them. She jerked her head back and forth now and I thought she would run, and I’d have to chase her. But then she looked down at the tiny woman holding her arm, and she stood her ground. I watched her chest heave and she got pale, no color at all in her face. I smiled to show her that everything was ok, but that seemed to make things worse. She stepped in front of the tiny woman like she was protecting her, and I lost the smile. I wasn’t going to hurt some old lady.

  And then Isobel pulled a canister out of her bag, pepper spray maybe, and I stopped moving. I kept my body totally still and watched her. I watched her hands shake so hard that the spray fell from her grasp. It rolled over the wet, dirty concrete and into the weeds at the edge of the sidewalk. She looked at me, judging the distance between us and realizing that it was hopeless to grab for it. Instead, she put herself further in front of the little woman, and she squared herself up like she was ready to fight.

  “What in the Sam Hill?” I heard the old lady demand, and I could also hear the sounds of Isobel breathing. She was gasping.

  “Isobel with an O, Starr with two Rs,” I said to her pleasantly. “It’s been a while.”

  Her mouth opened again like she was going to say something but then it just hung like that.

  “Excuse me,” the small woman said, and managed to maneuver herself back around to stand at Isobel’s side. “Izzie, is this a friend of yours?” she asked. “Honey, are you all right? Who is this man? How does he know your name?”

  Isobel’s lips moved as she mouthed words. Damned if she wasn’t praying. She thought I was going to kill her, right here. Right now.

  “Isobel and I knew each other a long time ago,” I told the tiny lady. “When she was a kid.”

  The lady glared back at me so ferociously that my mouth fell open, too. This elderly woman who came up to my belt buckle was going to take me on.

  “Were you a friend of her mother’s?” she demanded.

  What? “No, I didn’t know her mother,” I answered. “I gave Isobel food once. And clothes.”

  The glare was gone, replaced by a huge smile. “Well! Well, isn’t that nice. It must have been before we met,” she mentioned to Isobel, who hadn’t taken her eyes off me.

  “I’ve thought about her over the years,” I told the old woman. “I wondered what had happened to her, what she was doing.” That was one hundred percent true. I had spent the last eight years wondering about a lot of things, and the dirty girl who’d eaten a loaf of bread and stolen my jar of peanut butter was one of them.

  Isobel made a little noise, kind of a moan, and her friend looked up at her, concerned. “Izzie?” she questioned, and Isobel nodded at her like things were all great. She did a pretty good job selling it, and the lady turned back to me. “Isn’t it fortunate that we ran into you, then? Izzie and I were just heading home to have afternoon tea. Won’t you join us, Mr.…?”

  “Morin. Rory Morin.”

  She delicately extended one tiny hand. “Rella Ross. It’s a pleasure. Yes, you’re welcome to join us so the two of you can catch up.”

  Now Isobel turned to stare at her, like she was crazy.

  “He can’t come to your apartment, Rella.” She finally spoke, and her voice shook just like her hands were. “I’m sure that he’s busy.”

  “No, I’m available for tea,” I told them both, trying to think if I’d ever actually drunk that stuff.

  “Then let’s be on our way. It’s such a pleasant surprise to run into old neighbors,” Rella Ross remarked. She tugged Isobel’s arm and got her moving again down the sidewalk toward the apartment building, and I walked on the old lady’s other side. Isobel looked around, her eyes darting frantically, but she still didn’t run. I admired the fact that she was sticking with her friend.

  “I still keep in touch with some of my former neighbors,” the tiny woman said. She launched into a story about living on Buena Vista Street, her first house as a newlywed in 1956, and how she always exchanged holiday cards with the people she’d met there. “Are you a native Detroiter like Izzie and me, Mr. Morin?”

  “You can call me Rory,” I told her. “No, I’m not from here. I’m from up north.”

  “How long have you lived in our fair city?”

  She talked like she was giving a lesson in how to hold a conversation with a str
anger. “I moved here when I was eighteen,” I answered. “But I’ve been away for a few years.” I met Isobel’s blue eyes as they flew to mine over her friend’s giant, flower-covered hat. They were definitely as wide and scared as when I’d first seen her, when she was curled up on the filthy carpet in the hallway outside my apartment. She had been so dirty herself that I didn’t know the color of her hair or even of her face until she’d helped herself to my shower. A kid who looked like a little elf, or maybe like a fairy, had emerged from my bathroom.

  She still had that fairy look about her now, with all that blonde hair and her big eyes. Her pale skin was soft and delicate, like a peach, I thought. I watched her throat move as she swallowed and I saw the clench of her jaw as she worked to hold in her fear.

  “Where have you been living?” the small lady asked me politely.

  “In Adrian.”

  Isobel seemed to catch on her breath and choke a little. “Are you all right, Izzie?” her friend asked her. “Is your heart beating fast?” Isobel shook her head and her eyes met mine again. She knew what I’d been doing in Adrian, that I’d been locked up in the state penitentiary there.

  “But now I’m here to stay,” I announced. “I left some things unfinished in Detroit and I came back to clean everything up.”

  Isobel choked again, choked and coughed. The old lady stopped to pat her on the back. “You’re getting run down,” she said worriedly. “I think you’ve been doing too much. For your job and me and everyone else.” She frowned, and I wondered what Isobel was so busy with.

  “I’m fine,” she said to both us, and getting ahold of herself, she took Mrs. Ross’s arm and started us moving again. Moving very slowly.

  “What’s your job?” I asked her.

  She cleared her throat. “Um, I clean. I’m a cleaning lady. Most of the people I work for like to call me a housekeeper because they think it sounds better.” The words had tumbled out but she stopped suddenly and bit her full bottom lip, bit it so hard I thought she might draw blood.

  “She’s a very, very hard worker,” Rella told me approvingly. “She would go all hours if she could, but she shouldn’t have to.”

  “I’m fine,” Isobel told her again, and a little blush came into her pale cheeks. “You worry too much, Rella.”

  “Of course I worry about you, honey.” The tiny lady tsk-tsked, and then turned back to me. “What is your occupation, Mr. Morin?”

  “Rory,” I told her again. “I used to work in personal protection, and I may go back to that.” Maybe. If nothing went my way, I could always return to what I had been doing that got me sent to the state pen in Adrian, but I planned to avoid that line of work if I could. I had spent more than eight years thinking about what I’d done and I didn’t want to do those things anymore. I didn’t want to think about them, either.

  “Protection? Well, I would think you’re large enough to make people feel quite safe,” Mrs. Ross said, and I watched Isobel’s cheeks lose that little bit of color they’d gained. She sure didn’t feel safe. She was currently scared out of her mind, but with the old lady between us, she wasn’t doing anything about it.

  We walked the rest of the way to the building where I already knew that she lived, and it turned out that the tiny woman also had a place there on the first floor. Isobel hauled her up the front steps and used a set of keys she had to get us into the woman’s apartment, although she hesitated a lot in doing it. She should have trusted the instinct that made her pause, because it was a big mistake: she never should have allowed a threat like me to get her into an enclosed space, alone behind a closed door. But Rella Ross was still yapping away about church, about the service, about tea and everything else, and she didn’t appear to notice that her younger friend was about to puke in fear.

  “Izzie, do you mind…” she said, and Isobel quickly nodded.

  “You rest, Rella. It’s a long walk home. I’ll get the food.” But then she looked at me and bit her lip again, afraid to leave the two of us alone in the living room while she was three steps away in the kitchen.

  “We’re good,” I told her, and smiled again, but again, it had the opposite effect that I’d planned on. Isobel only bit on her lip harder. I thought that maybe I’d check on my smile in the mirror, to see if prison had changed that, too. Maybe now it was harder and uglier, like those years locked away had done to the rest of me.

  Rella Ross chatted more, asking me about my family, my education, my plans for the future. I didn’t mean to say much, because I never said much, but I found myself mentioning woodworking, and that I had an interview at a shop here in Detroit.

  “That’s wonderful!” she congratulated me, and kept up the interrogation. But after a while she closed her eyes and seemed to doze a little and I listened to Isobel making the food, dropping things with those shaking hands, murmuring words that could have been more prayers or maybe cursing. She also checked on the two of us, a least five or six times, and whenever she stuck her head out of the kitchen, I nodded at her calmly. No smile.

  “Here we are,” she said finally, and put out a tray of little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, a tea pot, and three cups that looked like they would hold a drop or two of liquid. She touched Rella’s shoulder, and the old lady roused and smiled at her.

  “This looks lovely. Mr. Morin, may I pour you some?”

  She did, with a very wobbly hand, into my tiny teacup that said “La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles” on the side. Isobel had “South Dakota’s Corn Palace” and Rella Ross had “Beautiful Niagara Falls.” “They’re from my travels with my husband,” she explained, and started to tell me about him. I looked around, but there was nothing in this little place that made me think another person lived there, and Isobel looked increasingly worried as the old woman kept talking.

  She broke in eventually and said, “Rella, isn’t it time for your Sunday rest? Rella?”

  The little woman stopped and said yes, it was, and goodbye to me. Then Isobel helped her up and into what I thought was the bedroom. I wondered if Isobel would try to make a break for it from there, but I still didn’t think that she’d leave her friend. And I had also seen the bars on the windows.

  When she came out, she looked like maybe she had been crying, but she straightened up her shoulders and cleared her throat. “We can go up to my apartment,” she said. “I don’t want anything to happen around Rella.”

  I gave into my curiosity. “What do you think’s going to happen? What do you think I’m going to do?”

  “Nothing,” she told me quickly. “Let’s go.” She gave me a wide berth as we went back out the apartment’s door, which she locked very carefully.

  This building was a lot better than the one I’d first met her in. Cleaner, maybe safer. We went up a few flights and I nodded approvingly as she opened the door to what looked like a studio apartment. “This isn’t bad,” I told her. “You’re doing ok.”

  “I’m doing ok,” she agreed. Her eyes flitted past me but she had made another mistake: I was already between her and the door. There was no fire escape, either, so she was stuck in here with me.

  “It took a little while to track you down,” I commented, “but not too long. You’ve never left Detroit.”

  “No,” she agreed. “I couldn’t, not with Rella and everything else.” She swallowed. “I didn’t think…it had been so long…”

  “I get it,” I told her. “After a while, you got comfortable. I had been gone so long that you started feeling like I would never come back.” Complacency was another error. Yet another one was that she had put her utilities in her real name, making it much too easy for me to track her down. It had thrown me off a little when I found two apartments that were being paid for by Isobel Starr and that had given her one extra day of freedom because I had visited the other place first. But then I’d come here. I’d watched until I saw her emerge from this building early in the morning, feet dragging, drinking from a metal mug in one hand and hauling a big canvas bucket to her car
in the other.

  “Yeah, I got comfortable.” Isobel nodded vigorously at me. “And I thought maybe you would be rehabil—” She broke off. “I thought maybe you would want a fresh start. That you wouldn’t come back to Detroit at all.”

  “It was a risk,” I said. “If you didn’t want to meet up with me again, you were taking a big risk.” And she sure looked sorry now that she hadn’t made a run for it years ago. I paused. “I gave you something before I got arrested,” I said. “Remember?"

  “You—yes,” she said. It seemed like she was gasping again. “I took it from you.”

  “My bag of stuff,” I concurred. “I left it with you and I said I’d come back for it.” I stared at her as even more color leached from her face. “You should sit down.”

  “No, I just need to tell you the truth. Just get it out. Eight years,” she said, but she was panting, wheezing.

  “Isobel. Sit down!”

  “I…” She tried to draw in a breath. “I…”

  I watched her eyes lose focus and flutter closed and I jumped forward to catch her before she hit the ground.

  Chapter 2

  Isobel

  “Wha—”

  I tried to open my eyes and sit up, suddenly startled out of a terrible, swirling dream that Rory Morin was in my apartment and I was going to have to tell him what I had done. But I was still so dizzy, my head flopped back down onto something fairly soft, and I moaned a little.

  “Hey.” A voice spoke from right above me, a deep voice. A man, my mind told me.

  No. I started to fight, wildly striking out with my fists and feet. I wasn’t going down easy, not this time.

  “Hey!” the voice boomed.

  My eyes flew open as hands clamped around my arms and a body pressed against me, holding me down on what I realized was my couch. Rory Morin was on top of me, his face inches away, his eyes boring into mine.

  “Calm down, Isobel. I’m not hurting you,” he told me. “You fainted and I caught you.” He eased his weight off and let go of my arms, slowly rising to stand.