“And how long has that been?”
Kinsey twisted her lips to the side before saying, “Um … maybe five, six, seven years, give or take? Noah wasn’t a baby when she bought her place. He was at least a few years old.”
“Hmm …” I nodded slowly, growing more and more curious by the second.
Patrick bumped his shoulder against mine. “Why don’t ya just ask her? Don’t you two hang out sometimes?”
It wasn’t a lie. Ray had become a good friend in the weeks since we’d started spending time together. We chatted regularly, saw each other every Tuesday at the store, and ever since I had learned that she worked at the library, I’d made it a point to visit her weekly when I needed some new books to pass my time with. But that didn’t mean I wanted her to know that I was digging for information about her or her kid.
“Yeah, I might,” I half fibbed because who knew? I might find a reason to ask eventually.
But now wasn’t the time.
***
That time did come, however, when, a couple of days later, that same truck was parked outside Ray’s place late into the evening.
Noah was sitting on the curb in the quiet dark.
“Hey,” I said, poking my head out my door. “What are you doing out so late?”
It was nine o’clock on a school night. Noah was never outside this late on a school night.
He looked in my direction, but didn’t say anything. So, I brushed Eleven out of the way with a sweep of my foot—that damn cat was always trying to sneak back outside into the same world I’d rescued him from—and walked out the door and onto the steps I still hadn’t fixed.
At the sight of my approach, Noah began to shake his head, his eyes widening with a warning.
“Noah, why are you outside?” I asked again, sterner than before. “Is everything okay?”
“I can’t talk right now,” he hissed quietly.
A loud sound came from inside Ray’s house. It could’ve been a piece of furniture being thrown. A door being slammed. Whatever it was, warning bells rang loudly in my head, clanging with every beat of my heart, and I took a step further toward Noah.
“No, no, no. Please, Soldier,” he begged in a frantic, hushed voice, just as a man’s voice shouted something incoherent from inside the house.
I didn’t want to go back into my place. I didn’t want to pretend that the kid wasn’t scared or that something wasn’t happening inside the house he shared with his mom. Everything told me to do the opposite, and so I did.
I marched right past Noah on the curb, who was still begging and pleading for me to stop and go back home, and I walked up the porch steps and knocked loudly on the door.
“Who the fuck is that?” I heard a man’s voice shout.
“I-I don’t know.” That was Ray, and she sounded small and terrified. Her voice … so, so different from the woman I knew and so, so familiar from somewhere far away.
“Well then, maybe you should answer the fucking door.” He was angry, condescending.
I knew without meeting the man that I hated him.
Ray did as she had been told and slowly opened the door to reveal her tear-streaked face and giant, baggy sweater wrapped tightly around her body. Her eyes widened at the sight of me standing on her porch, her cheeks reddened with embarrassment, and she shook her head, just as Noah had done.
“You have to go—”
“No.” I stopped her, placing my palm against the door as she tried to close it. “What’s going on in there?”
“It’s nothing. You have to go now.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing, Ray.” I kept my voice quiet.
I didn’t want the monster inside to hear me. I didn’t want to get her into more trouble by simply being there—for caring. But if she was in danger—and it sure as hell seemed like she was—I wasn’t going to sit back and listen to it happen.
“Just blink twice if you need me to do something, and I’ll do something right now.”
She made a show of keeping her eyes open, void of any emotion but sincere warning. “What I need is for you to go. Please.”
Her tone was flat and tense, and my face remained just as expressionless as I took one, two steps back. She had to know I was serious. If she had given me the word, I would’ve barged through that door and physically removed whoever the fuck was terrorizing her and her son. But I didn’t know the facts. I didn’t know what was going on, so I resigned with a single nod despite the fiery urge to do the opposite, and she closed the door in my face.
I didn’t want to get Noah into any trouble for talking to me either, so I didn’t stop on my way back to my place. Instead, as I passed, I said, “If you need me, you know where to find me. Bang on my door, yell for me—whatever you have to do—and I will protect you.”
He didn’t reply, but I knew he’d heard me, and I lied to myself, thinking that it was good enough.
***
Noah didn’t go back inside until Ray opened the door an hour later, and I never stopped watching through the faded cloth hanging over the window. Once he was inside, Ray stepped onto the porch and cried. She held her arm against her chest, and I narrowed my eyes.
What the fuck is going on over there?
I wanted to walk over and demand an explanation. But I figured now wasn’t the time, so I continued to watch until the shadowed figure of the monster next door left without a glance at the woman on the porch and drove away in his big, obnoxious truck, and I didn’t stop watching until Ray went back inside.
The next day, bright and early in the morning before work, I wandered over to the house next door and knocked until Ray opened the door.
There was a brace on her wrist and a forced smile on her face.
“H-hey, Soldier. What can I—”
“What the hell happened here last night?”
She shook her head indifferently. “Nothing. Really. Noah’s dad and I just got into an argument, and things got a little heated. I told Noah to go outside so he didn’t have to hear us yelling.”
“I could hear the yelling from inside my house,” I countered, crossing my arms and eyeing her studiously. “What happened to your arm?”
She glanced at the black brace Velcroed to her wrist. She must’ve acquired it sometime in the night after I’d somehow gotten to sleep, and she swallowed at the sight of it now. Then, she waved a dismissive hand, sending the question away with a lighthearted laugh.
“I was putting some stuff away and fell. I think I sprained it or something. It was so dumb.”
“Is it broken?”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, like the sheer thought that it might be was ridiculous. “No,” she said with a scoff. “Probably just a little sprained. I’m just wearing the brace until it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
I narrowed my eyes skeptically. “And you said you … fell?”
“Yep.”
Since the moment we’d become friends, Ray had never bullshitted me. She had always been up front, honest, and real, never holding back or filtering herself. This new side of her was bothersome and concerning, and I didn’t fucking like it. Not one bit.
I stepped closer to her, encouraging her to tip her head back to look up at me. “If you wanna lie to me, you should learn how to act better than that,” I said in a low, hushed, concerned voice so Noah couldn’t hear, if he happened to be awake. “I have to go to work, but I hope you’ll tell me what’s going on. You can trust me, Ray—you know that—and whatever’s going on, I can help. I want to help.”