Sobs. For a long time.
Eventually, her old green eyes come up to mine over the top off Annika’s head. “And you are?”
I offer a smile. “I’m Chance.”
“I’m Mary. But you can call me Gram, if you like.” She smiles, then pats Annika on the cheek. “Come now, darling. Up you go.”
Annika reaches for my hand, and I give it to her, help her up. Annika wipes her eyes, rubs a wrist across her nose. Lets out a shuddery sigh, and leans against me for a moment. And then she accepts Gram’s hand and lets her lead her into the house.
The interior decoration hasn’t been updated in decades, so there’s faded wallpaper, threadbare carpet, heavy oak side tables and a coffee table, a plush maroon couch. A framed painting of Jesus with a rosary hanging beneath it. Rows of framed photos on another wall acting as a timeline of life—Mary and her husband at various ages, as youths in young love, then with a baby, then with the child as a toddler, as an elementary-age child, as a teenager and then an adult—then as a lovely young woman with a handsome young man who I assume must be Annika’s father. The next photo in line is not, unlike the previous ones, a studio portrait, but rather a posed family photograph using a timer, in this very room, in front of a Christmas tree; Mary, Zeke, and Annika’s mother with two little girls, who I assume are Erin and Annika, at ages perhaps six and eight; Annika’s father is absent. The photographic timeline continues, with Erin and Annika aging into teenagers, and her mother and grandparents aging as well. The timeline stops a couple years ago, with the entire family present—this must be not long before the accident; Annika is tall and beautiful, bright-eyed, happy, one arm around her grandfather’s waist, the other around her mother’s shoulders. A happy family.
Annika’s eyes are scanning the photographs as well, and land, as mine do, on the last one. “That was the last time I was happy,” she says, her voice quiet but bitter.
Gram clings to Annika’s arm, rests her head against Annika’s shoulder. “I know, darling. But you’ll be happy again.” For some reason, she looks at me when she says this, with a knowing smile. “An old woman knows these things.”
Annika looks at her grandmother, catches the look at me, the smile. “Gram, really?”
A wink at me, then she tugs Annika through the living room to the kitchen—yellow walls, laminate counters and flooring, appliances as old as the rest of the house. “Come, sit, sit.” There’s a round white table with four matching chairs in a corner, near a tall, glass-front hutch containing fine china dinnerware. There’s a red tea kettle on the stove, steam escaping the lid but not whistling yet.
I sit, cautiously—the chairs look old and delicate, and I’m not exactly a featherweight. The chair creaks under my bulk, but holds.
I see Gram eying me—my stitches, my tats. “Should I ask why you aren’t wearing a shirt, young man?”
I snicker a laugh. “Well, nothing to tell, really. I produce a hell of a lot of body heat, so I’m generally more comfortable without one.”
The kettle begins whistling at that moment, and she turns off the heat, her eyes going to my shoulder again, the obviously recent stitches. “I thought perhaps it had to do with those stitches.” She meets my eyes. “It looks like it was quite the ordeal.”
“I’m a bouncer at a club, ma’am. There was a situation, which I handled. It did mean the stitches, but the truth is I generally don’t wear a shirt in most circumstances, if I can help it.”
She nods. “I see.” She looks at Annika. “Mint tea, my lovely?”
Annika smiles. “That sounds great, Gram, thank you.”
To me, then. “And you, dear?”
I’ve never been a tea person, but I shrug. “Sure, thank you.”
Three matching mugs, three bags of tea, three careful pours, and then she sits with us, dipping the teabag into the steaming water via the tag and string. Her eyes go to Annika. “So, my dear. Talk to me.”
Annika rolls a shoulder. “What do you want to know?”
“Oh, well…everything.” A tender smile. “Where you’ve been, and why it took you so long to come see your grandmother.”
Annika swallows hard. “I’ve…after…” She stares into her tea, dragging the bag around in the mug. “The last time I saw you, when you wouldn’t talk to me.” Gram opens her mouth to speak, but Annika holds up her hands to forestall it, speaks over her. “It was the right thing to do, Gram. Theonlything you could do. I’m not gonna lie, it…it fucking hurt,sobad. I was strung out, broke, hungry, and alone…but all I could think about was needing a hit. If you’d let me in, there’s no telling what I would’ve done. I’m glad you didn’t, now.”
“That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, next to burying my Zeke.” She blinks hard, wipes at her eyes with shaking, curled, arthritic middle fingers.
Annika closes her eyes a moment. “Honestly, Gram, you closing the door in my face is what helped me get clean. I knew if evenyouwouldn’t look at me, much less talk to me or let me inside, that I was totally gone. And then one day, about a week later, I woke up and had no idea where I was.” She shakes her head, eyes clenching shut, leaking tears. “I don’t think I can say it. I can’t tell you this.”
Gram grabs her hands and squeezes hard. “People think of us older folks as cute and innocent. But you young folks tend to forget that because we’re old, we’ve been around. We’ve seen a lot. So, Annika dearest, don’t think you can shock me. I know exactly what goes on in those drug dens.”
Annika looks at me, then at Gram. “I woke up and I had no idea where I was.” Her eyes close and I know she’s remembering, relating as she recalls it. “It was filthy. The first thing I saw when I woke up was a water-stained ceiling. Like, it was sagging, peeling, about to collapse in on me any second. The walls had once had wallpaper, but it was peeling off in chunks, and the wall beneath it was just…rotting, water stained, god knows what. There was a window, so dirty you couldn’t see out of it. Dead insects on the windowsill.” A shake of her head. “I remember it all,sovividly.”
A long pause. Eyes still closed. Disgust and revulsion carve her features into a twisted rictus.
“I was in so much pain. Everything hurt. It was like the worst hangover ever, times a thousand. The floor was…so nasty. Dead bugs. Rat shit. Ants and roaches just out in the open, crawling around. They were in the fuckingbedwith me. I was naked. I…I couldn’t—I stillcan’t—remember anything. Not for days back. I remember you closing the door. I don’t remember where I went, how I got meth, what I paid for it, who I got it from. I had no idea where I was.” She shakes her head. Tears leak. “It was obvious I’d been…used. Passed around. There were used condoms all over the floor. Dried…stuff…all over me. All over the bed. In my hair.” Her hands clench into fists and press into her eyes, hard. She’s shaking, barely able to manage a whisper. “Alvin came in, while I was trying to figure out where the fuck I was, what had happened. He explained to me that I’d offered myself in exchange for drugs. So he invited his friends over and…let his friends do what they wanted to me, in exchange for getting me high. He said I’d been there, doing that, for almost two days.”
Gram sucks in a sharp, shaky breath. “Ohhh, honey. Ohhhh, my god. Nikki, my love.” She leaves her chair, moves behind Annika and wraps her arm around her from behind, kisses the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, my love. I’m so sorry.”
