Page 27 of Fighting For You

"Alright," I said. "This summer. Just this summer. And promise me that earning money isn't going to make you drop out of school. Because that's what happens sometimes, Ian. A kid gets used to a paycheck and decides school isn't worth the trouble, and I am not going to watch that happen to you."

"Don't worry about it."

"Ian."

"I said don't worry about it."

I held his gaze. He didn't flinch.

"There's one more thing." He picked his glass back up. "Jesse's family offered me a room. It's part of the deal. I work at the shop, they give me a place to stay."

I went still. "So you're not moving back in with me?"

"Nora, how many times do I have to remind you? I'm not twelve anymore." He shrugged. "It's weird for a grown man to still be living with his sister."

"You are not a grown man yet, Ian."

"I'm almost seventeen."

I wanted to tell him that he was my little brother and the fact that he could grow a patchy mustache and cook his own eggs did not qualify him to live on his own in someone else's house. But I looked at him standing there with his shoulders square and his chin up, and I saw the boy who rinsed his plate without being asked and left me half the chicken and thanked me for breakfast on his way out the door. He wasn't running from me. He was trying to stand on his own.

"Just this summer," I said again. "Then you come back. You finish senior year. And we find a place together."

"Yeah. Senior year. I'll be there."

I hugged him at the door. Pulled him in tight, my arms around his shoulders, my chin against his chest. He let me hold on for a few seconds before he patted my back and stepped away.

"I'll see you, Nora."

"See you."

After he left, I sat on Gracelyn's couch with my coffee going cold and tried to sort out what I was feeling.

Relief was part of it. My little brother was growing up. He wasn't quite a man yet, but he was getting there, and I could see the shape of the person he was becoming. Someone who wanted to carry his own weight, who showed up with a plan instead of waiting for me to make one. For six years I had done the math every single month, and for the first time, I could see a day when I wouldn't have to.

But underneath the relief was something emptier. I raised him. I checked his homework, made his lunches, wrote his name on the brown bags even after he told me to stop. I sat at a parent-teacher conference pretending I knew what I was doing. I taught myself to cook his favorite meal. Every choice I made for six years was shaped around keeping him safe and keeping us together, and now he was walking out the door because he was ready.

I was supposed to be happy about that. I was happy about it.

I was also sitting alone on a borrowed couch, and the boy I had built my whole adult life around didn't need me to build it around him anymore.

The shortlist of two-bedrooms Knox had sent me was still open on Gracelyn's laptop. I looked at it for a long time, then closed the tab.

It took three weeks to finish all the paperwork after the fire. Three weeks of hold music, case numbers, and government offices that needed a document I didn't have before they could issue the one I came for.

On my first shift back, Lori spotted me from across the huddle room and made a sound I'd never heard her make. She crossed the room in three steps and pulled me into a hug so tight my badge dug into my ribs.

"You're back. Oh my God, you're back."

"It's good to be back."

"Are you okay? How are your lungs? Did Josie really clear you?"

"I'm fine, Lori. I promise."

Kip appeared a few minutes later with a coffee and held it out to me. "Welcome back, Nora. Figured you could use something better than the break room stuff on your first day."

"Thanks, Kip."