Page 95 of Across His Line

“Is that blood? Is that your blood?”

“Mom. Just—please.”

The door opens.

She’s beautiful. Blond. Eyes that sparkle in the light. She’s dressed for Thanksgiving perfectly. A long dress the color of red wine that moves when she walks. Diamond earrings, the kind that don’t need to be big. She smells like perfume before she’s all the way through the door, something soft and expensive, roses and something underneath.

She’s holding a glass of wine she doesn’t seem to know she’s still holding.

And when she sees me, she stops in the doorway. Her face changes.

I’m ready for disgust. I’ve been ready for it since the gates. I know what I look like. I know what a woman like this sees when she looks at a girl like me, standing in her son’s bedroom on Thanksgiving with her hair matted and blood on her sweater and her shoes on the rug. I’ve seen it on teachers and cashiers and other girls’ mothers my whole life. I know exactly how to stand still while somebody decides I’m dirt.

It isn’t disgust.

It’s worse.

It’s pity.

Her whole face goes soft. Her hand comes up to her chest. Her eyes go to my neck and stay there.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, sweetheart.”

And I almost back into the closet door.

I could have handled cruelty. I know what to do with cruelty. I’ve been doing it my whole life. But nobody’s ever looked at me like that, all soft and sorry, like I’m a bird somebody found on the sidewalk. I don’t know how to act. It makes me feel so poor I can taste it. It makes me feel like the whole house can see straight through my sweater.

She takes a step toward me with her hand out.

I stiffen. My whole body just goes rigid, shoulders up, chin down.

And she sees it. She stops. Her hand stops in the air, and then it comes back down to her side. She doesn’t come any closer.

I didn’t expect that, either.

“Sorry,” Rafe says behind her, looking right at me.

She turns and looks at him. “For what?”

He looks at me. “I’m sorry about her.” He looks at his mother. “You just barged in here.”

His mom doesn’t seem offended.

My nerves remind me that my throat is on fire.

She gives him a look. A real one. Eyebrows up, mouth flat, the look of a woman who’s been giving that exact look to that exact boy his whole life. And he looks back at her with his swollen lip like he’s not sorry at all.

And I understand something, watching them. There’s something real between them. Not easy. Maybe not even close. But there’s something there that knows how to do this, the look and the face back, like they have a strong bond. Something about it makes me less nervous.

She puts her wine glass down on his dresser, carefully, on a book so it won’t leave a ring. Then she looks at me again, and her face changes one more time. It gets practical. Like she’s put the soft part away somewhere for later and taken out a list.

“You need something clean to wear,” she says. “I’ll get you something.”

She turns to Rafe, looks him up and down. The split lip, the cheek, the torn collar, the shirt.

“And you need to clean yourself up. That shirt’s ruined. The jacket will have to go to the cleaner. Where is the jacket?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”