Archive of Our Own

Unwashed hair. Stale fast food. Nicotine gum and vodka nips poured into Arizona tea. Every Greyhound bus smelled the same.

Amy Bendix slid further down in her bus seat and covered her mouth and nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, desperate to inhale something else: the sticky-sweet chemical residue of cheap perfume. A spritz of Sweet Like Candy by Ariana Grande from the CVS two rest stops ago was hardly enough to chase away the smell of this bus, but it would have to do.

Her seatmate was a very sweet and very deaf and very tired abuela who had to be at least 70 years old, and whose snores spread a vague fug of breath mints across the space between them. Small mercies.

Abuelita had slept right through most of the excitement overnight. There had been two people kicked off the bus on the side of the road for smoking meth in the bathroom. There had been one unplanned stop at the South Carolina border, where the state police had boarded and taken a guy wearing an ankle bracelet. He’d left kicking and screaming, throwing punches left and right down the aisle. Everybody who was still awake had clapped when that guy left. Amy had not joined in, relieved the cops hadn’t been coming for her. And through it all, the abuelita beside her snored blissfully on, head tipped backward, mouth open. Her minty breath ruffled the little hairs sticking out of the mole on her chin.

Amy had cornered the sweet little abuela in the station outside Boca Raton when she’d glimpsed the woman’s ticket and realized they were both headed to New York. With a smattering of very bad Spanish and half-hollered smiling granddaughter vibes, she had coaxed the woman to follow her to the proper Greyhound bus and insisted they sit together.

Amy knew a good shield when she saw one and planted Abuelita in the aisle seat so she could have the safer window seat to herself. She tried to soothe her guilt over this by offering to stay awake and guard the woman’s bag while she slept, but even Amy’s fear-driven vigilance had limits. She dozed fitfully, the straps of their bags wound tightly around one elbow, shuddering awake every time the bus jolted, turning up the volume on her shitty headphones every time the gross couple in the row behind her started smacking skin together again. When the city sleeps, I’m awake. Locked up in my mind...

It had been a long, ugly day of travel, and Port Authority was still twelve miserable hours ahead of her.

What’s worse , she thought to herself, being on this god-awful bus or getting off of it and facing Frank?

Frank had sent her to Florida. Frank had given her a nice, safe place to land, and plenty of money. Frank didn’t yet know that she’d fucked it all up.

*

“Amy! Hey, kid. Good to see you!” Curtis Hoyle snagged Amy by the shoulder firmly and steered her through the crowded Port Authority bus terminal. He embraced her with one strongly muscled arm as they walked. “Frank didn’t tell me you were coming to town. He’s so busy he can’t come pick you up?”

Amy felt the warmth of Curtis’s broad, reassuring hand and shrugged out of his grasp to maneuver through a tight spot in the crowd. “Yeah, uh, he doesn’t--it’s a surprise.” She winced. “For him. Me being here, I mean.” Curtis stopped and swiveled to look at her, instantly suspicious.

“Oh. This the kind of surprise he’s gonna like?”

The accumulated weight of the last few months, and the months before that, pressed in against the corners of her vision. She wavered. She thought about hiding under the bed. So many beds. Amy forced out a laugh before she could follow that line of thought too far. “It’s so not like that, Curtis, see, he told me to--”

“He told you to what?” Not a question so much as a challenge, calling her out. Curtis’s eyes narrowed. “Are you in some kind of trouble again, kid? Let me call him, we can get you--”

“No!” She laughed nervously to dispel the uneasy feeling in her gut at the concern on Curtis’s face. “I’m not in trouble, nothing like that. Or not--I mean, I don’t want to bother him yet, it’s just that I needed to, uh, come to the city for a few days anyway.”

Curtis just looked at her and then, without saying a word, he walked on, his steps surprisingly fast. Amy hitched her backpack higher on one shoulder and hustled to keep up with him.

“I thought you knew people in the city,” he finally said in the elevator on the way up to the rooftop parking garage.

“Yeah, but last time I went to see a friend of mine, it didn’t go so good,” Amy shrugged, eyeing Curtis and trying to remember how much he knew about that particular night. That bloodstained hallway. Frank’s voice cutting through the static in her head when it was all over. There. You shot him. I killed him.

“Tell you what, kid,” Curtis said, clearing his throat. “I won’t ask any more of my nosy questions if you’ll come with me to this group meeting I gotta run in about twenty minutes.”

“What, like AA?”

“Nope. A veterans’ group.” He unlocked the car, looking at her over the roof of the sedan. “For PTSD.”

She feigned nonchalance. “Will Frank be there?”

Curtis shook his head. “Not today. Free coffee, though.” When she hesitated, he added, “And Dominguez brings cookies.”

In lieu of an answer, Amy climbed into the car, hoping he hadn’t heard the growl of her stomach over the city noise all around them.

*

The group Curtis ran turned out to free coffee that was predictably crappy, but comfortingly sweet once she’d dumped in four sugars and way too much Coffee-Mate.

But not a single one of the burly-looking veterans walked through the door with any cookies and the table at the side of the room remained depressingly empty of anything except coffee. A sour, desperate feeling settled into her stomach. It was a mistake, coming here with Curtis, she realized, and knew she would slip out as soon as she could get to the bathroom.

“Amy!” Her head jerked up guiltily at the sound of Curtis’ voice. “Amy is my intern, everybody. Amy, come take a seat, we’re starting.”

A dozen veterans, some of them scarred up, all of them intimidating, swiveled to look at her. “Uh, hi.” She tried to come up with an excuse that wasn’t Curtis is a liar . Defeated, she slid into the empty seat next to him, trying not to spill her coffee in the process. This was a waste of time. She could have spent the afternoon lifting something to fence, finding her old friends, getting some food, she thought desperately.

But once the halting conversations began around the circle of folding chairs, Amy found herself interested despite herself. There were stories from a dozen variations of Frank Castle. One Frank Castle couldn’t shake nightmares about his Navy destroyer going down. Another Frank Castle never left base on his tour, though he flinched every time a downshifting truck echoed in the street outside the windows. Yet another Frank Castle spent time in the infantry that left him with enough scars to rival the real Frank, but was more bothered by the two back-to-back ACL surgeries that had kept him confined to Walter Reed so long he lost out on a good job opportunity.

In the middle of Curtis answering a question about job benefits, someone short and compact and obscured by a low hood and too many layers of flannel barreled in through the doorway, noisily yanking down an extra chair from the rolling rack in the corner and pulling it toward the circle. Nobody seemed disturbed by the latecomer except for Amy, who was annoyed at the scraping chair legs, like the new guy just didn’t give a shit about interrupting.

“So you gotta make sure to--Amy, scoot a bit--” and she did, begrudgingly, “--to bring your DD 214 with you when you go to those appointments, it goes a lot quicker,” Curtis was saying, but Amy was distracted when he added, “Good to see you, Liz,” with a quick nod at the latest arrival, who was now the only other female in the room.

Black buzz-cut stubble emerged from under the low hood, and the latecomer flashed a wide, quick smile at Curtis and the other guys, sparing only a cursory glance for Amy. There was a gap between Liz’s front teeth and Amy could see an old scar curving through her buzz cut, across one temple toward her ear.

Without missing a beat or seeming to care about the noise factor, she then fished something out of her bag and held it out to Amy. It was a large, battered plastic margarine tub, strangely heavy. Amy held it uncertainly.

“Cookies, kid,” Liz whispered helpfully and reached over to pry the top off the container. Inside were layers of homemade butter cookies with sprinkles, and those thumbprint cookies with jam in the middle. Amy tried to keep it cool though her mouth watered like crazy. She took two and handed the tub to Curtis.

She spent the rest of the meeting waiting for the cookie tub to come back around the circle (and trying not to look like she was waiting for it). She spent a lot of time trying not to stare at Liz Dominguez, too, and noticed that the woman was very young, like maybe barely older than Amy herself, honestly, and also she never spoke. She spent the whole time listening with a look like perhaps she had a lot to say and simply preferred to keep it to herself.

Curtis stood by the doorway when it was all over, shaking hands and talking as everyone filed out. Amy lingered nearby, eavesdropping and refilling her cup to the brim with creamer and sweetener and a little bit of bitter coffee.

Liz Dominguez lingered as well, and was one of the last to leave.

“Dominguez, you met my intern already?” Curtis called out to her. Amy barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Hey, I meant to ask. Did you get those flyers up I gave you last time?” Curtis clasped Liz’s hand and pulled her in for one of those shoulder-to-chest hugs that Amy noticed all the military bros seemed to go in for.

“You know it. All over the halfway house and the shelter down my block.” It was the first time Amy had heard her speak. A raspy voice, but surprisingly high, with the faintest trace of a New Jersey slant to her vowels.

“What about Martín? Any luck?”

Dominguez’s eyes flashed a kind of defiant humor as she zipped up her duffle coat and shouldered her backpack. “What do you think? Nah, he’d rather keep up with the stress baking, as you can see.” She held up the margarine container, rattling the leftover cookies inside a little for emphasis. “My roommate. He’s got his own ideas about therapy,” she said to Amy with another one of her strangely wide grins.

“Good cookies this week. I like the jam ones,” Curtis said.

“I’ll tell him you said that. Hey kid, we got plenty at home. You want the rest of these?” She thrust the worn yellow container at Amy. “Don’t you feed your damn intern, Hoyle? Kid’s clearly starving.”

Curtis chuckled, damn him. Amy flushed pink, stammering as she tried to refuse the offer. Liz just set them down on the card table next to the coffee machine.

Liz opened the container, plucked up a handful of flimsy napkins and started to wrap the cookies up.

“Thanks,” Amy said, embarrassed.

“No problemo.” Standing right next to Amy, quieter now, she said, “Hunger like that got me in front of an army recruiter, once upon a time.”

Curtis was occupied with stacking the chairs, but still Amy took the wrapped-up cookies and shoved them into her coat pocket quickly so he wouldn’t see. The bundle bulged there, alongside the four other cookies she had already stashed away, now crumbling to pieces, probably. This Dominguez woman unnerved her. “I’m fine. I’m not even his intern or whatever.” The woman laughed like this was the best joke she’d heard all day. Amy scowled at her. “What do you care?”

“Well…” Dominguez tilted her head side to side, her laughter fading. She messed with the red stir straws sticking out of their cardboard box, eyeing Amy sidelong. “You age out recently?” At Amy’s silent look of mortification crossed with fear, she continued, “Not trying to get in your business. Let’s just say takes one to know one.” She gave Amy that gap-toothed smile again and scrubbed a hand over the soft, short hair on her head. “I went to basic literally the day after I aged out of the foster system. Three square meals is better than ramen and government cheese in a shitty group home.” It took Amy a second to process this, and she lowered her gaze, picking at some of the pink sprinkles scattered on the card table from the cookies.

“Nah, I...I live on my own now,” she finally managed to say. The words hurt a little bit, the lie contained there like an open wound.

Amy hadn’t thought about her last group home in a long time -- not in her waking hours, anyway. She still dreamed the one she’d run away from the last time. It passed for a good dream, nowadays, though the memories were hardly pleasant: the smell of wet laundry gone to mildew and the feel of cheap, scratchy sheets on a sagging bunk bed. Fighting in line for a shower in the bathroom with nonexistent water pressure. Teaching the new kids how to hide their shampoo and conditioner above the ceiling tiles so it didn’t get stolen or pissed in. She’d thought it was no better than a prison, back then; only later did she see it for what it was, a scrappy refuge where at least her worth wasn’t measured by her ability to scam or grift. The last place she’d lived where she didn’t have to earn the right to stay.

“You ever think about it? The military?” Dominguez asked casually, still messing with the straws. “Cause if you like, I could--”

“Nope,” Amy said, mortified by the offer as much as by being caught up in the memory of that lost bunk in Newark. “No. Not interested.” She started to walk away.

Dominguez only shrugged. “Hey, wait!” She jogged over and pressed a business card into Amy’s hand before she could say no. “My caseworker. She works with former foster kids. Helped me get on my feet, get housing and food.” Amy looked down at a social worker’s name, a city agency, an address in Hell’s Kitchen. “Maybe you don’t need it, maybe you do. Just...hang onto it.” The card is folded, worn at the corners. “My number’s on the back, too. System kids are always welcome to my couch.”

Amy looked at it, stunned into silence. The crumpled card seemed to burn with uncomfortable promise, like it was either going to give her everything she needed or nothing at all, and she didn’t want to know which.

“Hey, Hoyle! See you next week. Feed your intern some lunch.” Liz was gone before Amy even had a chance to thank her.

Curtis waved over his shoulder to her as she left. Amy shoved the business card in her jeans, shoved all thoughts of it away, and snuck a cookie out of her coat pocket and ate it in one bite before grabbing another folding chair and following Curtis to the rack of chairs.

“What’s this about lunch?” said an achingly familiar, deep voice from the doorway, stopping her dead in her tracks.

It was the last voice she wanted to hear. Amy swallowed the last of her cookie and turned. Hoyle only gazed at her as if to say, did you really expect me not to tell him?

Frank Castle stood in the doorway, his jaw set firm as he took in the sight of her. All the scars that had crisscrossed his face the last time she’d seen him were healed now, near invisible under the shadow of his shave. He looked better. He looked like himself. Her gut ached with a rotten mix of sorrow and longing, warm nostalgia tinged with spiking panic.

You gotta move on , he’d said to her at the bus station at their last goodbye. Live your life right. Give me your word on that.

How could she tell him she had done everything wrong? Literally every single thing, from day one, since leaving New York?

He shifted only a little, waiting for her to answer. His eyes watched her not unkindly, but wary. “You’re not supposed to be here. What are you doin’ here?”

How could she tell him that running away from Florida to come back here was the only smart thing she’d done?

Mute, her tears streamed down her cheeks before she could say the words on her tongue. I’m sorry. I had to come back. Let me explain. She ran to close the distance between them and fell into his arms before she could take another heaving breath. Let me stay. But it only came out in a wordless sob.

“Kid, hey,” he murmured into her hair, wrapping his huge arms around her. He was warm and comforting and solid, exactly the way she remembered him, and it was better than a million dollars in her pocket, better than anything she’d had in a long, long time. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay,” he kept saying, low and steady.

It wasn’t okay, it was never going to be okay, but at least with Frank, she could pretend.

*

After two cherry cokes and a cheeseburger and fries and a side of onion rings and a coffee-mocha-chip milkshake, Amy sat across from Frank in the little diner where he had brought her. My treat , he’d said, to her infinite relief.

The food filled her up, but the silence between them loomed uncomfortable and awkward.

She had not reckoned on his stubborn silence. She had not reckoned with how much she was unable to explain. She had not reckoned on Curtis refusing to join them, robbing her of the one buffer between her and Frank that she’d been counting on to make the whole ordeal bearable.

Frank leaned back in the booth, drinking his third cup of coffee, black as tar. He watched her drag a french fry through a pool of ketchup. He waited.

She’d tried, honestly. At least at first. She’d peppered him with a dozen questions about his life, trying to forestall him from asking about her own. However, Frank would not tell her what he’d been doing, except for the most maddeningly vague replies. He was working . He was fine. Karen was fine and Agent Madani was fine .

He had not asked her any questions, actually. He had simply waited out her own nervous chatter, and watched as she ate, and let her grow more and more nervous about his silence. He simply let the silence between them yawn wide and beg its own questions. What about Florida? Why leave, why come here, and why go to Hoyle instead of directly to Frank?

And eventually, Amy had gone completely quiet -- unable to answer the questions he wouldn’t ask and unable to offer a word in explanation.

It had been so much easier when they’d been on the run together, she reflected. For all the insanity he’d put her through, it had been so much easier to focus on Frank’s bruises, his busted hand, the utter shambles of normalcy as they sought pockets of safety. She remembered the bright, clean, blank slate of Dinah’s apartment where they’d spent so many days (her lemon soap, her dark amber perfume on the vanity), and the crappy trailer squat (stale cigarettes smoke in the polyester curtains) where she’d waited for hours hoping to hear his voice calling her on his way to the front door.

There had been so little time, on the run, to think about her real life. The girl she’d been before that motel room massacre? That girl had suffered, sure, but in the kind of way where she still felt capable of escaping by the skin of her teeth, free to make a new life for herself. Or at least pretend it was possible. She’d find a new life as Rachel, Ashley, Mary, Stephanie. But all that belonged to the girl she’d been before Frank Castle had scooped her up, zip ties and all, and pulled her to freedom.

The girl she was now had no idea how to live with everything that had happened. The girl she was now felt unmoored when she tried to float under the blue-green Florida water with her oxygen tank strapped to her like a bomb, and flailed to the surface, gasping in panic, no matter how carefully she checked her pressure gauge.

The girl she was now was perfectly capable of sabotaging a very nice little Florida life, she knew that much. But she was not capable of explaining that to Frank. Not yet, anyway.

“More coffee, hon?” The waitress asked Frank, walking up with a coffee pot. She eyed Amy’s half-empty cherry coke and the melting milkshake.

“Just the check,” Frank said, draining the last sip of his coffee. The waitress tore it off the pad in her pocket and dropped it on the table and walked away. Frank checked his phone again. It kept buzzing with messages.

Amy knew her time was running out. Frank had spent the entire meal watching her eat, grunting in response to her questions, his eyes relentlessly tracking her every move, waiting for her to answer his unvoiced questions. Even now, she saw that he watched her with something akin to weariness. Something akin to regret.

Like he was getting ready to say goodbye.

It fired a bolt of panic through her.

“Listen, Frank. I can’t thank you enough for the lunch--”

“Dinner,” he corrected her, clearing his throat, glancing at the darkening sky outside.

“Right. Yeah. I’ll repay you, okay? I’m just, uh, a little low on funds right now.”

“You need money?” he asked, eyes searching hers.

“A friend of mine in the city owes me some money,” she said, cursing herself silently for the lie. “I’m here in town to pick it up. I just didn’t realize the ticket would cost so much, I guess…”

“You guess ?” He dropped cash on the table, folded neatly under the bill. She stared at the crisp bills, willing herself not to calculate a way to palm the money without him seeing. “You also guess you gonna keep that job in Florida while you’re on a little jaunt to New York?”

Donning her jacket, Amy felt the crumbly weight of the cookies still stashed there. It was messy, but it was comforting -- and it was better than stealing, anyway. She was trying . “He said I could take a break however long I liked,” she lied. “It’s the off-season anyway.”

Frank sighed as he stepped back, gesturing with his arm for her to walk ahead of him.

No chance of palming the money on the table, then. She tried not to eye it on her way to the diner door, hating herself, hating her own lying words, hating everything that seemed to cage her in whenever she tried to move one step forward in life.

Outside, the evening was damp and an ugly, windy kind of cold that tore right through her jacket. Amy felt the panic of loneliness welling up inside her like a tidal wave, like a shout waiting to be vocalized. She wanted to ask him if she could stay at his apartment. She knew she’d only succeed in asking him to drop her at the nearest subway station.

In the parking lot, he stopped before his van and she saw him looking at the cracked screen of his cell phone again. After a moment, he grinned up at her, eyes flashing only a little bit mischievous. “I got a job for you,” he said as he opened the door of the van.

*

David and Sarah Lieberman’s house was huge and clean and really nice and smelled like apple pie, magically, though later Amy figured out this had more to do with the scented candle in the kitchen than with the mystical, amazing-mom energy exuded by Sarah Lieberman, which was her first assumption.

“Frank’s told us so much about you,” Sarah gushed when they had arrived straight from the diner, and at first Amy hadn’t known what to say, but then Sarah hugged Amy fiercely and whispered, “Thank you so much for agreeing to babysit. You’re a lifesaver. You have no idea .” And then Amy had been truly speechless, and turned to look at Frank.

Frank was busy hugging David, a tall, rangy-looking dude with kind eyes and a shaggy beard who Frank called Micro, for some weird reason. Frank introduced Amy to David, saying he was a programmer he used to work with, which made no sense to Amy (what need would a guy like Frank possibly have for a computer jockey?). David shook his head and said he mainly worked for Homeland Security as a contractor, an explanation that made only slightly more sense to Amy. But she kept her mouth shut.

When David and Sarah shut the door behind them, they stood in the entryway and suddenly Amy was overwhelmed by the apple-pie smell. She could still smell the scent of whatever expensive lotion Sarah was probably wearing, from when they had hugged. Amy tried to focus.

When the couple went to the kitchen, she waited a polite second before elbowing Frank in the side.

“Were you going to tell me?” she whispered, full of a fierce, cold anger threatening to send her voice louder. “I’m not--”

“Zach, my man! Amy, this is Zach, and that’s Leo,” Frank said over her, reaching out to high-five a boy coming down the stairs who looked like he was just shy of his teenage years, still baby-faced but awkward, all elbows and long legs. His slightly shaggy dark hair hid his eyes just a little and he eyed Amy with a defiant look, like he resented her already; she caught him staring at her chest surreptitiously. Amy crossed her arms and gave him a pointed look to let him know she saw, and Zach had the good sense to look away awkwardly. The older sister, Leo, a pretty teenager in a black sweater and jeans who looked bookish and somewhat quiet, nodded warily at Frank while watching Amy.

“That’s a nice name, Leo. Is that short for something?” Amy said.

“No,” Leo frowned and shoved her hands into her pockets, looking at Amy narrowly. Leo had the right idea, Amy knew. Leo was smart and Leo could see a bad idea when it walked in her front door.

The kids followed their parents into the kitchen and Zach immediately started arguing with his dad. “This is stupid, I told you I don’t want a stupid babysitter. We’ll be fine by ourselves--”

Amy pulled Frank’s sleeve, lagging behind a few steps. “Frank, I am not doing this. What are you thinking? They don’t even need a babysitter. These kids are like, teenagers.”

“Their parents want a babysitter. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth -- you need to earn money the honest way,” he said with a shit-eating grin, like he knew she hated this idea and he just didn’t care.

“ Frank-- ” she started to say, but then Sarah Lieberman swept toward them again and Amy was caught up in a whirlwind of details before she could protest. Sarah talked a million miles an hour. There was dinner for the kids, plenty for everybody , call the neighbors if there’s any trouble, numbers on the fridge of course , bedtime at ten, no R-rated movies . Don’t forget to run the dishwasher .

Amy didn’t intend to let Frank leave.

David pulled Frank into a private conversation. David kept glancing over at his wife and kids with a poorly-concealed look of lost desperation in his eyes. Amy felt bad interrupting them. Zach, meanwhile, had no such qualms: he started peppering his father with vicious little salvos from his stool at the kitchen counter. “Dad, don’t be dumb. We don’t need a stupid babysitter. Dad, did you hear me? Dad, hey dummy…” Sarah only stopped her stream of instructions to Amy for a second to beg Zach to stop, and then she continued talking. Amy didn’t absorb a word of it. Apple pie smell be damned, whatever was going on here was sure as hell was not going to be her problem. She waited for her chance.

“Mrs. Lieberman, I’m sorry, about tonight?” She said it loud enough that Frank could overhear it, glancing over so he knew she was ready for him to step in. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to--”

Sarah’s eyes flew open even wider and she looked chagrined. “Of course! Don’t say another word. I know a hundred is too low. Oh my goodness. I should have said earlier.” She pulled two crisp hundred dollar bills out of the pocket of her jeans and held them out to Amy. “Will you accept two hundred? We’ve had trouble keeping babysitters...I know it’s a lot.”

Just then, there was a thunder of footsteps as Zach stomped out of the kitchen with a murderous look at his father. Sarah Lieberman didn’t even react to the slam of a door upstairs that came a second later, shaking pictures in their frames against the wall. She closed her eyes for a moment before she looked at Amy again. “It’s a lot,” she repeated softly, and Amy realized she wasn’t talking about the money.

She reached out to take the money in one hand, feeling the crisp, raised print under her fingertips: satisfying, tempting, but still like an itch telling her to run .

Frank gave her a warning look to say, do not fuck this up . “It’s just one night, Amy. One night. You need the money.” Amy glanced over at the anxious, folded-up form of Leo perched at the kitchen counter, getting a hug from her mother. “Soon as they get home, David will call me and I’ll pick you up. I’ll drive you to that friend of yours who owes you money, if you like, okay? Then how about we drive you back down to Florida.” His voice had gone a little softer now, the bass rumble gone a bit fond. “You and me, together. Like old times.”

Amy dared to let herself think about it for a half second. She dared to picture them alone together on the highways again, but without the threat of bullets flying in their wake this time, without the awful terror of constant pursuit. They would have time, so much time, to talk. That was what she needed, right?

So ten minutes later, when she locked the door behind Frank and the Liebermans and watched the taillights of his van and their car drive away into the dark, she tried not to feel guilty for what she was about to do.

Zach was back downstairs by then and playing something obnoxiously loud on the tv, pointedly ignoring her; Leo watched Amy come back into the kitchen. Amy ignored the apple-pie smell, ignored the pasta and the sauce and everything laid out lovingly on the counter. She clicked off the gas burner under the already simmering pot of water. After considering a moment, she chucked the unopened package of pasta back into the fridge.

“Aren’t you going to make the pasta?” Leo said, dark ponytail swaying as she looked over from the counter stool, working through an algebra problem set.

“How old are you, again?” Amy countered, picking up her jacket from a chair and shoving the two hundred-dollar bills deep into the inner zipped pocket. “Fourteen?”

“I’m fifteen. And a half.”

Amy didn’t answer her for a minute, zipping her jacket tight and wishing she’d thought to ask Frank to lend her one of his black beanies. It was shaping up to be a cold night. Maybe the kids wouldn’t notice if she swiped one from the basket at the front of the house, she thought with a twinge of guilt.

“I’m not going to be making you any dinner tonight. Sorry,” she said with an insincere smile.

Leo looked up at her, shocked. Poor kid. Amy didn’t feel bad for her one bit, remembering the massive pantry full of snacks that Sarah Lieberman had showed her before leaving. In fact, that gave her an idea. She ducked into the pantry herself and pocketed a few energy bars, throwing them into her bag.

Amy pulled her boots back on in the hallway and laced them up. There was an abrupt silence in the living room as Zach paused his game and peeked through the doorway at her.

“What do you mean you’re not going to make dinner?”

“I thought you didn’t like babysitters,” Amy said with a pointed glance at Zach, who chewed the corner of his lip for a second, watching her. The kid looked less defiant now and more edgy, his eyes darting between Amy and his sister Leo, who stood with her arms crossed in the doorway behind Amy, with an expression of disbelief.

“This is your chance to prove you can do it on your own, how about that?” Amy suggested. “I get out of here, eat what you want, call mommy and daddy if something goes wrong, party all night for all I care.  Everybody wins.”

Leo looked at her in shocked disapproval. “We paid you. You can’t just leave .”

“Can and will.” A surge of relief ran through her as she realized escape was within reach. She grabbed a ski hat from the overflowing basket stationed by the coat rack, shoving it down over the unruly mess of her curls.

“I’m going to call and tell my parents,” Leo said, a little desperate tremor wavering in her voice. She took a phone out of her back pocket and hesitated.

“You do that. By the time they get back here, I’ll be gone.”

“I’ll call Frank,” Leo said, her voice steadier now. She held her cell phone up for Amy to see, thumb poised over the green call button on Frank’s contact. It was a picture of Frank all right, though the entry was labeled Pete .

Before Amy could ask how or why Leo had that number and that alias, her cocky little brother Zach pushed his way fully into the hallway too, and announced, “Yeah, we’ll call the Punisher. How would you like that?”

Amy’s mouth dropped open a little as she considered this, and finally dropped her hand from the handle of the front door. God damn it. “How do you know about the Punisher? How do you know he goes by Pete?”

Leo and Zach shared a look, and then Zach asked, “How much do you know about our dad?”

Amy shrugged. “He’s a programmer. Does something with Homeland Security.”

“No, before that,” Leo clarified. “Before he died.”

“Twice,” Zach said sharply, his breath going a little quick and angry.

“Yeah. Before he came back.” Leo looked at Amy as if daring her to deny it had happened. Amy blinked. And then she took off her jacket.

*

Leo was a pretty decent storyteller, though Zach kept jumping in with his own take on certain parts, longer versions of some things Leo hadn’t witnessed, and it took them a while. By the time they got to the part where David had his second fake-out death, at the hands of a sniper this time, there was only a little bit of pasta left from the dish that the three of them had quietly, cooperatively cooked and served during the telling of the whole saga.

Amy noticed a jumpiness in Zach, the kind of nervous, almost performative excitement that comes from telling a new stranger about all the weird shit in your life that you don’t usually let yourself talk about. When he talked about the snipers shooting his dad right in front of him, he went still for a second. He looked younger, eyes wide and staring. Amy felt a kinship with him, even though a second later he was back to his manic, knuckle-cracking pacing, going in circles around the kitchen island, over into the dining room, back again, always roving.

“...and that’s when the kerosene exploded.”

“It wasn’t kerosene, dummy, it was gas,” Zach said. “I should know,” he muttered as an afterthought, his shoulders rolling uncomfortably.

“Same idea. It exploded,” Leo said. “And don’t call me dummy. I’m not the one failing English and math,” she muttered. Zach’s only reply was a wordless noise of scoffing and his continued nervous pacing. Leo rolled her eyes and continued the story for Amy.

Amy watched the girl’s hands, her narrow little fingers clenching and releasing as she pushed an empty water glass back and forth between her hands. “But Dad stopped the explosion, and then--”

“That’s not what happened at all,” Zach snapped at her, coming up behind them. He worked a loud crack from his knuckles against the edge of the marble countertop. “You weren’t even there.” Scorn dripped from his voice, a sharper blade of warning hiding beneath the bluster.

“Yeah, but Mom told me--”

“Shut up, Lee, you’re such an idiot, I swear to God.” Zach slammed a cabinet door, then another, looking for something. “If I have to listen to your shit again...ugh.”

“Zach!”

“Language, kid, jeez. So you got away, right?” Amy tried to get back to the thread of the story. “I can’t believe they made you guys wait in a hotel before they told you he wasn’t dead. Like, fancy, or what? I’m surprised your mom--”

“It wasn’t a fucking fancy hotel. It was a shitty little suite and Mom was just--she kept--the whole time we waited there she barely moved or spoke or-- fuck .” Zach stopped in front of an open cabinet door, his words caught in his throat. Then he started slamming through cupboards again. “Where’d they put it?” he muttered to himself again.

“Zach, don’t you dare. This is why you need a babysitter,” Leo hissed at him, an angry pink coloring her cheeks.

“Shut your fucking trap , Leona .”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Amy finally said, spreading her hands to keep space between the two of them as Zach pushed toward his sister with malice. “Language. The mouth on you. No wonder you keep running off your babysitters,” she said, aiming a friendly punch at Zach’s shoulder on her way to the sink with the dirty plates.

He didn’t budge. Breath heaved in his chest and he glared at his sister and Amy in the awkward silence that followed.

“That’s not why,” he finally said. “Why don’t you ask her ?”

“Don’t do it,” Leo said just above a whisper to her brother, so that Amy almost didn’t hear it over the water running in the sink. This was some old, private argument that had nothing to do with her, and she realized her stupidity in trying to intervene. Maybe it was better to let the two of them fight it out and then she could slip out while they weren’t even paying attention to her anymore. Yet something slowed her. She kept listening to the hushed fight between them while she pretended to be absorbed in rinsing the dishes, chasing bubbles around the sink with the sprayer.

“What are you gonna do, tell Dad? I don’t give a rat’s ass,” he said, voice low, moving around her to a different part of the kitchen. “And Mom’s not going to believe you. She never does.” Zach huffed out a breath, part laughter, part derision.

Leo’s eyes stayed trained on Zach, furious, watching as he crouched down at another cabinet and started triumphantly pulling out dusty six-packs of seltzer and then a tall bottle of something red.

“Is that grenadine?” Amy asked, going for a distraction. She wrung out the soapy sponge, glancing uneasily at Leo’s fists, now clenched at her sides. “Hey, if you guys have any orange juice I can show you how to make a really cool virgin sunrise…”

Zach snorted derisively, his voice muffled with his head and shoulders deep in the cabinet. “What are you, straightedge or something?” Then he finally yanked at something far in the back, pulled hard, and hauled out his prize: an open-topped cardboard box of wine bottles and spendy looking liquor.

Things moved fast, just then.

Leo swarmed over to her brother with a yell and kicked him in the shins, hard , and he howled in pain, doubling over just long enough for her to wrench the box out of his arms. Zach snarled, “What’s your fucking problem , Lee?”

“Stop it--” Amy yelled, panicking as she tried to grab at Zach and stop him from clawing at his sister.

By then Leo had already wrestled open the nearby sliding glass door and pushed her way through, out onto the back deck. In her haste, a bottle caught on the doorframe. In slow motion, Amy watched it fall. She winced before it even hit the ground.

It smashed right on the threshold, spattering Amy and Zach with pink-red and shards of dark glass. Yet still, Amy had to wrestle the boy backward. “You bitch ,” he gasped, either at his sister or at Amy, or both, Amy couldn’t tell.

“What is your problem ?” she yelled, furiously hauling handfuls of his sweatshirt into her grip, desperate to pull a hundred and twenty pounds of furious teenage muscle back from the wet, glittering mess of glass. Evenly matched in strength, straining against each other for a long moment, Amy’s boots skidded on liquid for a fraction of a second. Only then did she look down and realize Zach was only in his socks.

Her skin went cold and hot at the same time, all over, a vertigo of dread. She flashed on the memory of a motel bathroom and bloodied flesh; the way sharp things had to be plucked from soft flesh and the way a needle felt in skin as it was stitched together.

She gagged the memory back and bit out, “You’re going to get tetanus-- ” and threw every ounce of herself into the fight, grasping him by the upper arms and pulling him back a few inches, finally.

But then he stopped of his own accord, arrested by a new sound outside. Glass, smashing all over the deck in a liquid, horrible sound.

He stared at his sister over the wreckage between him and the deck. “You wouldn’t.”

Leo looked him right in the eye from a dozen feet away, the liquor box balanced on one arm and one of the bottles in her other hand. Evidently she had dropped another bottle on the deck, just in front of her.  And then Amy realized it was no accident, because Leo flipped the bottle in her hand in a lazy arc up and over her shoulder, the movement deliberate and sharp.

The wine bottle smashed spectacularly behind her, a blast radius of dark glass and red liquid.

Leo’s chin trembled a little as she stood there. Her eyes blazed with righteous fire as she grabbed another bottle out of the box and hurled the smooth glass away from her. It smashed against the fence at the edge of the yard.

In the distance, a dog started barking.

Zach stood frozen in the open doorway, dumbfounded. Amy watched over his shoulder.

Another loud smash echoed through the cold dark. A fizzy wine trickled down into the dirt below. Leo kept reaching into the box for another bottle, and another, standing absolutely still while around her liquid pooled, spattered, wet and sweet-smelling among the winking shards.

“You’re not,” Leo gritted out, smashing another one on the deck behind her, “going to do this,” and another against the fence, “again.” A bottle of vodka smashed on the rocks edging a garden over to one side. “And you’re not,” the last liquor bottle raised high in one hand, something amber-colored and expensive-looking, “going to ever call me a bitch ever again.” She hurled the bottle downward at her own feet, the glass splintering and scattering across her socks and wetting the hem of her jeans.

When she was done, she hurled the box down to one side and stared at her brother, daring him to say a word. Amy could see a trickle of blood down the back of Leo’s shaking hand where a shard must have ricocheted and scratched her. The red dripped down, little dark drops diffusing into the pale gold puddle at her feet, amber fading to pink at the edges of each drop when it landed.

Zach said nothing. Only the tiniest tremor betrayed him as he stood looking at the wreckage his sister had wrought.

The backyard quiet spread so thickly that even with the dog barking in the far distance, Amy could still hear liquid dripping to the ground between the planks of the deck, the echo of a tiny puddle gathering there before it absorbed into the earth.

Carefully, Amy moved Zach to one side and stepped over the green-black slivers of glass, out onto the deck. After a moment, Leo looked right at her, eyes huge. The girl’s soaks were soaking wet, stinking of booze, fragments of glass stuck in the cotton weave here and there. Amy didn’t hesitate. She took Leo’s soft hand in her own, then turned and bent down just a little, her boots making a ghastly scraping sound in the glass. Amy pulled just gently enough to get Leo to understand, and then the younger girl let herself be pulled up so Amy could piggy-back her safely into the house.

She was surprisingly light and stayed completely still, her legs cradled around Amy’s hips and her arms slung around her shoulders. She rested all of her weight on Amy, draped over the older girl like a blanket, like the effort had wrung everything out of her.

Silently, Amy paused at the door and reached down, one hand at a time, under the wet cuffs of Leo’s pants, to grasp the heel of the ruined sock and gingerly pull its sodden weight down and off, dropping it with a wet plop on the deck. First one, then the other. She shook the girl’s pants legs just a little and heard more painful little pieces of glass fall away.

“There. That’s the worst of it. Let’s get you inside now, okay?” Leo’s dead weight on her back did not stir, did not make a sound in reply. She simply clung to Amy like a little animal seeking warmth.

Amy leaned against the house for support for a second, turning to look at the mess, and had to press her lips into a hard line to stop from breaking out into a grin. “You did good, kid. You did good.”

*

Inside, Zach kept wiping his nose on his sleeve and sniffing.

“Cold in here now,” he said uncomfortably when she shot him a look. She could see by his red eyes, however, that he had been crying. He fetched a box of bandages and a tube of neosporin for his sister, who sat on a stool in the kitchen, quiet and calm as Amy fixed up her hand.

“Are you gonna be okay?” she asked the girl, squeezing her shoulder. Leo snuck a weary, resentful glance over at Zach, who just then disappeared into the pantry. The girl relaxed visibly when Zach emerged holding a broom and dustpan.

Amy heaved a loud sigh. “You need shoes on to do that, buddy. Nobody is getting stitches tonight, okay? Least of all from me,” she muttered. “Listen, Leo. You need to go take a shower. You stink like a bar. Put your stuff in the laundry with, like, stain stuff.”

Leo stood to leave but fixed Zach with an implacable look before she went. He held her gaze for an uncomfortable moment before looking away, shoving his feet into his Nikes. Leo disappeared upstairs, and then the only sound was the wet, scratchy drag of glass over the hardwood under Zach’s broom bristles.

It wasn’t an apology. It wasn’t even words. But it seemed like something.

Meanwhile, Amy was more worried about the kitchen and the backyard. If there was one thing she did know how to do, it was how to clean up a mess before the adults came looking for someone to blame. She grabbed a roll of paper towels and started looking for some kind of floor cleaner.

Amy tore off a massive handful of paper towels and started dropping them everywhere the wine had pooled inside near the sliding glass door, waiting for Zach to get out of the way before using the toe of her boot to push the wad of absorbent paper further into the puddle. Zach wouldn’t look at her, just kept stubbornly sweeping and doing a bad job of it.

“Let me ask you a question,” she said. She didn’t look directly at him, not at first. There was a feeling akin to terror in her gut, a feeling like she wanted to simultaneously yank this poor kid back from the edge of the cliff and yet also shove him over the edge, just to prove to herself that she didn’t care.

She watched red wine race in a wet, spreading line across the dry part of a paper towel as it soaked in. “You ever shoot someone?”

That stopped him. Finally.

“What kind of babysitter are you, anyway?” said Zach, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “You’re such a freak.” He almost laughed, but it was a sound of despair, tears threatening again.

“The kind of freak who wants to tell you a story, so shut up.” She looked him in the eye and tossed a sopping handful of paper towels into the trash a few feet away. “A story about your friend Pete. Frank. Whatever. A story about how I know him.”

Amy didn’t think she could take it, telling him everything, but she felt she owed him something. Something in return for the part of Frank’s story they’d shared with her, which she might otherwise never have learned.

The thought of him helping these two kids -- even if they deserved it, even if it was long before she knew him -- it sunk a little dagger of jealousy into her gut when she thought about it too much.

So she tried not to think about it. Instead she took Zach’s dustpan and they went out to the deck to sweep up the rest of the glass together in the chilly, damp air, where she could talk without looking at him too much, without thinking about it too closely.

Just talking, in the dark, with this angry kid who she’d intended to abandon and never see again, earlier that night. A kid who’d stared at her boobs and then insulted everyone and tried to rebel and got caught in a mess of his own anger.

She told him the bits and pieces she thought he could handle. What it was like running, changing names,  trying to ferret out who was and wasn’t out to kill her. The way killers had come for her, swarms of them in the stairwell. The way Frank had kept her safe, over and over again, even when she didn’t think she deserved saving, when she was sure he was one hundred percent done with her crap. The way he cared for people in trouble. “Like you guys and your mom, once upon a time. Like your dad too, it sounds like.”

By now, they’d filled the cardboard box with swept-up bits of glass, and picked up some of the bigger pieces from the fence and the garden. Amy started following a hose, looking for the water spigot.

“He helped me when my dad was gone. Pete did. Frank. Whatever,” Zach said, his breath fogging around his face, eyes gone unfocused for a moment. “Stopped me from doing something really stupid at school. Made me think about stuff.” Surprised by this, Amy stopped, waiting for him to say more. “You know what he said? He told me I should go to him if I ever needed to work stuff out. If I got, like, angry about shit. You know?”

“Yeah. I do.” She laughed without humor, understanding completely now. “How’d that work out?”

“It didn’t!” he exploded, his knuckles going white against the broom handle. “My dad came back, and Pete never came for like, months, and then when he did he was all, ‘Sorry, little man.’” Zach deepened his voice in a credible imitation of Frank’s gruff tone, and Amy guffawed. “‘You should talk to your dad. He’ll take care of you.’ Like it had never happened. He just...walked away. God, it made me so...so mad.”

Amy nodded. “Yes! Exactly.” Laughter rippling her words.

“It’s not funny,” he said, annoyed.

“No--I mean, that’s exactly what he does. That’s exactly what he did to me. He sent me to freaking Florida! He sends everyone away. Everyone.”

“What the fuck ,” Zach said, sitting down heavily on a metal lounger missing its cushions. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck .”

It took her a second. That abandonment — that gut-deep, bone-wrenching loneliness — it washed across Zach’s face. That hollow look after the rug yanked out, the door slammed shut, the hand you thought you could hold slipped through your fingers. She knew it too well.

“I should wash your mouth out. Such a foul mouth on you,” she said, trying for a laugh and failing.  Instead, she pulled up the loops of twisted, kinked garden hose and turned on the spigot to fill the dirty ten-gallon bucket sitting under it. It was heavy and awkward and sloshed out, freezing cold, when she carried it over to him. “Make yourself useful, okay? Get the stains over there.”

She turned on the sprayer at the end of the hose and the red and amber stains turned pale and then washed away almost completely. When she was done, though, there was no feeling of relief, no feeling of a job well done, a secret well hidden.

When she looked up, Zach still sat on the lounger, bucket at his feet, unmoving.

“Hey,” she called, walking back over, wiping the spray off her face with the already-damp sleeve of her jacket. “ Hey .”

He had retreated behind a wall, his eyes gone far away. “Don’t do that, now. Hey. Kid.” She trailed the stupidly heavy hose behind her and she could not figure out how to turn off the spray, the freezing mist blowing in every direction. “Sugar—oh fuck it .” She aimed the spray deep into the bucket between his feet so a fountain of water cascaded up into his face and drenched him completely.

He stood up, dripping, shocked out of his reverie.

She dimpled, saying “Sorry,” one second before darting away, dragging the heavy, freezing length of the hose behind her. He dashed after her with the cumbersome bucket. Luckily all the glass was cleaned up by then, because she bit it hard, landing on her ass, and then he dumped the entire bucket of filthy, freezing water on her head with a triumphant yell.

Amy sat there, her teeth chattering in cold shock, trying to get out from under her own sopping wet curls and the buoyant giggles that kept escaping her mouth, in fits and starts, until he reached down to haul her back up to her feet, and she used the momentum to shove him back into the house in front of her.

*

Not until Zach was safely out of earshot and in the shower did Amy knock softly on Leo’s door.

“How’re you doing?” Amy asked when Leo let her in. A huge poster of the solar system took up most of one wall and a pale gray light-up globe of the moon shone in one corner. Photos of her and her friends lined the border of the mirror over her dresser, bright little smiling faces, smooth-cheeked and zit-chinned and safe.

“Fine. But Zach is still a jerk. He’s got problems,” was all Leo said from her perch on the bed, knees drawn up under her chin. Damp, curly hair framed her face, making her look much younger than the fierce girl Amy had witnessed on the back deck barely an hour ago.

“Problems?” She laughed. “Uh, yeah. I mean, he is a teenage boy and nearly every teenage boy I’ve ever met has had a problem being a decent human being...not that that’s an excuse. He was a total dickwad to you tonight,” Amy said gently, “And he owes you an apology.” She touched the faded ribbon of an old gymnastics medal hanging from a hook by Leo’s window. “Does he do that a lot?”

“Like, every day,” Leo snorted in response.

“No, I mean...the drinking.” She knocked the little medal against the window frame idly, shrugging when the girl didn’t answer at first. “Just curious.” She glanced sidelong at Leo, who picked at a loose thread at the hem of her flannel pants for a while, weighing her words.

“Not all the time. He does it to piss me off,” she said, her cheeks coloring in a high, angry pink flush all at once. “When a babysitter comes over. He hides it, does it secretly so only I see. I’m surprised he let you see him go for it. Before, he always hid it, then when I told the babysitter, he’d tell them I was crazy, trying to get him in trouble. Told them I’d tried to drink it and was blaming it on him, or whatever. We’d always have huge fights, as you saw,” she rolled her eyes, “and then...that was it. No babysitter would ever agree to a second dose of that crazy. I don’t blame them. My mom stopped trying to find new people at all.” Her jaw worked a little as if she was holding back something through sheer stubborn will, then finally said, “And maybe once or twice he’s done it when we’re home alone after school, right before my mom gets home from getting groceries or something.” She yanked at the loose thread on her pajamas, snapping it free. “It’s so stupid. He ’s so stupid. And I kept telling them and telling them, and they wouldn’t believe me.”

Amy pushed down the feeling of relief and instead sat down on the bed and slung an arm around Leo to comfort her. “Well, Frank will believe me, and your dad will believe Frank, I know that much.” She tried not to think about telling Frank at all, because she didn’t plan to be there when he returned later. “Or maybe...maybe I broke the bottles. Right? Your parents will never see me again, so just tell them I...whatever. I don’t really care if they think…” she trailed off, swallowing the stupid lump that tried to form in her throat. “Or whatever.”

Leo looked up, her eyes sharp and vivid blue and accusing. “No. You can’t lie. You can’t--”

“It’s fine, honestly. It doesn’t matter. I mean, it shouldn’t.”

“Yes, it does ,” Leo said, pounding a fist into the bed. “It matters because...because--I swear, you’re the only person Zach has listened to about anything. Like, ever. Aside from Frank. And we can’t go back to...before.” Her voice whispered and her shoulders hunched a little with the memory. “Right after my dad came back, I mean. Mom was like, sick with worry about us, all the time. Like she had, uh, flashbacks, or whatever. I felt bad for her but it drove me nuts . She never left us alone for a minute. And then my dad, I swear sometimes I think he gets this look in his eyes--” A strangled sound in Leo’s throat, a helpless, angry sound of frustration. Her gaze on Amy was relentless. “You know?”

Amy waited.

Leo said in a whisper, “Like he’s going to leave again.”

“Like he’s already gone, a little. Like he’s already said goodbye,” Amy said. She snapped her mouth shut, pressed her fingers against her lips as if it would help. She steeled herself, but the lump in her throat overflowed messily into tears. Amy scrubbed her sleeve over her eyes once, twice. Again. “Yeah. I do know.”

When she got a handle on herself again, and as if it would dissolve any of the unspoken garbage Amy felt like she had just dumped in the lap of this poor, sheltered, hurting kid, she knocked her shoulder into Leo’s, smiling a little through the mess of her mascara.

She couldn’t look Leo in the eye without betraying herself, so she focused on the dark hallway, where she could hear the hum of the bathroom fan down the hall and bare feet on tile as Zach emerged from the shower.

“Hey. I meant what I said earlier, Leo. You did good. You did more than good. Just remember that, okay?” She left the room before she could second-guess her own words.

Amy was running out of time to do what she needed to do. If she stayed, Frank was going to return, just as he’d promised, and there would be questions (fine) or lies (awful) about what happened tonight; but much worse-- so much worse--was the thought of that road trip with Frank back down to Florida. She had a limited window of time to escape that particular fate, she felt it like a clock ticking in her veins, yet a sick feeling rose inside her every time she felt the urge to head back downstairs, grab her things and hit the road without looking back. Not after everything that had happened.

Instead, she knocked on Zach’s open door, peeking around to see him already reading a book under a dim bedside lamp, already tucked into his quilt. She sniffed the air.

“Hey, Old Spice,” she said. “Whew, that’s a lot of aftershave. I guess you smell better.”

He looked nervous, dropping his book and scrubbing a hand through his wet dark hair, sticking up in spikes everywhere. “You can’t smell the wine anymore, can you?”

She regarded him silently for a moment. “You sure that’s what I should be worrying about?”

He didn’t say anything for a long, stubborn moment. Then: “Leo put stuff for you in the bathroom. Clothes or whatever. If you want to change.” A peace offering.

Time was running out. Frank’s anger loomed on the horizon like the anvil of a stormcloud, boiling higher and telling her to run, but she was so tired, and the wine and liquor smell was everywhere on her hands and her pants. The idea of a pissed-off, scared, triumphant Leo picking out clothes to share with her made something in her chest go crookedly askew.

In the bathroom, on top of an insanely fluffy, clean towel folded primly on the counter, she found a worn pair of black leggings and a long-sleeved tee shirt, even a pair of underwear that looked like they were right out of a package. A part of her said take the clothes and run . The louder, more insistent part of her reached out to touch the pale blue towel, gather it up in her hands and inhale its clean smell. She knew exactly how good it would smell like before it even reached her nose.

She climbed in the shower a moment later and didn’t let herself think of anything but that beautiful apple-pie, clean-linen smell, and of the two impossibly young kids down the hall and the things they had lived. And the things they hadn’t. It steeled something in her. By the time she rinsed out the conditioner and finished dressing in the borrowed clothes, she knew what she had to do.

The lights were off in the hallway. Leo’s door was closed and no light seeped into the hallway now. Amy figured it had to be past eleven o’clock at least. When she peeked her head around Zach’s doorway, she saw him sitting there, waiting for her, book laid aside.

He seemed a little surprised to see her.

“You look different,” he said.

She looked down at herself, at his sister’s clothes. She felt, herself, like her edges had softened under the hot water. Like something had washed away and left only the important core pieces behind. “Just clean and tired, I guess,” she offered.

Zach’s chin jutted up defiantly. “You talked to Leo about me, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “Are you going to narc on me? I thought you were different. I thought you understood-- ”

“I’m not going to narc on you,” Amy sighed, rolling her eyes. Because I’ll be long gone before they come home . The words stuck in her throat. She leaned against the doorway of his room, hesitating.

“Listen, it’s messed up, what happened with your dad. And with Frank, too. I’ve been through some messed-up stuff in my life, obviously,” she laughed wryly. He didn’t respond, didn’t want to take the bait. He wanted to stay mad, but at least he was listening. “And you’ve seen some stuff, too, so I feel like I can tell you this. I told you some of what happened, earlier, but not all of it.” Her gut dipped and swooped even as the words tumbled out of her lips. “I shot a man. Frank was there. He--he finished it. Killed him, I mean. But I shot the guy. He was going to kill me, and I shot him.”

She dared a look at Zach and saw a kind of understanding in his eyes. “Here’s the thing. Something so awful like that happens and it doesn’t stop anything. More stuff happened after that. Worse stuff. Much worse. I saw people...killed. Or dead. Dying.” It was as much as she could manage to say about those awful days she’d spent on the run before Frank had found her. “When you see stuff like that, it messes with your head. Makes you mad. Makes you wanna do stupid shit. Makes you want to run away, not think. Makes your sister want to throw a bunch of bottles against the back fence,” she said with a little huff of laughter.

“I can’t talk to my dad about it,” Zach whispered. “Besides, he’s the one who keeps trying to leave.”

“You could talk to Frank instead. I’ll tell him he has to,” she said, gritting her teeth a little. “Plus, if you dad tries to run? Frank’s really good at keeping people around when they really, really want to leave.”

She thought about zip ties cinching her wrists on a motel bed, even though she knew she couldn’t tell this kid about it. Frank killing the bad guys was one thing; how would she even explain those early days with Frank, to Zach? This one time, Frank made me dig a bullet out of his bloody buttcheek and I think maybe if I’d run away at that exact moment I could have put him in jail for kidnapping if I’d really put my mind to it. No. Instead she told him about Frank’s stubbornness. The way a person could feel frustration, deep down in their bones, a need to run as far away as possible, and yet Frank didn’t care. If he thought it was best for you, he’d find a way to make you stay.

Zach scooted down deeper into his pillow, still watching her in the doorway out of the corner of his eye. “Frank’s not here all the time, though,” he finally said, sleep furring his voice. “He can’t like, threaten my dad into sticking around.”

“Don’t be so sure of that.” She smoothed out her borrowed shirt, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Sometimes you think you can just walk away from something and it has a way of...following you, I guess. I don’t mean walking away from family -- I mean walking away from the stuff that happened, all the unsaid crap, you know? The stuff you don’t talk about. You lug it around on your back until it drags you down. That stuff. It follows you.” Amy was pretty sure Zach slipped in and out of sleep as she spoke now, her voice lulling him. She kept talking.

“I should know. So does Frank, I guess.” She remembered Liz Dominguez in the basement, not flinching but blinking in a particular, slow way when another veteran described an explosion that killed two guys in his unit. The kind of thing Amy remembered doing in the group home when that kid Angel liked to threaten her with a knife and she steeled herself every time, eyes wide open and daring him to follow through. There was just that little, uneven tremor in her hands that threatened to betray her, every time.

“Frank knows he could keep you around by just leaving you in a locked basement somewhere, sure, but that doesn’t last forever. Frank knows the stuff that keeps you around is in your head, and he reminds you of that stuff. He’s so stupid and stubborn about it that eventually...eventually you just want to stay. Not because you’re stuck, but because he’s like this...tether. To something safe. Something dependable.” The lump in her throat was nearly choking as she sat in Zach’s doorway, telling herself to get up, to get her shoes and leave before it was too late.

She spoke just above a whisper now, “Zach, are you asleep?” He didn’t move under the heap of quilts. She kept talking, just in case. She told herself if her voice woke him, if he responded, she would stay. Not wanting to admit she was frozen to the spot with a kind of homesick longing for something she never truly had, except with Frank. “Zach, if you’re listening, let me just tell you one more thing. You’re a lucky kid. So lucky. I used to dream about having a life like yours. My own room, a nice family, a nice house. God, a mom who makes the whole place smell good. Anything I used to dream about seems so dumb now. Not because I don’t want it, but because I just think about different things, I guess. Like...not taking things that don’t belong to me. Or not screwing up a job that someone gives me. Not letting my big mouth get me in trouble yet again.”

There was still no response from the sleeping boy, but she wasn’t paying attention anymore. She just spoke on into the dark. “That’s my problem, see? I get something good, and then I mess it up, and then I just leave and start all over again. Except this one time, this one stupid time , the good thing I had was Frank. And he told me I had to get out of town, it wasn’t safe, all this other stuff, and I believed him. I knew I’d messed up everything in New York beyond repair. Anyone who knew me knew I was toxic sludge.” She thought about watching Frank’s retreating form as her bus pulled away from the station months ago, carrying her south, far away from the mess of her life. A pang heavy in her heart, thinking I did this. Thinking, I’ll never get this back. “I knew I had to go. But I didn’t want to.”

Florida had been another kind of hell. The kind she’d run from when everything was in shambles (two warrants, one under her real name, and Frank’s buddy was going to be pissed off when he found out what she’d done) but with a kind of freeing, hopeful feeling in her chest because at least she could go find Frank. At least Frank was still around. At least Frank didn’t hate her yet, didn’t think she was a lost cause. He was her anchor on this stupid, dark disaster of a planet, one she didn’t mind tethering herself to.

Yet she couldn’t bring herself to dial Frank’s number, upon arrival. She couldn’t bring herself to say, I messed up, can you come get me? She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that the girl he’d placed on that bus, money in her pocket, had come back to beg for help. She couldn’t bring herself to say any of it.

“Now that I’m back, do you know what I keep thinking, Zach? I can’t tell which one is the real me. The one with the messed-up life crashing down all around her, or the one who keeps starting over as if it’ll be different the next time. Which one is the delusion? I don’t--” she stopped and laughed quietly, her breath leaving her on a soundless exhale, “--I don’t know. And I can’t keep doing this.

“I thought I was going to go. Maybe like your dad, huh? I was going to leave after you fell asleep. Sorry. But it’s like this itch you get under your skin -- nothing feels right, nothing feels safe. If you get going, no one can look at you for too long, no one can see anything about you, really. You can be anyone, go anywhere. You can try to leave behind the stuff that hurts, the stuff you think you can escape.

“But I can’t. Not again. It just doesn’t work.” She glanced over at him and his mouth was open a little against his pillow, deep quiet breathing betraying his sleep. “Didn’t work for your dad. Doesn’t work for me. Cause here’s the stupidest, dumbest part. Running does nothing unless you take with you everything that you love.”

She sat there, hating her own words. She could have been sitting there for eons, whispering at a sleeping teenager who had his own problems and didn’t need hers into the bargain, trying to wrestle with this feeling in her gut that said run and the other feeling that said it’s no use. Trying and failing to come up with an escape hatch. Trying and failing to see any other way forward.

Not until David Lieberman gently shook her awake some hours later did Amy even realize she had fallen asleep, slumped over at Zach’s bedside, in the doorway, half in and half out.

“Everything okay?” David said, helping her to her feet, fatigue and worry crossing his face as he glanced in at his sleeping son. Amy nodded silently.

For all the Liebermans could see, the house was just as they had left it. There was no sign of anything that had transpired, except perhaps a few faint stains on the wooden deck, hardly visible in the dark. That box of broken glass might sit unnoticed in the trash bin for days.

As she descended the stairs toward the front door, she saw Frank waited for her on the front steps, his dark eyes unreadable. Just as well. There was no possible way this could go well.

Sarah Lieberman held the door open for her with a weary smile. “Amy, thank you so much. Really. We are so grateful to you. David and I had a good time tonight, for the first time in a long time. I hope maybe you’ll think about coming back. Don’t answer me now, just think about it, okay?” She gave a pleading smile as she said goodbye, then turned, remembering something. “Oh, I put your clothes in the dryer. David can drop them by Frank’s place tomorrow, okay? I feel so bad we got home so late.” She said goodbye and ducked into the house with a weary look.

Amy felt stupid, trying not to think of the smell of airy-spring-breeze-apple-blossom-lilac she’d been inhaling from the cuffs of the borrowed tee shirt the whole time sitting with Zach. Numb, she thought of this stranger, this mother , doing her laundry, folding and ironing her crappy cotton cardigan and her Forever 21 tank top, her fading, threadbare jeans.

David stepped beyond the threshold for a second, side-eying Frank at this. “You gonna be around, or…?” David said. “Thought you were taking off. Road trip and all.”

Frank only looked at Amy, an eyebrow raised. Tugging on her jacket, she had no way to say everything she needed to say in that moment. Instead, she had to force the words out from between the pressed line of her mouth. “No road trip.”

Before she could betray herself any more, Amy turned and walked to his van, throwing a goodnight over her shoulder to Mr. Lieberman.

Frank stood at the door talking to David for another moment before he nodded slowly and turned away, half jogging to unlock the door of the van for her.

In Frank’s van, the familiar scent of the vinyl and the musty old floor carpeting called a thousand memories to her mind, good and bad. Driving too late at night, too far, too fast. This van had seen a lot -- she saw where dents in the panels had been hammered out and freshly painted over with black auto primer. She waited in the quiet for Frank, who busied himself with something under the van’s hood.

She thought about other things, too. Thought about Florida, and everything waiting for her there. Thought about maybe going back, just trying to make it work, just letting him think everything was fine. Jumbled together with any idea she had of asking for his help was the faint feeling of panic telling her that maybe, just maybe, this time even Frank couldn’t fix it.

She thought instead of asking for five bucks and a lift to the nearest subway station.

She fingered the crumbs of butter cookies still falling to pieces in her pocket, clinging to the little business card Liz Dominguez had passed her. She thought about what she would even say to some well-meaning social worker about her life. Was it possible to create a clean version of herself, one capable of getting housing and a SNAP card, sifting out all the other sharp, difficult, illegal parts of her life she had to keep hidden?

It seemed like too much. She thought instead about the slivers of glass in the soil beneath the Lieberman’s deck, hidden and waiting to cut into skin if someone went crawling underneath. Thought about getting a shovel, a sieve, a teaspoon, and sifting through everything to remove every little piece left over from Leo’s magnificent act of defiance.

Frank finally climbed in and slammed the car door, starting up the engine and listening to it rumble unevenly until he was satisfied.

His face in the glow of the dashboard lights looked so familiar; his was the only face she ever wanted to see when things went to shambles, the only face she ever wanted to see when she wasn’t sure who she was. She felt it as a heaviness under her tongue first, a well of tears threatening to burst out of her throat if she looked at him too long.

“Okay. No road trips,” he said in alarm, looking at her with his hands up in a placating gesture. “I’ll get you a bus ticket instead. Listen, I get it, you don’t want me to--”

“Don’t send me away,” Amy finally cried out, and then she buried her face in his chest, sagging into him. After a split second, his arms wrapped around her in surprise, his embrace becoming a rocking, soothing calm as tears flooded down her face. When the heaving sobs abated a little, she couldn’t manage more than a begging repeat. “Don’t. Please. Please don’t send me away again. Please don’t do it.” A refrain, a prayer, fading back into quiet as the sobbing shuddered through her.

“Send you away--kid, I wanted you to--” he pulled back, grasping her by the shoulders to look into her eyes. “I needed you to be safe, okay? Always. No one can hurt you. No one. The farther you get away from here the safer you are.”

“You can’t keep me safe by sending me away,” she said, wrestling herself out of his grip and smacking one fist against the muscle of his shoulder, again and again, emphasizing her words. “You can’t do that. You can’t . You just can’t .”

“Kid, you don’t get it--”

“No, you don’t get it. I can’t do it on my own,” Amy finally said, the words feeling like defeat, like spilling out something that was never supposed to see the light. Something dangerous.

Need was dangerous.

“Why did you really send me away? And don’t tell me it was about keeping me safe. Tell me the real reason. I need to know, Frank.”

Frank’s eyes looked haunted. It took a long, long time for him to say anything.

One hand wiped down over his eyes, and then rasped against his stubbled cheeks, palm covering his mouth for a long moment. She hadn’t seen him look so scared and haggard since their days on the run. “It was to keep you safe, but beyond that. It was also because I--because you--” he broke off, struggling with it. “Because I can’t do my thing if I gotta keep you safe. Not here--”

“Let me tell you something,” she said, angrily pushing tears from her face with one sleeve, “you can’t keep me safe by sending me away if I’m the one whose life keeps falling apart over and over again and causing trouble. The call is coming from inside the house, you know? Or whatever.”

After a second, he cocked his head at her, eyes softening but not letting up. “What happened in Florida? What happened to marine salvage?”

“I just--I couldn’t--does it matter?” An angry blush of embarrassment sprung to her cheeks, though she tried to play it off as righteous indignation. Despite herself, her voice ratcheted up more and more. “I messed up, okay? And I’m going to mess up again. I’ve been messing up my whole stupid life and you’re the only person left who gives two shits about me, and then you send me away and basically tell me to try harder or whatever and I know, Frank, I know for a fact that neither one of us believed a word of that when you said it at the bus station. And guess what? Surprise, it didn’t work! It’s never going to work!” She choked back a sob, voice breaking on the words. She was yelling now, and she didn’t care. “You’re the only one who understands me. You know what my life has been like. You were there for some of the worst parts. You--you’re the closest thing to a family I’ve ever had. Don’t you understand what that’s worth? Don’t you get it?”

A stunned, ringing silence under the engine’s uneven growl.

“I do get it,” Frank said softly. His eyes dropped and his fists tightened on the steering wheel. “More than you know.” When his hands unclenched, he turned in his seat to face her again. “I shouldn’ta done it. Sent you away like that. There’s so little keeping me going some days...gets hard to think about the people I still got. Hard to keep ‘em safe while I still got myself drowning some days, you know? Other days just...barely floating above water.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Tryin to hang on.”

The idling engine exhaust wreathed the van so thick Amy could barely see from the curb to the Liebermans’ house. Like they were immersed in a little cloud. She wanted to stay there, if it meant she would never get to the part where he sent her away again.

Frank reached for the gear stick and put the van into drive. He stopped a second, not looking at her; an offer tenuous like a single strand of thread: “Maybe we can keep each other going. Stick together. How about that?”

Amy couldn’t open her mouth to speak without crying, so instead she just nodded, and kept nodding, looking over at him once, twice, until he nodded, too.

Frank reached for the gear stick and put the van into drive. “Let’s go home,” he said. He glanced over at her, steady and sure. “No road trips. No bus tickets.”

“Deal.” She didn’t know what the morning would bring, but she knew she’d hold tight to the anchor he offered. With both hands. “And no zip ties,” she added warily, though fatigue was already pushing her into the place where she could barely find her words.

“Deal.” Frank cracked a rare smile. “Go to sleep, kid. We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he said gruffly, the rumble of his voice as soothing as the blanket of warm, dark sleep that threatened to overtake her with every breath she took.

Outside, the lights of the neighborhoods blurred together, one long ribbon of sleep leading to home, to Frank’s home, to the only place in the world where she knew she would feel safe, and that was all that mattered.

***