Chapter 5
The apartment was above a laundromat on a street where the sidewalks were cracked around the trees.
The first night, I slept on a couch that smelled like dust and lemon cleaner. Claire took the bedroom, but she left the door open. Every time the pipes rattled, she sat up. Once, I heard her whispering on the phone in the kitchen.
"No, don't call here."
A pause.
"I said don't."
Then she hung up.
In the morning, she made toast in a pan because she couldn't find the toaster. The bread burned on one side. She scraped it with a butter knife and put the lighter pieces on my plate.
"We can go to the store later," she said.
"Do we have to go home?"
She kept scraping.
"Not today."
That answer made my shoulders loosen, even though I still watched her face.
A caseworker named Dana visited before lunch. She brought a folder, two grocery cards, and a small plastic bag with socks and a toothbrush. She asked permission before sitting.
Claire answered most of the questions. Where had we been staying? Who knew about the apartment? Did anyone have a key? Had the man from the clinic contacted her?
When Dana asked about the apartment's location, Claire looked toward the window.
"I didn't choose it," she said.
Dana noticed. "Who did?"
"The foundation's family office."
Claire's hand tightened around her coffee mug.
I didn't know what a foundation's family office was. I knew the words made her go still.
Dana didn't push. She wrote something down and said the address would be treated as confidential.
After she left, I found Claire sitting on the floor beside the couch. She had taken off her trench coat and laid it across her knees. The stain on the sleeve was still there.
"Why can't we go home?" I asked.
She folded the sleeve inward.
"Because someone knows where home is."
"Who?"
She shook her head.
I waited.
"His name is Grant," she said finally. "He works for the family that pays for almost everything around us. The school field. The running program. The medical bills when people don't ask too many questions."
"Is he the man from the clinic?"
"No. He's worse when he's polite."
She looked toward the thin apartment wall. A washing machine started below us, thumping unevenly.
"The injury happened because I tried to leave," she said.
I didn't understand. "Leave where?"
"An event. A private one. I was supposed to stay until Grant finished talking to me."
"What was he talking about?"
Claire pressed her thumb against the coat's seam. "A story he wanted me to tell."
"About my leg?"
"About how you got hurt."
I remembered grass and a car door closing. My foot had felt hot and trapped.
"What story?"
"That you wore the guard too long during practice."
I looked down at my gray shorts. "I don't play practice."
"I know."
She said it so quickly that I knew she had been waiting for someone to notice.
I moved closer. "Why did you let him put it on?"
Her face folded at the corners. She didn't cry. She looked tired in a way that made her seem older than she was.
"Because he said if I made trouble, he would make sure we couldn't get help anywhere else."
"How?"
"He didn't explain. He didn't have to."
The washing machine below us thudded again.
Claire reached for my hand. This time she held it carefully, with her palm open.
"I should have taken it off sooner," she said. "I should have told Elena everything the first minute."
"Did you know it hurt me?"
"I knew you were afraid."
That answer sat between us.
I thought of the guard in the clear bag. "You told me not to remove it."
"I did."
"Why?"
"Because Grant said it would look like we were hiding something if it wasn't on you when we arrived."
I pulled my hand away. The movement was small, but Claire noticed.
"I thought you believed him," I said.
"I believed he could hurt us with lies."
The apartment seemed to shrink around the words.
That afternoon, Claire went downstairs to use the laundromat's phone because she didn't want to use hers. I stayed on the couch with the television off. Through the wall, I heard a man's voice in the hallway.
"Claire?"
I froze.
The voice came again, closer this time.
"She needs to call me back."
I didn't answer. My foot began to pulse. After a minute, the footsteps moved away.
Claire came back carrying a paper bag of clothes. One sock had fallen out onto the stairs. When I told her, she dropped the bag.
She locked the door, checked the chain, and sat beside me.
"Did he see you?"
"I don't know."
She picked up the phone and called Dana, then stopped before the call connected.
Instead, she dialed the clinic.
Elena answered.
Claire said, "I need to tell you something about the guard."
She listened for a while, her eyes fixed on the locked door.
Then she handed me the phone.
Elena's voice came through, calm and familiar. "Toby, I found something in the intake record."
I held the phone with both hands.
"What?"
"The guard was listed as a youth sports brace," she said. "But the size and the condition didn't match the explanation given at intake."
Claire closed her eyes.
Elena continued, "And the time written on the form doesn't match when you arrived."
I looked at the door.
"Does that help?" I asked.
"It gives us another question to ask," Elena said. "Sometimes that's where the truth begins."
After the call, Claire took the phone from me and set it on the table.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Then she opened the paper bag, found the fallen sock, and put it beside my other one.
"We're not going to hide the important parts anymore," she said.
I wanted to believe her. I wasn't ready to say I did.
May you like
But when someone knocked once on the apartment door, Claire didn't tell me to be quiet.
She took my hand, and together we waited for the knock to come again.
