The Survivor

heels. Nate did a literal double take at the husky kid before turning to Janie.

“She told him everything,” Janie said. “And they think he’s staying here.”

“You what?” Nate spun to his daughter. “You told your boyfriend? This is life and death, Cielle.”

Shithead Jason held up his hands calmingly, the picture of maturity. “And I am here for whatever you need, bro.”

The muscles of Nate’s left hand were contracting, and he did his best to shake out the knot forming in the meat of his palm. “Cielle, you need to-”

“What? Keep it a secret? You guys haven’t. You told Pete, and look how that turned out. So why can’t I tell someone important to me?”

“No one should know about this,” he said.

“No, Nate. It’s just that you want to make all the choices. Who to tell, who not to.” She drifted down the final steps, on tilt. “You said I could make my own choices. Well, this is my first. And his.”

She reached back for Jason, who took her hand and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He’d removed his small gauge earrings, leaving hole punches in his lobes through which Nate could see the sides of his neck.

Janie turned to Nate. “You told a fifteen-year-old she could make her own choices?”

“Not exactly,” he said.

They were arrayed around the entryway like enemy tanks in a clearing, everyone ready to pivot and fire.

“I’m staying with her,” Jason said. “That big guy comes back, I’ll kick him in his Justin Bieber.”

“You don’t understand,” Nate said. “These men, they don’t care about anything. They are perfect terrorists. You need to stay away from this for your own safety.”

“Far as I’m concerned,” Jason announced grandly, “they can all go suck a bag o’ dicks.”

“Okay,” Janie said. “Great. Thanks.”

A rush of fury, burning Nate’s throat with the words: “You think this is a fucking joke? Some kind of video game? Do you guys have any concept of-”

Cielle reddened. “I know what’s best for me.”

“Your inviting him here proves exactly how little you know what’s best for you.”

Cielle stormed upstairs, towing her boyfriend. Jason paused, pointing across at Casper. “By the way, the dog’s showing his lipstick. I’m just sayin’. It’s a little gross.”

Cielle took up the slack, yanking him around, and then they were up and the bedroom door slammed, leaving Nate and Janie and an aroused Rhodesian ridgeback.

“Put that thing away,” Janie said to Casper, who rose and padded off. She rubbed her eyebrows with thumb and forehead, muttering something unintelligible.

Nate’s skin was tingling-the aftermath of the outburst. He looked at Janie. “What?”

“She’s not seven, Nate. She is fifteen. You can’t just pick her up and throw her over your shoulder. She has to be part of this. We need her to cooperate.”

He tamped down a flurry of objections. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. What do we do about it?”

“Absolutely nothing for fifteen minutes.”

He followed her into the kitchen. Unfolded the divorce papers and dropped them on the island. “I brought these. You just need to countersign and mail them in.”

The leak beneath the sink drip-drip-dripped.

Janie cast a weary gaze at the papers. “Thanks.” She slid them off the marble, letting them clap to the side of her leg, and trudged over to her study, which was more of an alcove off the kitchen.

Nate found his tools and the little box in the back of the pantry and dropped a new washer in the flanged tailpiece of the kitchen drain to stop the leak. After tightening everything up, he brought the mortar bag down from the garage cabinet and reseated the loose brick on the porch. Janie worked quietly at her desk the whole time, and Nate found a familiar calm in their separate but harmonized routines. As he came back in from the front yard, he noticed a few spots of Pete’s dried blood on the kitchen floor, which he cleaned up with a wet paper towel silently so Janie wouldn’t turn around and notice. Finally he walked over and knocked gently on the wall behind her. When she pushed back on the rolling chair, he saw that she had out a calculator and a stack of bills.

She traced his gaze and said firmly, “Late bills are not a problem. They’re a welcome distraction.”

He nodded reluctantly. “Has it been fifteen minutes?”

“It has.”

She rose, and they headed side by side up the stairs. Jason’s deep voice was audible from the hall. “I wish I had like ninety-seven senses so I could love you with more of them.”

And Cielle: “You are so lame. That’s like a double trampoline bounce of lameness.”

“Don’t be a bitch.”

Nate opened the door sharply without knocking. The kids were sitting on the floor, their backs to Cielle’s bed. Jason played with a Zippo lighter decorated with a skull and crossbones, flicking open the lid, snapping it shut.

“I don’t like the way you’re talking to her,” Nate said.

“Dude-you seen the way she talks to me?”

Janie’s voice, strained thin enough to break: “Just … go home, Jason. Cielle will call you later.”

He shrugged and lumbered out.

Cielle examined her cuticles.

Janie sat next to her and Nate against the adjoining wall. They looked at each other, united by parental helplessness. Janie made a gesture: You first.

“Look,” Nate said. “About Jason-”

Cielle said, “I love him.”

“I know, honey,” he said. “And colors are bright, and music is subversive, and when you see him, he puts a hum in your chest. I know. And that’s how it should be. But it isn’t safe right now. I am one move away from extracting us from this mess, and we can’t have any complications in the mix.”

“He’s not a complication,” Cielle said.

Janie reached for her but thought better of it. “I know you think you know everything right now. What decisions you want to make.”

Cielle’s fists were at her temples, and she flung her hands, sending out flares of maroon-streaked hair. She glared at Nate. “You don’t like Jay because he’s more creative than you.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t like Jason because he’s not human. I wasn’t either at his age. ”

Cielle went back to her cuticles. Silence. Just beyond her line of sight, Janie regarded Nate imploringly.

He gritted his teeth. “Okay. Look, I’m sorry-”

Cielle’s head snapped up. “So he can stay?”

“No.”

Cielle sank her chin beneath the frayed collar of her oversize sweater. “He could help if those guys come back.”

“What’s he gonna do? Scare them off with his music?”

With a sleeve bunched over her fist, she wiped her nose forcefully, as if to tear it off. “You don’t get it.”

“No.” His voice was low, but hard as stone. “You don’t get it. We could all get killed, Cielle. Him included. How you gonna feel if he winds up with a bullet in his chest?”

Her expression shifted abruptly, the wrinkles smoothing from her forehead. Reality slapping her. For a moment he thought she might start crying, but whatever twinge of guilt he felt was drowned out by the roaring necessities at hand.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, breaking the silence. He stood with some difficulty, stiff from myriad bruises, and checked the ID.

Janie read his face and said, with all-too-familiar disappointment, “Work.”

He pulled the phone open. “I can’t,” he said into it.