Tell Her Am Sorry

Chapter 7:

I didn't even know I was crying until Lily said it.

That's the thing about crying. When it's the real kind, the kind that comes from somewhere under your ribs, you don't feel it happening. You just look down and your shirt's wet and your daughter's staring at you like you grew a second head.

"Mama?" Lily said again. Her little voice went up at the end. Scared. "Mama."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand. "I'm okay, baby."

"You're not."

"I'm okay. Look." I crouched down and held out my arms and she came running and I hugged her so tight her feet came off the floor. "Mama's okay. Mama just got some dust in her eyes."

"You're lying," Lily said.

I looked over her head at Kael.

He was standing by the door with his phone in his hand, watching me. Not saying anything. His face was doing that thing where he wasn't moving a single muscle but you could tell something under the surface was working.

"Give me a minute," I said.

"You got two," Kael said. "Then we talk."

"I don't need two. I need one."

He nodded. Put the phone in his pocket. And then — this is the part that got me — he walked over and sat down on the floor next to Lily's crayons. Crossed his legs. Picked up the purple crayon.

"Hey," he said to Lily. "You know how to draw a motorcycle?"

Lily's eyes went wide. "No."

"I'm gonna teach you."

She looked at me. I nodded. She dropped to the floor next to him like she'd known him her whole life.

I walked out of the room.

---

The hallway was concrete and cold and empty and I put my back against the wall and slid down until I was sitting on the floor with my knees up and my forehead on my knees.

The woman's voice was still in my head.

Tell her I'm sorry.

Tell her he's looking for her and he's not alone.

Who says that? Who says he's not alone? What does that even mean? A man on his own is one thing. A man with people is a whole different thing. A man with people is a war.

And she knew me. She knew who I was. She said tell her like I was a specific person, not some random woman in a photo. She knew I was still alive. She knew I had a daughter. She knew I was running.

She knew something.

I put my hands over my face.

My mother's face came up behind my eyes. The way it always does when I'm scared. Not the way she looked when she left — I don't even remember that, I was sixteen and she was already half out the door — but the way she looked before. When I was little. When she'd put her hands on either side of my face and say you're my good girl, Ella Rae. You're my good girl.

She used to say it in the kitchen. The one with the yellow curtains. Before the yellow curtains got taken down and the house got sold and I got sent to live with an aunt who didn't want me.

You're my good girl, Ella Rae.

Then one day she wasn't there anymore. Just a note on the counter and a hundred-dollar bill and a man she'd married when I was fourteen and divorced when I was fifteen, and after that I was on my own.

I hadn't thought about her in years. I'd trained myself not to. You can't miss somebody who left you. You can't spend your life wondering where she went or if she's alive or if she ever thinks about the daughter she left in a house with a man who wasn't her father.

You just don't.

I sat there in the hallway with my forehead on my knees and my mother's voice in my head and a strange woman's voice on repeat, and for the first time in three years I let myself think the thing I'd been not thinking.

What if it's her.

And then I heard myself say it out loud, in a hallway, alone:

"Please don't be her."

---

I got up. I wiped my face. I went back in.

Kael was drawing a motorcycle. Lily was drawing on top of it with three different colors at once. The picture was a mess and they were both very proud of it.

I sat down on the floor. Not the couch. The floor. Right next to them.

Kael looked up at me.

"You good?" he said.

"I don't know."

"That's the most honest thing you've said all day."

"Shut up."

Lily giggled. Kael's mouth twitched.

"I need to tell you something," I said.

Kael put the crayon down. That was the thing about him. He knew when to stop.

"Webb wrote that number down for a reason," I said. "He wasn't the kind of guy to leave a mystery on the back of a photo. If he wrote it down, it meant something."

"Agreed."

"So whoever she is, Webb knew her. Or knew of her. Either way, she's connected to that night."

"Agreed."

"And she said he's looking for her."

"Agreed."

"She said he's not alone."

Kael was quiet.

"Say something else," I said.

"I was waiting for the part where you tell me something I don't already know."

I looked at him. He looked back. His face was flat but his eyes were doing the thing they did — the seeing thing.

"You know what I'm about to say," I said.

"I think so."

"Say it back to me so I know I'm not crazy."

Kael was quiet for a second. Then he said, "You think that woman is your mother."

Lily looked up. "Mama's mama?"

"Go color," Kael said.

"Okay." She went back to her mess.

"How did you know?" I said.

"Because when she said tell her I'm sorry you went white as a sheet. I've seen that face before. It's the face people make when they get a call about somebody they thought was dead."

"You see a lot of those?"

"More than you'd think."

I looked at the floor.

"I was sixteen when she left," I said. "She left a note. She left money. She took everything she could carry and she got in a car with a guy I didn't know and she never came back." I picked at the rug. "I was in the system for two years. Foster homes. Then I aged out and I was on my own. I met Damon when I was nineteen and I thought — "

I stopped.

"Thought what?" Kael said.

"I thought he was safe. I thought he was quiet. I thought quiet meant safe."

Kael didn't say anything.

"Turns out quiet just means the noise is on the inside," I said. "And I didn't learn that until my daughter was six months old."

The room was very still.

"Anyway," I said. "That's the story. My mother left. I don't know where she went. I don't know if she's alive. And now there's a woman on a phone telling me to tell me she's sorry."

I looked up at him.

"I think it's her," I said. "I think it's her and I think she knows something about Damon and I think she's been watching me."

Kael sat back. Looked at the ceiling. Then at me.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Okay. Here's what we do."

"You have a plan?"

"I always have a plan."

"Great. Tell me the plan."

"You and Lily go home," Kael said. "You stay home. Tomorrow morning a car's gonna come pick you up and bring you back here and you're gonna meet some people."

"What kind of people?"

"People who find out things I can't find out."

"People like Webb?"

Kael's jaw moved. "Yeah," he said. "People like Webb."

I looked at him.

"And what do I tell Rita?" I said.

"Tell Rita you're sick."

"For how long?"

His eyes met mine.

"Until I know who that woman is," he said. "Then we'll talk about after."

"After."

"After," he said, and his voice went lower, "I'm gonna have a conversation with the man she's talking about. The one who's looking for you."

"Kael."

"You asked for the plan."

"The plan can't be you find Damon and do something bad."

"The plan can't be anything else."

I looked at him. At Lily. At the crayon drawings on the floor.

"I don't want you to kill him," I said.

Kael didn't answer.

"Kael."

"What do you want me to do, Ella?"

"I want you to make him go away. That's all. I don't want him dead. I don't want that on me."

"On you."

"Yes."

"I'd be the one doing it."

"On my conscience either way." I looked at him. "I don't want my daughter growing up knowing her father got killed because of me."

Kael looked at Lily. She was coloring. She had a purple mustache from the crayon.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"I'm not gonna kill him."

"You promise?"

He looked at me. A long look.

"I'm not gonna kill him," he said again. "But if he touches you or that baby, I'm gonna do things to him that he's not gonna like. And I'm not gonna be sorry."

I looked at him. And I said, "Deal."

He blinked.

"Deal?" he said.

"You said you weren't gonna lie to me. I believe you. Deal."

Kael looked at me for a long time. Then he did something I had never seen him do in the short time I'd known him.

He smiled. Not the one-sided thing. A real one. Small, and a little bit surprised, like it had snuck up on him.

"Deal," he said.

---

The drive home was weird.

He didn't follow me. That's the weird part. I kept checking my rearview and he wasn't there.

Then I realized he was ahead of me.

A black SUV had pulled out before I turned onto the street. It stayed in front of me the whole way. Never sped up. Never slowed down. Just stayed ahead, four car lengths, the whole time, until I pulled into my lot.

I parked. The SUV pulled over at the curb and the guy driving — the blond kid from the door — rolled down his window and held up his hand. Not a wave. Just — hi.

I waved. I don't know why. I just did.

Lily was asleep in the back. I carried her up the stairs and into the apartment and put her in the crib without even waking her. She snuffled and rolled over and her little hand fell out from under the blanket.

I stood there looking at her for a long time.

Then I went to the kitchen window.

No bike. No sedan. Just the black SUV, parked across the street, one light on inside.

I pulled out my phone. I texted the only number I had.

They're in front of my building.

The reply came fast.

Yeah.

You said you weren't gonna be outside my building.

I'm not. My guy is.

That's the same thing.

No it's not. I'm not standing on your street looking up at your window.

I looked out the window. The street was dark and empty and quiet.

Where are you?

A pause. Then:

Down the block. On the roof. Watching the alley.

I put the phone face down on the counter. Then picked it up again.

You're on a roof.

It's a nice roof.

Kael.

Ella.

I stood there looking at the screen.

Then I typed one more thing.

Goodnight, Kael.

And he typed back:

Goodnight, Just Ella.

I went to bed. I didn't sleep. But I went to bed.

And at 3:14 in the morning my phone buzzed on the nightstand, and it wasn't Kael's number, it was a number I didn't know, and the message said:

I saw you tonight. You've grown up so much.

— Mom.

Chapter 7 Ends.