Page 38 of Tell Me You Love Me

“Are you…” He pauses for a beat, considering his words. “Are you safe, Alana?”

My heart?

No.

My soul and sanity?

Absolutely not.

“Physically?” I blow my nose a second time and wipe above my lip. If I ignore the way they tremble, then I don’t have to admit how being mere feet from Tommy Watkins destroys me. “Yeah. I’m fine. How are things in New York?”

ROUND TWELVE

ALANA

A few days after my run-in atBooks Books Books—new name, pending—I wander through the house with a stack of clean laundry to put away and a sheen of sweat settling on my brow, despite how early in the day it still is.

“I was thinking of taking Franky over to the lake today. Do you still have—” I push through my mother’s bedroom door and stop with a frown when I find her sitting on the side of her bed, her hands on her knees and her head dangling with exhaustion.

Franky and I have been in Plainview for a few weeks now, living with my mother and seeing her daily. Still, her vulnerability and frail thinness never cease to catch me by surprise.

The woman she is today, physically, is nothing like the vicious snake she was in my youth.

“Are you okay?” Changing tact, I set my laundry on the end of her bed and come around and crouch so I can look up and see her face. “You don’t look so well, Mom. Are you feeling sick?”

“I didn’t sleep very well.” She licks her lips. The crackle of a dry tongue over dry skin is like rubbing paper together. “It was hot last night, so I kept tossing and turning. You’re going to the lake?”

“Well… no.” I place my hand on her forehead and search for warmth. It’s the mom in me, I think. It’s the first thing I do whenever Franky is feeling off. “We can stay home and have a movie day, if you like.”

She pulls back, shaking her head and dragging her eyes up. Her face hasaged a lot in the last ten years. What used to be smooth skin is now loose. Firm cheeks have become puffy and slack. Seductive bow lips are now flat and thin.

Worse, her skin has a gray tinge that makes my stomach do somersaults every time I look for more than a moment.

“I’m getting up now to make coffee and breakfast,” she murmurs. “Then I intend to watch my shows all day. The inflatable tubes are still in the shed.” She places her hands on the mattress and moves to her feet. She’s slow and in pain, but if nothing else, spite spurs her on. “I’m not sure they’ve been moved since you last used them. So as long as you stored them well, and they didn’t have holes back then…”

“Mom! Argghhhhh!” Franky’s guttural scream brings me up in a flash, my legs powering me toward the window that overlooks the yard before my brain can process the fear coursing through my veins. I tear the curtains aside and shove the glass up, risking shards raining on the carpet, and then I lean my head through the window in search.

“Franklin?! Where are you?”

“It’s trying to kill me!” He sprints across the lawn faster than I ever knew he could run, arms waving in the air and glasses bouncing on his nose. But before I dive under my mother’s bed and find the shotgun she keeps there, Whacky II, that damn rooster, bolts in Franky’s wake, hunting my baby down and—no doubt—thrilling in his place of dominance. “Mom!”

“Stop running!” I press my hand to my chest and breathe through the panic. It’s like lava in my veins. Like poison coursing through my system. And then deliriousness takes over until laughter bubbles along my throat. “Honey!” I clap my hand to my mouth when Franky trips on his own feet. But damn, he rolls until he’s up again. “If you stop running, he’ll stop chasing.”

“Save me, Mommy!” His voice breaks with genuine tears. Fear. Horror, as that friggin’ chook cuts through the yard and rounds my baby up. “Mommy!”

“Whacky!” I climb through the window and onto the roof of the house’s first story. It’s odd how, now that I’m an adult, I’m not scared of letting my mother see the myriad ways I learned to sneak out of her prison. Striding to the corner of the house, I turn and climb down the trellis she had installed somewhere around my eleventh birthday.

“Mommy!”

“Whacky! You dumb rooster. Stop it.” I descend in bare feet and shortsnot at all appropriate for outsiders to see—lucky me, there are no Watkins boys lingering in the yard today—then dropping to the porch, I dash onto the grass to stand between my son and his villain. “Hey!” I wave my arms and jump in his way when he tries to charge. “I’m gonna cook you up and eat you for dinner if you don’t cut the shit.”

“Get inside, Alana!” My mother stands at her window—her need to control me renewing her strength—and pursing her lips, she looks down her nose and judges me. “You look like a fool.”

“Impossible!” I back up, reaching behind me until I feel Franky’s hands take mine. Then, I meet Bitsy’s derision and beam. “I’m busy being my son’s hero.”

“You’re not even afraid,” Franky murmurs, plastering his cheek to my ribs, his chest to my back. “How come you’re not scared?”

Because I’ve faced bigger, meaner, scarier monsters all my life. But when Whacky turns, bored with the hunt, and wanders away, I draw my son around and swipe the tears from beneath his eyes. “He’s just a chicken, honey. He’s smaller than you by a hundred.”

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