Page 54 of Soft Tissue Damage
His lip curls in a sneer, and he turns away, shaking his head. “I always knew there was something off about you.”
My face flames red. Leon goes upstairs, and I suppose he came to get something from his room. I hear him come down again, and he leaves the house without another word.
There’s pressure in the back of my throat, and my eyes sting. For a moment, I feel like I do when I’m in church, when all the figures in the stained-glass windows are pointing their fingers at me and screaming that I’m a whore.
“Lay-na, Lay-na,” Rosie sings uncertainly, wondering why I’ve suddenly and completely shut down.
I quickly swipe the tears from my cheeks and smile at her. I will not cry because of Leon. “Do you want to play paints? Let’s play with paints in the garden.”
We spend a pleasant afternoon outside with pots of paint in bright colors and big sheets of brown paper. For a while, she grips a brush in her fist, and I help her dip it in the pots and spread it across the paper. Then she decides that using her fingers is much more fun.
When Rosie’s finished playing, I leave the painting todry on the outdoor table and we go inside to get cleaned up.
Rosie watches a short, colorful video on the TV while I prepare her dinner of corn cakes made in a skillet with chopped avocado. While she eats, I fry the rest of the corn cakes and leave them on a wire rack to cool. Later I’ll portion them up and put them in the freezer.
I hear the garage grind open and the sound of Cullan’s truck as I’m using a wet wipe on Rosie’s avocado-smeared fingers.
Cullan enters the kitchen, and he sees me and Rosie and smiles. “Good. I made it home for bedtime.” He scoops her up in his arms and carries her upstairs, but not before giving me a smile that’s so warm it makes my insides melt. “I’ll be back in a moment, Elena. Thank you for looking after her today.”
I smile at him, but Leon’s visit today has shaken me up, and I still feel like I’m on unsteady ground. I ache at the thought of losing all this. I’m crazy lucky that a plumbing problem means I’m living in this beautiful house, even temporarily. Wanting more than that feels dangerous. Good things don’t happen to me, at least not for long. I should be calling him Mr. Grant, not Cullan. I shouldn’t be flirting with him over text. Sleeping with my boss would be the fastest way to lose everything that I’ve been working so hard for. When my aunts finally tell me who my real mother is, I don’t hope that this unknown woman will love me on sight. I’m not that foolish. She gave me away and never came back for me.
But I want to know why. Without knowing who she is and why she gave me away, I feel stuck.
Thirty minutes later, Cullan comes downstairs. I’ve started getting things out of the refrigerator to make dinner for us, but he shoos me away.
“I’ll do that, you sit down. You’ve been working hard all day.”
“So have you,” I point out, but I step back from the chopping board.
“I pay you to look after Rosie, not me. Besides, I like to cook.” He gets to work preparing a pasta dish. “How was your day today?”
I smile, but it trembles. “Good, thanks.”
Cullan closes the refrigerator slowly and frowns at me. “Elena. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Rosie was great. She’s a dream to look after.”
“But?”
He can see I’m upset. There’s no use hiding it. “Leon came by, and…”
Cullan’s face hardens in anger. “I must have missed the notification while I was working. I told him he’s not to come here right now without asking me first.”
“This is his home. He probably doesn’t think it’s fair he’s been excluded.”
“Leon is twenty-one years old. He’s a man, not a boy, and he needs to respect boundaries. That means mine, and it certainly means yours. I’m going to speak to him about—”
Cullan is interrupted by the doorbell. He pulls hisphone out of his pocket, checks the app, and mutters a curse. “Excuse me.”
He strides out of the kitchen and disappears. I hear him open the front door and say to whoever is out there, “Now is not a good time. You’re supposed to call first.”
A flinty, feminine voice cuts across him. “We need to talk about our children. Am I interrupting something?”
I hear the sharp click of high heels along the hallway. Confident, authoritative footsteps of someone who believes she belongs in this house.
My stomach swoops. Am I about to meet Cullan’s ex-wife?
An attractive redhead in a sleeveless tank top with very sharp shoulders and pointed nails rounds the corner. She steps up to the kitchen island and takes a pointed sip of the smoothie she’s holding while examining me with glittering green eyes. The baby doll tee and jeans I’m wearing. Rosie’s dinner plate that I’m clearing away. The mug of chamomile tea I’ve half drunk.
