Page 63 of Double Down

“T-they say the girl is pretty quiet, doesn’t bother anyone, and sometimes she helps the maids fold towels so they let her stay. Her mother used to be a maid, but she died.”

“How do you know all of this?” My mother grabbed my arm, her polished acrylic nails cutting into my skin. I didn’t cry. I didn’t make a sound.

I never did.

“I listen,” I lied. “I overheard the manager talking about her. They say even if they give her a sandwich and let her play in the pool, it’s a net positive for the resort, and the maids like her. They are pretty sure a few of them stay on with the job just to look after her.”

“You overheard all of that?” One thin eyebrow arched at me as I nodded.

I hadn’t overheard it. Conrad did, and he filled us in. He had spotted the girl first and wanted to know more.

“Why? Why do you care?”

“I like knowing what’s going on around me.” It’s another lie, but one my mother wants to hear. “People say things all the time that they don’t realize I can use.”

“Well, I guess the Masterson boy may not be the brains after all.”

Conrad was never the brains, but my mother didn’t know that. The smart one was always Atticus, but I knew better than to correct her. Still, when she looked at me with something other than annoyance and disappointment, I felt taller, stronger.

Almost proud.

I looked back at the girl, and this time she was watching me too…and I felt seen. Like she wasn’t expecting someone else. Like she knew who I was, what I was…and maybe she didn’t find me lacking.

That was the moment I fell for her, long before I had ever talked to her.

And that secret is one I thought I’d take to my grave.

A week after that, my parents started fighting. My mother had caught my father with a younger woman. It was the first ugly fight where they used me as a weapon against each other. It proved that neither of them really gave a damn about me.

I ran out of our suite, and I couldn’t breathe. Tears streamed down my face, and it felt like my lungs were going to explode. I wanted to get someone, an adult, to call an ambulance. But they didn’t find me.

She did.

She knelt in front of me and took my hand.

“You need to box breathe. It’s going to hurt, but it helps,” she said, looking right into my eyes.

“What? No, I need a doctor. I’m going to die.”

“No, you aren’t; it just feels like you are. Take a deep breath, as deep as you can, and count to four.” She lifted her hand and pointed her finger, drawing an invisible line in the air.

My eye went immediately to the dirt beneath her nail, but I dismissed it and took a breath with her, my lungs screaming.

“Now hold it for four.”

She drew the line to the right, and I followed her finger, noticing how it was bent a little funny, like it had been broken at some point and not reset correctly.

We held our breath for a four count together.

“Good, now let it out slowly, count to four again.” Her finger moved down. “Now hold it again for four.”

Her finger returned to the exact spot it started.

“Again.”

We sat and breathed together, her fingers drawing those boxes in the air with each breath.

“Better?” she asked.