Page 104 of The Bodyguard

“I stayed awake all night, curled as small as I could get in the closet, listening, at attention, trying to decide if my mother had lived. I never fell asleep. When the sun was up, she came to find me—and she had a split lip and a cracked tooth. As soon as I saw her face, I wanted to get us both out of there. Every atom in my body wanted to escape.

“But as I started to stand, she shook her head. She climbed into the closet with me and put her arms around me.

“‘We’re leaving, right?’ I asked.

“But she shook her head.

“‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why aren’t we?’

“‘Because he doesn’t want us to,’ she said.

“Then she put her arms around me and rocked me back and forth, in a way that always, before then, had made me feel safe. But I didn’t feel safe anymore. I don’t think I ever felt safe again after that, to be honest—not really. But guess what I still do even now when I feel scared?”

“What?” Jack asked.

“I sleep in the closet.”

Jack kept his eyes on mine.

“Remember my little safety pin with the beads on it? I’d made that pin for her that very same day. I never got a chance to give it to her. By the time that night was over, I’d lost it—or, I thought I had. After my mom died—not that long ago—I found it in her jewelry box. She’d kept it all those years. Finding it again felt like finding some little lost part of myself. I was going to wear it every day forever before I lost it on the beach that day. As a talisman for being okay.”

“But you’re okay, anyway.”

I looked down. “Am I? I don’t know. Up until I came out here, I’d been sleeping on the floor of my closet every night since my mom died.”

Jack lifted a nonsweaty part of his T-shirt to wipe my face. Had I just cried? Again? What was with me? Then Jack said, in a tender voice, “So sleeping on my floor is an improvement.”

I gave him a little shove and started walking again.

He fell into step beside me.

“Anyway,” I said, regrouping. “That’s the story of that song. I never heard my mom sing it again after that night. I forgot about it entirely.”

“Not entirely, though,” Jack said.

And then—even though there was nobody around to see—he pulled me into a hug.