Page 20 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

I move like a girl who grew up above this place and learned which boards gossip and which boards keep secrets.

I pack him small plates like I'm feeding a stubborn cat.

Bread heel rubbed with garlic and a drizzle of oil, anchovy-stuffed olives that make my eyes water in the best way, a wedge of pecorino that I slice thin and fold like paper.

When I have time, I make polenta in the battered pot my uncle left on the back burner out of habit, then top it with bitter greens wilted with a chopped clove and a squeeze of lemon.

I leave the plates on the marble and walk away like I'm not checking to see if he eats.

Later, the plates come back empty and I pretend my chest is not ridiculous.

At the hospital, the ER hum has a new note in it.

I could blame it on fluorescent lights and double shifts, but it starts at the parking lot.

Every black SUV is a cousin of the first one.

Some of them probably belong to night security and men from the finance wing who have opinions about bond yields.

Some of them don't.

I clock them all.

I learn license plate numbers the way I used to memorize vocab for anatomy exams.

I tell myself that vigilance is not paranoia if it keeps you alive, but the line is thin and I walk it like a tightrope.

I'm not brave.

I'm busy.

There is a difference.

Busy means I have patients to turn, charts to sign, and a resident who keeps forgetting that hands are attached to people.

Brave is the luxury of someone who can stop and hold a pose.

But even busy people look over their shoulders sometimes.

At the med cart, I straighten labels that were already straight and listen to Rizzo talk about her mother’s gout while a pair of men in suits ask the security guard polite questions with their hands in their pockets.

I breathe and the coin tastes metallic again.

When I come home, I hear him before I see him.

The sound is not loud. It's steady.

He moves the way men move when they have listened for footsteps more years than they have slept through the night.

A measured stride across a short piece of floor, turn, return, pause by the window where the glass is clouded but near enough to the street that a shadow says something.

The pacing stops when I key the door.

The quiet that follows has its own weight.

He steps out of the dark like he has always belonged to it and asks if my shift was quiet.

I say quiet is a word that lies for a living.