Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Juno’s mouth twitches. “Power move.”
“Stupid move,” Bob says. “They were my lucky socks.”
“You have lucky socks?” Juno asks, and for a breath her voice is easy, the old cadence of razzing him in kitchens.
“I had lucky socks,” Bob corrects. “Now they’re in God’s hands.”
Silence, then. Not awful. Just… full.
I clear my throat. “Juno, can we…” I gesture toward the kitchen, vague. “A minute?”
She doesn’t look at me. “We’re visiting.”
“Just a minute,” I try again, softer.
She smiles at Bob like she didn’t hear. “Tell me about Dennis’s sock-based diet. Does he pair reds with whites?”
Bob warms to the bit. I sit back, swallowed by the sofa fabric and the realization that she’s not ready to give me even sixty seconds on neutral ground. It’s fair. It also feels like slow drowning.
Karen watches both of us and sips her tea like it’s fortification. She leans forward. “Juno, honey… the wall…” She catches herself, and softens. “I know it makes you feel in control. I know it helps. But every time I look at it, I see the last thing your sister ever did, and I want to smash it with a chair.”
Juno’s throat works. She doesn’t look at the wall. “Don’t.”
“I won’t,” Karen says quickly. “I won’t. It’s your house. I just… wish this weren’t the only thing in it.”
Juno stares at her mug. The steam has thinned. “It isn’t.” She gestures at the coloring book on the coffee table, open to page forty-three, half the petals shaded in bruised purple. “I color. I sleep sometimes. I—” She almost says I kiss Arrow in a room with too many computers (at least I like to think so) and reroutes. “I remember. That’s a thing.”
Karen nods, eyes bright. “That’s a thing.”
I can’t help it, and the question slips out. “Have you… eaten? Today?”
“I had a cronut,” she says. “Half.”
“Repeatedly,” Bob says, delighted to be invited back into the loop.
Something loosens around my ribs. “I brought soup,” I lie, because I didn’t, but I would. “It’s in my car.”
“We’re not staying,” Juno says quickly.
Karen’s gaze flicks at me with that mom look that says stop poking the bruise. Bob stands, dusts powdered sugar off his jeans, and wanders back to the wall. He finds a doodle of a little cartoon Ghostface in the corner of a page—Juno’s sketching habit when she’s on the phone—and snorts.
“Who’s this little guy?” he asks. “He looks like the world’s worst marshmallow.”
Juno goes very still. A flush licks up her throat. “Just…something dumb.”
I hold my breath because if I cough wrong here, the whole scaffolding comes down.
Karen puts a careful hand on Juno’s knee, thumb making tiny circles. “We’re not trying to invade, Junebug. We just wanted to see your face and hand you a pastry.” Her voice drops. “And we wanted to make sure you know… you don’t have to be the soldier all the time.”
Juno swallows. “Someone does.”
“Let Detective Huxley be the soldier,” Karen says. “Let Arrow—” She catches herself, glances between us and winces. “Let… people who do that be that.”
“I don’t trust the timeline of institutions,” Juno says, and it’s so precise and so her that I almost laugh. “I trust the work.”
Bob sighs, but there’s love in it. “Fine. Then promise me this… don’t go anywhere alone. Not Atlas. Not the marina. Not to meet any man named after a type of cookie.”
“Nico,” Juno says, automatically.
“Nico,” Bob repeats like it’s a code word he will absolutely misuse later. “You take a person with you. Preferably a person with biceps.”
“I have pepper spray,” Juno says, defensive out of habit.
“Pepper spray isn’t enough,” Karen says softly.
Juno stares at the ring of tea in her mug and finally looks at me. It’s quick—like checking a mirror—but it’s there. Something passes between us that isn’t just anger, or at least isn’t only anger. A reluctant acknowledgment. A truce on a battlefield no one likes.
I take the opening. “I meant what I said,” I tell her, careful not to upset her. “I haven’t looked at your stuff since you told me to stop. Not your Ring. Not your laptop. I’m not in your air.” Render is, a little, I don’t say. “But I can stand a sidewalk away. I can sit in a car around the block. I can be the person with biceps.”
“Your biceps are fine,” Bob says, like an impartial judge offering a ruling.
“Please,” Karen says, tiny and fierce at once. “Let him stand the sidewalk away.”
Juno’s jaw flexes. She inhales. “I’ll… think about it.”
It’s not a yes. It’s not the door slamming. I’ll take it.
We visit for another fifteen minutes that feels like a slow-motion relay—topic tossed, caught, fumbled, rescued. Bob tells a story about a beagle bath that ends in a flooded hallway. Karen asks about the podcast and doesn’t push when Juno says she recorded a new episode and then didn’t upload it because her voice sounded like a stranger. I offer to fix her leaky sink because fixing tangible things is a thing I know how to do.