Page 72 of Cut Off
“Twelve,” I confirm.
“You should come to poker night,” Maisie says. “Thursdays.”
Sydney makes a small choking sound and tap-taps Maisie on the wrist with two fingers. “Maisie.”
“What.”
“He’s nine.”
“He can count, can’t he?”
I go bug-eyed. “You don’t understand. He’ll show up with a visor.”
“I have a visor,” Eli says.
“See.” Maisie pours him lemonade like the case is closed.
I sit on the wicker chair, accept tea, and try not to think about the way Maisie and her friend Pam run poker nights at the Sparkling Suds Laundromat, which is illegal in various ways. Letthe woman have her gambling. I’m not on this earth to police senior citizens.
Eli eats two cookies. He explains the rules of Blastman to Maisie, who says, “Well, I never,” in a way that makes him beam. Sydney refills cups. When the evening light goes long and gold across the porch boards, I’ve finished my tea, and realize I’m just watching this kid—the one kid who showed up in our lives wearing a Flash backpack over two weeks ago with grief stitched into every line of his small body—negotiate cookies with a woman who’s seen everything and still finds him fascinating.
When we stand to leave, Eli runs ahead toward the car with Sydney, who’s now, apparently, his consultant on a permanent basis. Maisie catches my elbow on the porch step. Her hand is paper-light and steel-strong at the same time, which is exactly Maisie. “Zoe.”
“Maisie.”
She brings her face close to mine. Her eyes are pale and unblinking. “You play dirty,” she says, low, just for me. “You do what you have to do. But you gotta win. That child needs you. And he loves you.”
“Maisie—”
“Hush. I know about the hearing. I’ve heard things about that woman, and I know what’s at stake.” She squeezes my elbow, hard enough that I feel it through my jacket. “Don’t you let her near him. Whatever it costs. You hear me?”
“I hear you.” My voice comes out thinner than I want it to.
“Good.” She pats my cheek like I’m seven years old. “Now go on. Tell that strapping young hockey player I said hello.”
She heads back to her tea. I stand on her porch step for longer than I should, because my brain snags on a word.
You win. Eli needsyouand he lovesyou. Not Jonah.You.
It hits me sideways, the way the hardest things do.
It all happened so gradually, I haven’t stopped to notice it—the morning routine, the chess matches, the closet, the Blastman costume I helped paint last night, the fact that Eli asked me, not Jonah, where his shadowbox was this morning. The fact that he texts me sometimes just to tell me a joke.
I’m Eli’s good friend.
Which means—what, exactly?
What happens to him when I leave? When I pack up from Jonah’s house and drive away? What happens when this kid, who’s buried one mother already, watches the next woman in his life close a door behind her?
Goddammit.
I have to stay committed to him from afar. Zoom. Flights. Calls, texts, whatever it takes.
Down by the car, Blastman is showing Sydney a new power. He’s making her laugh. He turns and waves at me with his whole arm, the way kids do when they are sure, completely sure, you’ll wave back.
“Coming, Blastman,” I call, and I do.
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