Page 24 of Until You

She takes a sip of her coffee. Sets it down on the side table. Picks it back up. Sets it down again. She’s nervous. Trying not to show it. Doing a decent job, but I’ve spent my life reading animals that can’t talk. I know what caution and unease look like when it’s trying to hold still.

“Okay,” she says. “Cards on the table. I didn’t know. I didn’t know you were their grandson. I didn’t know you lived here. I didn’t know any of this. I answered a job listing nearly a month and a half ago, interviewed with your grandmother, who is—for the record—the most charming woman I’ve ever met in my life, and she hired me on the spot. I moved in two weeks later.” She pauses. “That’s the whole story.”

I study her. She meets my gaze without wavering. No fidgeting, no looking away. Just those green eyes, steady and clear, daring me to call her a liar.

“Mimz hired you on the spot,” I repeat.

“Yes.”

“For a job that doesn’t really need to exist.”

Something shifts in her expression. A flicker of… not hurt, exactly, but something. Something like recognition. Like she’s already thought about this herself and arrived at the same uncomfortable conclusion.

“I know what it looks like,” she says carefully.

“What does it look like?”

“Like two very kind people saw a girl who needed help and invented a reason to give it to her.” She says it plainly, without self-pity, the way she’d said foster care that night at the bar. Just a fact. Something she’s learned to hold without letting it weigh her down. “I’m not naive. I know they don’t need a live-in aide. Your grandmother can outpace me on the stairs. Your grandfather fixed the garbage disposal last week with a butter knife and a YouTube video.”

Despite myself, the corner of my mouth twitches. That sounds exactly like Pops.

“But the job is real,” she continues. “My skills are real. I do real work. I manage their medications, I handle their appointments, I keep the house running when they want to go off and do things like spontaneous Caribbean cruises.” She gestures vaguely. “I earn my keep, Oliver.”

It’s the first time she’s used my name.

It lands differently than I expected. Not like a weapon. Like a key turning in a lock, opening a door that was already unlocked.

“I didn’t say you didn’t,” I say.

“You were thinking it.”

“I was thinking a lot of things.”

“I bet.” She reaches for her coffee again. This time, she actually drinks it. “Your turn.”

“My turn for what?”

“Cards on the table. You said this is your grandparents’ house. Fine. But you walked in with a key and a chip on your shoulder at eight in the morning. So what’s your story?”

I lean back against the couch. Run my tongue along the inside of my cheek.

“I need to stay here for a while,” I say. “My living situation... changed.”

Her eyebrows lift. “Changed how?”

“My brother got married.”

“Congratulations to him.”

“He didn’t tell anyone.”

“Ah.”

“And his new wife moved in.”

“Into your place.”

“It was his place. I was staying there while I—” I stop. This is more than I intended to say. “It doesn’t matter. Point is, Mimz and Pops told me I could stay here whenever I needed to. I’ve had a key since I was sixteen.”