Three hours of hammering panels into place, the rhythm of it filling the silence, and I'm grateful for every minute of it. No questions. No judgment. Just nails and wood and something that needs fixing that I actually know how to fix.
I pick Ma up and drop her at work for her night shift, watch her shuffle through the doors until I can't see her anymore, and then I drive to the warehouse.
Nerves settle into my stomach as I punch in the code. Unfamiliar. I don't get nervous. I don't let myself.
I ease the door open. I left the light on for her, and she's found the couch, curled up with one arm tucked under her cheek, asleep. Her hair's loose around her face.
I set up the TV and DVD player I'd scavenged earlier, positioning it where she can reach it without straining the chain, and she stirs at the noise. Comes awake fast, eyes flying open, landing on me.
I go still.
"What the fuck!" Her voice is wrecked from screaming, rough at the edges, and she scrambles upright. "What the fuck!"
"Good morning, Goldilocks."
"I didn't break in, fucker. You locked me in here." She blinks. "Goldilocks. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears?"
"Didn't even think about that."
"Fantastic." A pause, something shifting in her expression. "My name is Harvee," she says, quieter. "Not sure that matters to you."
"I know your name."
"Oh." Another pause. "What's yours?"
"Friends call me DJ."
She studies me for a moment. "What's your story, DJ?" Her tone lands somewhere between sarcasm and genuine, and I can't fully read which one she means. Maybe she can't either.
"Wrong question. You have no idea who I am."
She looks at me with this soft, searching expression that twists something in my gut immediately and not in a good way. That look. The sympathetic one. I've worn the receiving end of it my whole life — poor DJ, the mama's boy, the one with the sick mother and the complicated history. My fists pull tight at my sides.
I'm done with this conversation.
I pace instead. The concrete amplifies every step, restless energy with nowhere to go.
She shifts on the couch, trying to find a comfortable position against the chain. The metal clinks softly, and I make myself look somewhere else.
"Grabbing lunch," I say, stopping near the door. "Allergies? Anything you don't eat?"
"No." She looks up. "DJ."
"Yeah."
"Why are you doing this?" She nods toward the chains, voice dropping. "These hurt."
She lifts her wrists. Red welts where the metal has been.
I need to leave before I say something or do something I haven't thought through yet. "It's for your own good."
"How is any of this?—"
The door shuts behind me. Her frustrated shriek follows it, muffled but very much audible through the metal.
I laugh under my breath on the other side.
That accent. That fire underneath the fear. The way she goes from terrified to furious and back again without losing either one. It does something to my spine that I'm not going to examine right now.