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  I'd never met her mother. Neither had Jelena for that matter. But seeing as she didn't resemble Colson, I figured she must have taken after her mother with her sturdier frame, her large eyes that were golden with the faintest hint of green, her rounder face, her pouty mouth with a bigger upper lip.

  "You're right, Jelly," Colson agreed, placing his giant hand on top of her small head. "Winnie," he said, voice an odd hiss. Deeper than usual. Thick with - dare I think it - emotion.

  "Hey Colson," I said, giving him a wobbly smile. "I'm home," I added even though it went without saying.

  "I see that. Jelly, this is Aunt Winnie," he told the little girl who looked up at me with those big eyes, something like recognition there.

  And then her baby fat hand thrust out toward me. "I'm Jelena. Daddy calls me Jelly."

  "And why is that?" Thad's voice asked from behind me, making Jelly's face light up as she dropped my hand.

  "'Cuz I got jelly in muh belly!" she declared loudly enough for all the neighbors to hear, hauling her shirt up to show us all said belly.

  "Yes you do, little boo. Come on in here. Uncle Thad will get you some strawberry milk," he called, making the girl barrel through the doorway and collide with him bodily, prompting him to wrap an arm around her middle, lifting and flipping her upside down. Her squeals carried out into the hall where I moved, closing the door behind me, sealing us away from the ears of an impressionable little girl.

  "How long you been out?" Colson asked, hands slipping into his front pockets. A defensive move.

  "Just about two days," I told him.

  "And you didn't tell me because..."

  "I didn't tell Thad before either. He found out because he called and I was already on my way here."

  "And you didn't tell me once you got here because..."

  Colson was not someone who backed down, who let you have your reasons without explanations.

  "Honestly, I don't know," I admitted. "I was nervous."

  "About seeing me."

  "I guess."

  "Fuck," he hissed, running a hand down the scruff on his face, glancing down the hall before he looked at me again. "How did we get like this?" he wondered. "Winnie?" he asked when my gaze slipped to my feet for a moment. "Spill it."

  "You didn't come see me for almost a year," I admitted, knowing that one way or another, he would get the truth from me. I might as well use the band-aid technique.

  Colson's head hung, shaking in either shame or regret. Maybe a mix of the two. "I'm a shit," he declared, voice rough. "Never meant to hurt you. You gotta know that."

  "I know that."

  While Colson and I might not have been quite as close as Thad and I had always been thanks to shared interests, he had always been there for me, had always been my protector, my shoulder to lean on.

  "We can rebuild this," he told me. With conviction. Which was how he always spoke, honestly. But this was with determination. Like he had set his mind to it. Like he was going to do everything in his power to make it so. "With Jelly, it was hard to get out that way as much as I would have liked. But you're here now. We'll work on this."

  "We won't need to work on it," I declared, moving toward him, wrapping my arms around him, feeling that warm sensation move through me once again as his arms folded around me, familiar, comforting. "It will all fall into place."

  Until...

  I pushed that thought away, refusing to harp on it. That was a problem for another time.

  "Come on. I gotta get in there before she cons his gullible ass into giving her cookies for breakfast."

  We moved inside, having coffee, deciding to all go out to breakfast together.

  It was odd to see Colson as a father. She brought out a softness that I hadn't ever really seen in him. Colson had been the man of our family, even when he was nothing but a little boy. The weight of that burden had made him older than his years, heavier when Thad and I got to be young and light.

  When he had told me on the phone that he'd gotten a girl pregnant, I had always known he would take care of it. I knew he would work to provide for it, be a part of its life. Then when, three months after Jelena's birth, her mother decided she was not cut out to be a mother and gave Colson the choice to take over, or have his daughter put up for adoption, he had, of course, stepped up. As I knew he would. I hadn't been able, when I had heard the news, to picture it. I could see him doing the necessary tasks. Feeding, cleaning, washing clothes for her. But I couldn't see him rocking, snuggling, being sweet and silly with her. I hadn't thought he was capable.

  But sitting at a diner with him as he cut up her food, had a bubble blowing in their milk contest with her, as he entertained her with silly drawings on the placemat, I realized I had been wrong all along about him. There had always been sweet and soft and fun inside him. It had just taken a little girl with an infectious laugh to bring it out of him.

  "Did you get a card from Auntie May?" Thad asked, making the entire aura around the table shift.

  Auntie May.

  That was a sore spot.

  No.

  It was a gaping, festering wound.

  For all three of us.

  See, Colson, Thad, and I were as close as we were out of necessity, the need to close ranks, protect one another.

  Colson and Thad were eleven and I was nine when Child Protective Services ripped us out of our beds in the middle of the night, pulling us through the only home we ever knew, bringing us to a room with a social worker who told us our mother could no longer take care of us anymore.

  That was not exactly a surprise.

  We hadn't seen our mother in three days.

  It was not an uncommon occurrence. And we had learned to take care of ourselves. Get up for school. Eat cereal. Get to the bus stop together. Come home, sit at the table and do our homework, watch TV, eat freezer meals cooked in the microwave, go to bed. Shower, rinse, repeat.

  She would come shuffling in with greasy hair, purple circles under her bloodshot eyes, looking somehow thinner than she had been when she left. She'd fall into bed, shaking, crying, throwing up. Then she would get up and be gone again.

  And then in a room in the social services building, we met Auntie May. Our mother's older sister who had washed her hands of her well before we were born. There had been no appearances on holidays, no birthday cards on birthdays. In fact, we hadn't been aware our mother had any family until she came into that room, her low heels clicking on the worn linoleum floors.

  Auntie May was what our mother might have looked like had she lived an easier life, had she not spent all her money on drugs instead of food. Where our mother was rail thin, all sharp angles poking out of skin, Auntie May was softly rounded in the chest, butt, and belly. She dressed in a way the principal in our school did - straight and pressed slacks, a silky shirt underneath a tailored blazer, with oversized jewelry.

  She looked like our mom in the face, though hers was much rounder. And, sure, while our mother's eyes were often sad or bloodshot, there was a warmth there. Auntie May's eyes were cold. The kind of cold that made us all huddle closer together.

  I didn't remember the exact conversation, but the social worker had asked her if she would be willing to take us on.

  Her response?

  I guess I don't have much of a choice, do I?

  From that day, our fates were sealed.

  Free of the responsibility to care for us, whatever self-control our mother had evaporated. From what we knew, she spent the next several years in a cycle of drug use - using, running out of money, tricking herself out to get the next hit, overdosing, swearing she was recovering, then not. By the time I was twelve, she got hauled in for her first prison sentence.

  Disgraceful, Auntie May had hissed after the call had come through. Embarrassment to this family was another of her favorite things to say about our mother. To our faces.

  Auntie May did, on paper, all she was meant to do. She kept a nice roof over our heads. She made sure we ate, showered, d
id our homework, took us to doctor appointments, hired tutors if we were falling behind on work. Because Auntie May had the money for things like that - having spent her life working her way up the ladder in a big energy company, affording her a life full of luxuries but empty of a partner, her own children, friends.

  What she didn't do was genuinely care. Maybe she loved us in her own way. But her love came with strict conditions. Like never embarrassing her by being unkempt, never talking back - especially in front of company-, never having her need to leave work to come pick us up from the principal's office, never doing anything that might in any way reflect poorly on her.

  Not surprisingly, I never heard from or saw her again after I got locked up.

  "Please," Colson said with a snort. "We all know how I have brought shame on this family," he said, putting his left hand - free of a wedding band - on his daughter's little shoulder. "She doesn't send cards anymore."

  "Not that kind of card," Thad said with a smirk. Thad had handled Auntie May's rejection with the ease he handled everything. And maybe he had been more prepared for it, knowing that once he came out, she would want nothing to do with his godless ways. "It was technically from her attorney, I guess. About us getting cut out of the will."

  "Who is she going to leave it all to then?" Colson asked, shaking his head, his gaze going to his daughter, knowing the opportunities he could afford her if he got even a small piece of her estate when she passed.

  "Some scholarship for girls."

  "Well, at least it is going somewhere decent," I figured. Since she hadn't been willing to help me get something more than a public defender for my case, I always figured I was out of her will years back.

  "We don't need it," Colson added. "I am already working on a savings for Jelly."

  A savings that would likely have a lot more in it had he not helped put money into my commissary.

  Guilt flooded my system, stealing my appetite, making me push a plate of previously mouth-watering French toast away so I could rest my forearms on the table, hands cradling my lukewarm coffee cup.

  I would make it up to him, to her, before I went back. I would get a job, sock it all away, put it into a trust for her. Or leave it with Thad with instructions to give it to Colson for Jelena when she needed it.

  "And you know we will all be putting in," Thad agreed as he picked up the ketchup to trace over his golden hash browns.

  "Of course," I agreed. "I owe you guys."

  "Shush," Thad said, waving a hand that made four separate silver rings catch the light. "You're family," he said simply.

  "So what's your plan, Winnie?" Colson asked, checking the time on his phone because Jelly had a dance class he had to take her to after we ate. I tried - and failed - to picture my big, somewhat scary older brother full of a room of leggings and tutus.

  "Find a job," I told him. That was true enough. I couldn't rely on Thad's graciousness forever. And it seemed like it was going to take a bit to go through with my plan since a Facebook search hadn't gotten me any closer to finding him. "Which I am assuming will not be easy."

  While I likely had a better shot than a man in my position, I knew no one saw 'ex-con' on the application and jumped for joy.

  "This is Navesink Bank, boo," Thad said, waving a hand toward the window at his side. "Got different employers here."

  "Right," Colson agreed with an eye roll. "But we don't want her to have to be in that life."

  "I wasn't saying she should start selling..." he trailed off, gaze going to Jelena who was watching him with big eyes. "Tic Tacs," he decided. "But the Tic Tac manufacturers have many legitimate places for her to sidle up to a desk. That's all I'm saying."

  "Like Mallick," Colson said, voice full of insinuation. Like it was Thad's place to try to get me a job at the gym.

  "Exactly. Like any of those yummy Mallick boys, actually. Grassis. That gym that's owned by those... well... those hill people who all fill out their utility pants well."

  "I'll figure it out," I assured them with more confidence than I actually felt.

  I'd never even been on a job interview before. I had nothing to put on a resume. I didn't even have a valid driver's license anymore. Or a bank account.

  "Baby steps," Colson said, seeming to read the growing panic on my face. "It's not gonna happen overnight. Jelly, you about done? We got to get going."

  "Shit, me too. I mean shoot," Thad said, when Jelena giggled. "I have a 90s Hip Hop Dance class to teach."

  "Who even goes to a class like that?" Colson asked as Thad stole the bill he was reaching for, leaving him to toss money on the table for a tip instead.

  "Mostly the younger stay-at-home-mommies. You, dinner later?" he asked, offering me his cheek to kiss.

  "Sure. I'll cook."

  "Got your key?"

  "Yep," I said, fishing it out of my pocket.

  "You want a ride?" they both asked in unison.

  "I think I will walk," I told them as we made our way up to the front where Thad dealt with the bill. "What? No," I objected when Thad slapped some cash into my hand.

  "Shush," he said, slapping my butt hard before heading out the door. "Love you!" he called before disappearing.

  I was still tucking the money into my back pocket when Jelena collided with my thigh, her arms wrapping around my leg as she left what I suspected was a syrup smudge on my jeans. "I stole some of your fat toast," she told me in a hush like it was a big secret.

  "That's okay. I wasn't eating it anyway," I assured her, my hand pressing between the juts of her shoulder blades in a makeshift hug. "Go dance pretty, okay?"

  "Okay!" she declared, turning to make her way to the door.

  "I'll text you," Colson said, having gotten my new cell - a cell I wasn't one-hundred-percent sure how to use fully yet - number when we sat down. "We'll get together again."

  "Soon."

  "Yeah, soon," he agreed, giving me a one-arm hug before taking Jelena's hand and making his way out the door.

  I waited for everyone to leave, watching their cars pull away, before making my way outside, the crisp air making me wish I had worn a jacket. And about five minutes into the walk, I wished even more that I hadn't worn the heels Thad had thrown at me. Another block later, I comforted myself that I would never have to wear them again seeing as I was darn near certain that the insides were now stained with my blood.

  "Hey, baby," a voice called at my side, a shadow emerging from the overhang of a front stoop. "Where you headed?" he asked, coming down the stairs.

  Prison had been a funny thing.

  It exposed you to a violence you likely hadn't been around while free - violence from fellow women. But it also managed to shield you from the violence of men. Or, at least, that was the case in my prison where the male guards weren't - as far as I knew - predators. Just people who had a job to do.

  A sliver of uncertainty slid down my spine, making my shoulders push back, my chin lift, wanting to give the aura of confidence and lack of fear even as my pulse quickened as I saw him step onto the sidewalk.

  "What you too good for me?" he asked, his hand reaching out, closing around my wrist.

  I'd been aware of the noise - a loud car on the street.

  It wasn't until the noise got loud then cut off that I realized it wasn't a car at all.

  "Fuck off," a deep, not unfamiliar voice called from my side. When the hand didn't immediately drop from my wrist, I watched as Virgin - what the hell kind of name was Virgin anyway - pushed down the kickstand with his boot, slowly lifting up off the seat, dragging a leg over it to stand towering over me. Every movement was in half speed, was pointed, almost... threatening. "I won't tell you again," he added in a deeper rumble.

  The hand around my wrist disappeared, snatched back comically fast.

  "Sorry, man. Didn't realize she was one of yours."

  With that, he turned and jogged back up the stairs and into the apartment building.

  "Thank you, but I could have handled it," I as
sured him. "And what did he mean by One of yours? You have several women?"

  Why did I care?

  "Not at the moment," he said with what I could only call a lazy grin. "You want a ride where you're going?"

  "I--" I started, only to be cut off.

  "You're walking like your feet are killin' you."

  "They are," I admitted with a small smile, knowing it was pointless to deny it. In another block, I would probably be saying to hell with the disgustingness of the ground, kicking off my shoes, and making it home barefoot.

  "So you got nothing to lose and everything to gain from taking a ride, yeah?"

  It was hard to argue with that logic.

  "Where were you headed? Is that a hard question?" he added, white teeth peeking out of his lips in an amused smile when I didn't answer.

  "I am supposed to be looking for a job. But... I don't even know where to start."

  "You new in town?" he asked, picking up on my feeling of complete loss.

  "In a way. Sort of. I grew up here. But I left ten years ago. I just got back the day before we met."

  "You need a job this fast?"

  "Yes. I mean, Thaddeus is happy to spot me until I get on my feet again, but I don't want him to have to. But all the restaurants around here have changed."

  "Well, let's see. There's the Mexican and Chinese places, but I doubt they're hiring. More family business kind of things. The pizza place is the same. There's Famiglia and Abby's though."

  "Abby's?"

  "It's a delivery-only place that does comfort food shit. Soup. Mac n' cheese. Open all night. Great if you got the flu or something. Abby is the chef, but the way that place is growing, I figure they could use some help. And Famiglia is an upscale Italian place. Run by the mob. Just so you know. Dunno if that is a deal breaker for you."

  "No." Actually, it sounded like a place worth looking into.

  "Interesting," he said with a smirk I didn't quite know how to interpret. Pleased, maybe. But why? Because I was okay with the mob? Or, more likely, because I wasn't scared of being affiliated with them. An illegal organization. Like the one he belonged to. I mean, not that he wanted to be involved with me. Of course. Everything about the man screamed I'll give you the night of your life, but leave before the sweat dries. Not that I knew much about such things, but any woman knew that vibe when she found it in a man.