Satin and Secrets

The girl was sitting on the curb outside the 7-Eleven with her thumb out like she expected somebody to stop for her at nine at night on a road where nobody stopped for anybody. I noticed her because I always notice the ones with nothing. Comes from growing up with nothing, I guess. You learn to spot your own.

I pulled in for a six-pack and a bag of ice. She watched my truck the whole way, tracking it like a dog tracks a car that might have food in it. I got out. She didn't say anything. Just sat there with her backpack between her knees and her thumb still half-raised, like she'd forgotten to put it down.

"You waiting on somebody?" I asked.

"No."

"You got a ride coming?"

"No."

I stood there a minute. The ice machine hummed against the wall. Somewhere behind the store a semitruck geared down on the highway, that long groan of metal and air brakes.

"You got a place to sleep tonight?"

She looked at me then. Eighteen, maybe. Could've been younger. Dark hair pulled back, a hoodie too heavy for the weather, jeans with a tear in the knee that wasn't fashion. Her face had that washed-out look you get after a couple days of not eating right. Not scared, though. That's what got me. She wasn't scared of me. She was just tired.

"I'm figuring it out," she said.

I bought my ice and my beer. I stood in the cold of the store a minute longer than I needed to, staring at the racks of candy like they had answers. Then I went back out.

"I got a spare room," I said. "My wife's gone. Left last year. It's just me and the house and the room sits empty. You can stay a few days. Get your feet under you. No charge, no strings."

She studied me. I let her. If I was her I'd have studied me too.

"Why?" she said.

"Because I'd want somebody to do it for my daughter if I had one."

That wasn't the whole truth but it was true enough.

Her name was Wren. She told me in the truck, ten minutes in, after I'd already decided I wasn't going to ask. Wren like the bird. She didn't offer a last name and I didn't ask for one. She held the ice bag on her lap and watched the dark fields go by out the window and didn't say anything else until we pulled into the driveway.

The house is a two-bedroom ranch I bought with my ex-wife the year we got married. Pale yellow siding, a porch that leans a little on the left side, a yard I mow every other Saturday whether it needs it or not. I unlocked the door and stepped aside so she could go in first. She stood in the entryway a long time, looking at the living room. The couch. The TV. The bookshelf with the same paperbacks on it that had been there for six years.

"It's quiet," she said.

"It is."

She slept that first night on the couch, wouldn't take the bed. I didn't push. Some people need to earn a thing before they'll let themselves have it. I made her eggs in the morning. She ate them standing up at the counter, fast, like she thought I might change my mind and take the plate away.

The spare room is down the hall past the bathroom. I hadn't opened the closet in there in a year. Not since Dana left. I opened it that second morning while Wren was in the shower, and there they were, hanging in a row like they'd been waiting. The satin dress, the pale green one, the one she wore to her sister's wedding. The crop top she bought on a trip we took to the coast. The shorts she slept in all summer. Her gym clothes, folded on the shelf, still smelling faintly of her shampoo because I'd never washed them. I stood in front of that closet and I couldn't make myself take them down. Couldn't make myself leave them up either.

So I closed the door and went to work.

I install floors. Tile, mostly. Sometimes hardwood. It's a trade you learn with your hands and your back and it doesn't ask you to think too much, which is why I like it. I was on a job in the north end of town, a kitchen remodel for a couple who couldn't agree on grout color and told me about it for six hours straight. I thought about Wren the whole time. Whether she'd still be there when I got home. Whether she'd eaten. Whether she'd gone through the drawers.

She was there. She'd done the dishes. She'd folded the blanket she used on the couch and set it on the arm, neat as a hotel maid. She was sitting on the porch when I pulled in, watching the street.

"You don't have to do that," I said, getting out of the truck. "The dishes."

"I know."

"You're a guest."

"I don't like being a guest."

I sat down on the step below her. The evening was coming on soft and orange. Somebody two houses down was grilling something and the smell of it made my stomach turn over.

"How long you been on your own?" I asked.

She thought about it. "Awhile."

"Where from?"

"Doesn't matter."

I nodded. Fair enough. I'd have said the same at her age. Hell, I'd have said the same last year.

"I'm gonna be straight with you," I said. "I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know if this is a good idea or a stupid one. But the room's yours as long as you need it. That's all I got."

She looked at me sideways, and for a second she looked older than eighteen. Older than me, maybe.

"Okay," she said.

And that was it. That was the whole conversation. She went inside and I stayed on the step until the light went purple and the grill smell faded and the streetlights came on one by one down the block, and I sat there thinking about a closet full of satin I couldn't open and a girl in my house I didn't know and the fact that for the first time in a year the house didn't feel like it was holding its breath.

Which should've been a good thing.

It wasn't.