Chapter Text
Chloe clutched her phone, silent, waiting for three words to appear on its screen in perfect Standard American English. She hardly dared breathe for fear of waking up the man sleeping beside her, his back turned. Was he even asleep or just faking it, she wondered, knuckles white around her screen until it lit up with, "We are here." Safe. Chloe was safe. She exhaled, set her phone on the nightstand without making a noise, and got out of his bed.
As quickly as she dared, Chloe fished around in the dark for her clothes, stumbling around the unfamiliar bits of carpet--his bed took up so much of the small room--to grab everything.
The bedroom door opened a crack, shedding just enough light in the room for Chloe to find everything of hers, stuff it in her backpack, and dash out of the room. She clutched her backpack to her chest and looked up at her mom who murmured, "get dressed before we go and I'll make sure he doesn't move."
Chest tight, Chloe nodded and slipped into the bathroom a few feet away from the man's room. Mom was here. Mom was watching him. Mom was here and everything was going to be ok. Chloe put on her clothes, focusing on each motion. Leg up, down, balance, pull clothes up, on. Latch the bra clasps, arms under the bra straps and up, arms through shirt sleeves, pull shirt down. Done. Everything extraneous went back into her pack. She avoided her reflection in the mirror, turned the bathroom light off, and slipped out, closing the door softly behind her.
"You forgot this," her mom said softly, handing Chloe's phone out to her, brow creased so deeply Chloe wondered if she could draw the Grand Canyon in its grooves. She took her phone and gave her mom a tight smile before heading downstairs. She turned her head, his door hidden but the feeling of the growing distance between Chloe and his room easing the fear in her chest step by step, opening the dam she'd put up weeks ago when this all started to stop herself from crying. That grew harder when she felt her mom's hand on her shoulder as they walked down the brown carpeted stairs and outside.
The moment the door closed behind them, Dorothy wrapped her arms around Chloe, holding her tightly until a soft honk went off behind them, causing both of them to jump.
Chloe's mom took her hand just as tightly as her hug and pulled Chloe into the back of the familiar brown car with memories of younger years being chauffered everywhere embedded into the faux leather seats. Her grandmother turned around from the driver's seat and gave her a somber stare, the silver rims of her glasses glinting in the lamplight from the street light five feet from the car. "Want me to punch him?"
"Ma!" Chloe's mom protested, her response pavlovian after years of protesting Grandma Sophia's ideas. She looked at Chloe, eyes just as somber and sharp as Grandma Sophia's. "Do you?"
Chloe's answer stuck in her throat.
"We can all do it," her Grandma Sophia added.
A laugh, dry and cracking, burst out of Chloe. She shook her head and Grandma Sophia faced the front, nudging their car into drive and turning on the car's new ultra bright brights.
Dorothy drew her close. Exhaustion set in, heavy enough to drag Chloe's head into her mother's lap. Mom was here. Mom was with her. She was safe now.
Hesitantly at first, then deliberately gently, her mom stroked the hair out of Chloe's eyes, braided it, and then rubbed Chloe's back while Chloe curled around her.
"What's that song you used to sing me, Ma?" Her mom asked softly, her hands never stopping, a soothing, grounding warmth keeping Chloe with them instead of stuck in his room and glued to his bed.
"'Ninna Nanna.' But you're not singing it, I sing better Italian than you do. It's my song."
Chloe's mom snorted but was otherwise quiet. Grandma Sophia's wavering, wobbly voice filled the car and muffled Chloe's sobbing that had been stuffed inside her like a bad sinus infection. They heaved out of her now, just quiet enough that they didn't interrupt Grandma Sophia's singing.
"I've got you," her mom whispered into Chloe's hair. "I've got you and you're going to be ok."
Chloe curled around her mom who didn't once stop stroking her back. Her mom was here. She was going to be ok.