The man standing on the porch was maybe 26, tall, thin in the way people get when they’ve missed too many meals. His jacket was too big for him. His shoes had a split along the left toe, but his eyes, steady, quiet, not desperate, didn’t match the rest of him.
His name was Corey.
He’d been homeless for almost 3 years.
Renee looked at him the way she looked at bugs she found in the kitchen.
“You’re young,” she said. “Why aren’t you working?”
“I’m looking, ma’am. Hard to find something when you don’t have an address.”
Renee made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. Then she called over her shoulder, “Jade, come here.”
Jade came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel. She looked at the man on the porch. He looked back at her. Neither of them said anything.
“Pour him some water,” Renee said.
Jade went and got a glass. She brought it out and handed it to him. He took it carefully with both hands like it was something fragile.
“Thank you,” he said.
Not to Renee.
To Jade.
Jade nodded and started to step back inside.
And then Renee said it, casually, like she was deciding what to order for lunch.
“Take her.”
Corey blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“Her.” Renee pointed at Jade. “Take her with you. She’s yours. Consider it charity.”
The dish towel fell out of Jade’s hand.
She turned to look at Renee and waited for the part where she said she was joking.
Renee was not joking.
“She’s 21. She eats my food. She uses my water. I’ve been carrying her for 4 years and I’m done.” Renee’s voice was completely flat. “You want something from this house? Take her.”
“I’m not. I can’t,” Corey said, shaking his head. “I don’t even have a place to sleep.”
“Not my problem,” Renee said.
She looked at Jade, and Jade saw it then.
Not anger. Not guilt. Not even discomfort.
Nothing.
4 years of nothing finally showing its real face.
Jade walked back to her room. She stood in the doorway for a moment and looked at it. The narrow bed, the folded quilt her real mother had made, the stack of library books on the floor, the framed photo of her father on the nightstand.
She picked up the photo.
She set it back down.
Then she pulled her backpack out from under the bed and started packing.
3 shirts, 1 pair of jeans, her college folder, the quilt. She shoved it in even though it barely fit. And 1 book, just 1.
The Alchemist.
Her mother had read it to her before she got sick.
She zipped the bag. She walked out.
Corey was still on the porch, standing there like he wasn’t sure if this was real.
Jade stepped past him down the 2 porch steps and started walking toward the end of the driveway.
He followed.
Behind them, Renee closed the door.
They heard the lock click.
Neither of them spoke for the first 10 minutes. They walked side by side down Clover Ridge Lane, past the identical houses with their identical lawns, until the neighborhood thinned out and the sidewalk turned uneven.
Finally, Corey said, “You didn’t have to come.”
“I know.”
“You could go back. Tell them what she did. Someone would help you.”
Jade looked at the cracked sidewalk under her feet.
“She’s been doing it for 4 years,” she said quietly. “Nobody helped me then.”
Corey didn’t have an answer for that.
They kept walking.
