Inexplicably, sadness washes over me. I do know: parents die. My mom’s death threw a grenade in my life and I’ve never been the same since.
I sip my coffee and lift my eyes to find him staring at me, his expression serious. ‘What about you, Avery?’
I wait for him to continue with an impassive expression on my face but I feel the danger of what he’s asking, the territory we’re nudging closer to. ‘Your mom passed away when you were fourteen?’
Such a gentle way to describe what happened to her. I look beyond him, unable to hold his inquisitive, intelligent gaze. ‘Yes.’ Then, after a pause, ‘How did you know that?’
He doesn’t blink. ‘The guy that found you—a detective—had a small amount of information. It included that.’
My spine straightens. I’m not famous—not by any stretch of the imagination—but Moatsy’s rapid ascent into the tech bubble has made me somewhat well-known. At least within certain groups. But, for God’s sake, I pioneered software that could protect data. The idea of being spied on by someone makes my skin crawl.
‘You hate that.’
‘Yes.’
His laugh is soft, gentle, commiserating. ‘Fair enough. That makes sense.’
I guess he probably does understand where I’m coming from. Someone like him would no doubt get a bit of press attention. I think about that—about googling him to check—and immediately cut that idea off at the knees. That’s not what I do. That’s not what this is. What happened to ‘I don’t want to know anything about the guys I fuck’?
Nonetheless, every minute spent with him sparks a raft of questions in my mind, and I’m natural answer-seeker.
‘What happened, after she died?’
I swallow. ‘That wasn’t in the detective’s notes?’
His expression shifts. ‘“Moved into foster care” doesn’t seem like it really encompasses the truth of your experience.’
I grimace. ‘No.’
‘There wasn’t anyone who could take you in? An aunt? Grandparent?’
‘No. Mom was alone, except for me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I nod slowly.
‘I had a lot of autonomy with Mom. I’d been alone a lot and grown up fast. She trusted me. I was, in hindsight, given an extraordinary amount of freedom for a kid my age. But I didn’t take advantage of that. I was a good teenager.’
He doesn’t say anything but his eyes silently will me to keep going.
‘When she died, it was like—the world no longer made any kind of sense.’
I search for a better way to explain, but draw a blank.
‘Was she sick?’
‘No. She was broke and working just about around the clock to make ends meet.’ I bite down on my lip, the awful truth of it all hitting me like a ton of bricks. ‘I wanted to do a summer school in programming.’ I clear my throat. ‘I’d done some free lessons at the Y and th
e teacher had suggested it—I guess I had an aptitude. But there was no way we could have afforded it. I knew that but I still asked Mom if I could go, because I really wanted... I wanted to do it.’ I close my eyes for a second, needing to catch my breath. ‘After she died, I found the application forms. She’d taken on extra shifts at the bodega so she could get me there.’
His eyes are watchful; I can’t quite meet them. The past is pulling at me, heavy and inescapable.
I sip my coffee; it’s almost finished. ‘She was working when two guys came in and tried to rob the store. She fought them. They stabbed her.’ I close my eyes, sucking in a deep breath, trying to grab hold of my strength, to remember it happened a long time ago, but all I can think about as I sit across the table from Barrett Byron-Moore is that it was such a futile, pointless death.
‘Avery, I can’t—I’m so sorry.’
I blink, nod, don’t look at him. I finish my coffee and stand up a little jerkily, moving to the kitchen, needing mental space and physical space too. I put a new pod in the machine and place my cup beneath the spout.