FIFTEEN
Mila
I thinkI drew too much attention to myself with the nail gun.
Having one in my hand brought back so many pleasant memories.
While working all morning, I remembered how Khaz had shown me how to use one.
Shortly after my parents died and Emil moved me into the Whitman compound, I started asking about my tree house.
Emil had plied me with anything a kid might desire: my own pony, a pool slide, and one of those miniature electric cars for kids. I didn’t want any of that. I wanted my tree house. Dad had built it for me when I was five years old, and I loved going up there to be alone and think.
I told Emil, through my bodyguard, that I wouldn’t speak to him until I had my tree house. Not a new tree house, the same tree house my daddy built me.
Well, that must have rubbed Emil the wrong way because he wanted nothing to do with it. But then, somebody told somebody, and so on, and the next thing I knew, Khaz showed up with my busted-up tree house in pieces in the back of a moving truck.
That was the first time we’d met. At the time, I didn’t know that my father had begged him to help move our family out of New Jersey, with promises to pay him back when he got back on his feet. I didn’t know who Khaz was, but we came close to escaping together as a family.
I didn’t know a lot of things that I know now. I realized years later that Khaz was the man you hired to make people disappear when things got too hot. Because Khaz never showed his face when he was hired to do a job, neither Emil nor his guards or lieutenants knew what he looked like.
So when he’d shown up at the front gate, no one suspected it was him.
“Hi,” he’d said, squatting down, so we were eye level and holding out his hand. “My name’s Khaz. I heard you needed some help.”
I had taken to him immediately. All these mobbed-up men on the periphery of my life had insisted I call them “uncle,” but Khaz didn’t. He talked to me like a grown-up.
Building that deck this morning with Ozzie’s family made me feel closer to Khaz. It reminded me of that day when he’d shown up to help me. I remembered how he’d shown me how to use that nail gun, measure, mark for nails, and cut.
Khaz had pretended to be a handyman-contractor all those years, and Emil let me help him. He built their trust until the day I told him secretly that I was out for revenge against Emil for what he’d done to my parents.
“Listen,” he said one day. “Don’t say another word. I’m going to get you out.”
“How?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m taking care of it.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“Don’t worry about the how. Just leave it to me. That’s all I can say.”
I’d taken all day and had been up all night thinking about what he’d said to me.
The next time I saw him when he’d shown up to help add a deck onto the pool, I waited until no one was watching, and I said, “Someday, I’m going to kill him for what he did to my mom and dad.”
Khaz had paused his hammering but didn’t look up at me. I waited for a response that never came. I waited for him to tell me not to be silly. Not to do anything rash. Or to say that little girls shouldn’t be thinking thoughts of revenge.
But he’d said nothing.
He kept his head down and resumed the work.
I didn’t need validation, but his silence was all I needed to proceed with my plan.