“I’m Finn,” he said to her at last.
The girl looked over at him. She hadn’t spoken since she’d walked out of Devon ’s apartment, an oversized military duffel slung over her back and a look of defiance on her face. She’d marched past Finn straight to his little MG, thrown her bag in the back, climbed in, and slammed the car door, staring forward without asking any questions.
Finn had turned on the stoop and started to follow, then paused and looked back at the woman standing in the doorway.
“Don’t worry,” the woman said, reading his mind. “I’m on a six o’clock train, and there ain’t a goddamned thing in the fuckin’ place worth stealing.”
Finn thought about it for a moment and then continued on, sliding into the driver’s seat beside the young girl.
The woman cracked the screen door a little and leaned out over the stoop. “You give that bastard a message for me!” she yelled. “Tell him not to call me again. Ever! Tell him he can go to hell. Tell him that from Shelly!”
Finn put his hand up and gave her a grim wave, then threw the car into gear and pulled out.
The traffic was heavy as he guided the car through Southie and into downtown Boston, headed back to his apartment in Charlestown. It had taken ten minutes for him to muster the courage to say anything to the girl in the passenger seat next to him, and then all he could think to do was introduce himself. He could feel her staring at him, saying nothing in reply, and it made him shift uncomfortably in his seat. His agony was made whole by the fact that he couldn’t remember whether Devon had told him the girl’s name. If he had, Finn couldn’t remember what it was.
She continued to stare at him in silence.
“And you are…?” he prodded at last, striving unsuccessfully to infuse his voice with some small amount of humor.
After a moment she looked forward through the windshield again. “Fucked, by the look of things,” she answered.
Finn winced at her language and the venom in her voice. “No, I meant your name,” he said.
“I know what you meant.” She lapsed into silence again.
“I know this is hard,” Finn said. “It’s only for a few days, though. Until your father gets…” He wasn’t sure how to continue. “Until he gets back. Did she explain it to you?”
“Shelly? Yeah. Devon ’s in jail. You’re his lawyer. I’m fucked.”
He took his eyes off the road for long enough to look at her. Devon had said she was fourteen, but she was small and slight for her age. Her bangs were cropped across her forehead and she wore a stack of cheap metal bracelets around her wrist that jangled as the car crawled over bumps in the road. She looked like a normal kid, but she had the speech patterns and attitude of someone much older.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Basically. Except for the fucked part. Like I said, it’s only for a few days.”
“What’s he in for?”
Finn glanced at her. “Robbery.”
“No shit, Sherlock, that’s what he does. What’d he steal?”
“Clothes.” He didn’t mention the panties. He considered telling her not to swear, but figured it wasn’t his responsibility.
“Clothes?” she asked. “What, is he down to shoplifting? Is that even a felony?”
“They were really expensive clothes,” Finn replied.
“So definitely in felony territory,” she deduced. It occurred to Finn that no fourteen-year-old should be so well schooled in the specifics of criminal practice. “Well then, you must be a pretty good lawyer if you think you’re going to get him out of it. He’s been in before, so it’s not like a judge is gonna feel sorry for him. If you’re doing anything other than collecting a fee, you must be a real genius.” It was also remarkable how well she had mastered the subtleties of sarcasm at such a young age.
“Why don’t you let me worry about that,” Finn said. “That’s my job.” Candidly, he agreed with her legal assessment, but he didn’t mention that to her. “In any case, he’ll be out on bail by Wednesday, Thursday latest, and the time will go faster if I know your name.”
She twirled a finger angrily in her hair. “Sally,” she said.
“Sally,” he repeated. “Really? Sally Malley?”
“What can I say? My mom has a quirky sense of humor.”
“That’s a good thing, I guess.”
“And a wicked bad crack habit.”
He let that sink in for a moment, and once it had he realized there was nowhere to go with it. “It’s a good name,” he said instead. “Sally Malley.” He tried saying it with some amount of reverence, but the damage was done. She stayed silent. “Say, I know a good ice cream place,” he said after a moment. “You want to grab some ice cream on the way back to my apartment?”
“So, I’m guessing you don’t have any kids of your own, Finn?”
He could feel his teeth grinding. “It shows?”
“Only when you talk.”
“I’m still young,” he said. “Maybe someday.”
“I wouldn’t bother. Kids are nothing but a hassle. I remember the day my mother dropped me with Devon. The look on his face was priceless. He didn’t even know I existed before that moment.”
“That must have been strange.”
“Let’s just say that ‘surprised’ doesn’t begin to describe it. That was a year ago, and we haven’t seen my mother since. Devon does the best he can, but he’s not exactly cut out for the father scene.”
“Seriously, it’s really good ice cream,” Finn said after a moment. He threw a look at her and thought he could detect a smile tug for just a moment at the corner of her mouth. Then it was gone.
“Okay,” she said. “Ice cream would be okay. But it better be good goddamned ice cream.”
“Trust me.”
She turned her head to look out the passenger window, away from Finn. “Right. Trust you,” she said quietly. Finn could tell she’d heard those words before.
It was a nice house, at least. Sally tossed her duffel onto the bed in the guest room. Much better than the dives and flophouses where she’d often found herself in the past when her mother was bingeing. Still, no matter how nice the surroundings, she was fending for herself again, and that meant she had to keep her guard up. If life had taught her anything it was that you had to look after yourself, because no one else would.
She reached out and put her hand on the bottom of the duffel bag, feeling around for the familiar lump. She hadn’t taken the stuffed bear out of the bag in over a year; she was too old for stuffed animals. It was a gift from her mother on her fifth birthday, though-one of the few birthdays her mother had remembered-and she couldn’t bring herself to throw it out. She kept it buried at the bottom of her bag, rubbing it through the canvas only when she really needed to, but never taking it out to be seen. It seemed a reasonable compromise. She lived her life based on suspicion and compromise.
“You okay in there?”
The voice belonged to Devon ’s lawyer-her benefactor, for the moment. He seemed like a decent sort, at least on first impression. But she knew that first impressions could be misleading. She’d been around men enough to know to be careful. She was small for her age; that played to her advantage. She dressed in loose T-shirts and baggy pants. Better not to draw attention; attention could be dangerous. In a just and reasonable world, her youth alone would have been sufficient protection from unwanted advances, but she had learned that the world was neither just nor reasonable.
She’d been ten the first time one of her mother’s “boyfriends” tried something. He and her mother had been out for most of the night and her mother had passed out cold upon their return to the apartment. Frustrated, angry, and high, he had come into Sally’s room and stood over her bed. She’d been petrified as she lay there, pretending to be asleep, praying that he would go away. He hadn’t, though. She heard him pulling his clothes off. Shirt first; then pants; finally his underwear. He stood there a few moments longer, staring at her, before he pulled up the blanket and climbed into bed with her. She could smell the booze on his breath and oozing from his pores as he inched toward her. When he put out his hand and pulled her toward him, she hadn’t fought. She rolled over toward him and opened her eyes. His pupils were wide and glassy, and a serpentine smile crept across his face as he looked at her. Then he reached for her again and she closed her eyes and kicked out with all the force she could muster, her shin driving home between his legs.