Sold to the Bratva King novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: Two Doors Down

The mother met me on the sidewalk in front of the triple-decker.

She was in her forties, in a nurse's scrub top under a winter coat.

She held her car keys so hard they'd cut her palm.

"Third floor," she said. "I can't go back up."

"You don't have to."

I went up alone with my kit, my respirator and my Tyvek suit.

Four days does terrible things to a small apartment with the heat on.

I opened the windows first. I let the cold November air pour through.

I worked from the far wall toward the door, so I'd never step where I'd already cleaned.

The mattress went into red bags.

The section of floor under it came up with a pry bar, and I sealed the subfloor so nothing would come back through in the summer.

A Bruins hat. A row of library books, two of them overdue.

On the fridge, held up by a magnet shaped like a lobster, there was a crayon drawing.

A stick boy and a stick woman in a nurse's cap, holding hands.

MOM AND ME, it said, in a little kid's backwards letters.

I took it down, slid it into a clean plastic sleeve, and set it aside.

It took me nine hours.

When I came down, the mother was still standing on the sidewalk.

She hadn't sat in her car. She'd waited the whole time.

"It's done," I said. "You can go up whenever you want. It'll just be his apartment now."

I gave her the drawing.

She looked at it. Then she folded over, right there on O Street, and I caught her.

I'd never held anyone who was crying before. I'd only ever been the one crying, and nobody held me.

So I did what I'd wanted someone to do.

I didn't say anything. I just held on.

"How much," she said finally, into my shoulder. "How much do I owe you."

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