Free Snowflakes & Fire Escapes by J. M. Darhower Page A

thirty-one.”
    I nod, tinkering with the pen, scratching marks into the table until Holden reaches his breaking point. He covers my hand with his own, prying the pen from my grip.
    “The program works, Gracie,” he says, pocketing the pen before I can take it back. “You just have to learn to work with it.”
    Standing, Holden starts gathering his things, and I watch as he pulls himself together to leave. The tie goes on, his badged slipped around his neck, before he puts on his holster to conceal his gun beneath his coat.
    I know he’s still standing in front of me, but I suddenly feel utterly alone.
    “I have some other business to attend to, so it’ll be a while before I make another scheduled visit,” he says. “It’ll probably be closer to Christmas.”
    Christmas.
    It’s only three weeks, but it feels so far away.
    He’s never stayed gone so long before.
    “Call me if you need me,” he says, pulling out an envelope and dropping it on the table. “Here’s your stipend for the month.”
    I grab the envelope, pulling it into my lap, and skim through the cash as he finishes getting ready. There’s fifteen hundred dollars in it. My father used to leave me that much when he left for a weekend.
    Holden strolls around the table to where I’m sitting on his way to the door, placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing. “Happy Birthday, Gracie. Here’s to many more …”
    ***
    The sound of tapping glass was so faint I felt like it had to be a figment of my imagination, a phantom echo from somewhere deep down in my soul. My head turned, slowly, the sense of disappointment already brewing in my gut, preparing for the let down.
    It had been two weeks.
    Two weeks since Cody scurried out that window only to get caught on the way down. He hadn’t been hanging around the neighborhood with his friends. He didn’t show up at the diner while I was having breakfast. He certainly hadn’t come here .
    I expected to see nothing, but my eyes caught a sliver of green in the moonlight. He was there, crouched on the fire escape, peering in the window at me. His face was cast in shadows from the darkness, but I could make out bruising on his face, the marks moving down his jawline, toward a freshly busted lip that lined up almost perfectly with the scar that runs down his chin.
    A scar his father caused the first time he hurt him, back when we were just little kids. ‘He’s going to be a man someday,’ Cormac used to say. ‘Might as well start treating him like one.’ By treating, he’d meant beating. And by a man, he meant one of his guys that run the streets. Cody was never a son to him. Cody was just flesh and blood … the pieces that make up a person. Cormac never cared what else existed inside of the boy.
    He never cared Cody wanted more than his neighborhood.
    But looking at Cody at that moment, I knew the neighborhood had finally gotten its claws into him. There wouldn’t be any secret smiles from him this time. No more whispered promises of ‘soon’.
    Standing up, I gave a look around the quiet apartment out of pure instinct before walking over to the window and shoving it open, not caring about the noise it made. There was nobody there with me. I pushed it open as far as it would go, a blast of cold air hitting me right away. Two weeks were all it took for the warmth to move out and the cold to seep in, like his absence made more than just me mourn. The temperature finally dipped below freezing, the air damp and sky covered in clouds. I can tell the metal railing is slick, the steps icy.
    I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself right away. I was wearing his hoodie. He never came back for it. I started to climb out to join him but his hands grasped my arms, stopping me before I could come through the window.
    “It’s too cold,” he said. “Don’t come out here. You’ll freeze.”
    “Do you … ?” I paused. “Do you want to come in?”
    He didn’t answer that question.
    He didn’t have