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but she was keeping her distance, clutching her mauve robe to her chest. I blinked and tried to sit up.
    I was on her couch in her tiny, toy-strewn living room. There was a fuzzy darkness that came with dawn. Light was taking its time outside her windows.
    “What’s wrong?” I groaned while pinching the bridge of my nose. I’d fallen asleep with my glasses on, ensuring that the frames felt permanently pressed into my skin. We’d gotten to her apartment as night was falling. After scoping out the joint and peering through the blinds every five minutes, watching for her brothers or anything suspicious, I stayed up for as long as I could. It was a second story unit with views of the street, easy pickings. Sophia didn’t seem as worried as I thought she would be. Perhaps her focus was on Ben. He may have been young but he was observant and knew something bad was happening. Sophia did what she could to make sure he was calm and happy before putting him to bed.
    I had watched from the doorway. It was as close as I could get without intruding. My heart pinched as she sang him a nursery song, the same one that she sang to him since he was a baby. When I was around. In those days, she’d pick him up during his midnight cries and whisper it, so soft and so sweet. Sometimes I’d take over, just to give her a break. I could never hit her high notes – I wasn’t much of a singer. But Ben would stop crying, just like that.
    Later, when Sophia started pulling out of the marriage, out of life in general, I sang that song all the time. After a while, it stopped working. He missed his mother. I did too. And no matter how soothing I tried to sound, I couldn’t stop Ben’s tears. Things crumbled beyond repair.
    Ben was a year old when I last saw him, days before the divorce was final. Though I was now looking at the face of an older boy all curled up in his bed, in some ways it was like I never left. I knew him, deep inside, and everything on the surface was slowly catching up.
    He was almost asleep, round face, my beautiful boy, when he opened his eyes and stared right at me from across the room.
    “Mama, who is that?” he asked, as if seeing me for the first time. It felt like I turned a tattoo machine on my heart.
    She brushed back his hair. “No one you need to worry about. Sleep well, my Ben.”
    Any other time, I would have said something. The words, the anger, were fighting their way out of my chest and up my throat. To be brushed aside like that. I was his motherfucking
father
. But now wasn’t the time for my own insecurities, for the tragedy of our family. As long as Sophia and Ben were around her traitorous brothers, they were in danger. I needed to save them first.
    The technicalities could come after.
    And that’s how I ended up falling asleep on the couch. Sophia retired to her room, something I had no interest in being a part of, even if the offer was on the table (which it wasn’t). I lay down on the couch and waited. Waited for people who never came. Waited for the reason to run.
    “You were yelling,” Sophia said, straightening up. She started tugging at her dark hair, something she did when she was nervous. “I thought you were in pain.”
    “It was a dream,” I reassured her.
    “A bad dream. You cried out for that woman. For Ellie.”
    It was weird to hear her say Ellie’s name. She didn’t say it with venom though, just curiosity. I couldn’t blame her. Ellie and I had quite the story and she hadn’t heard any of it. There was no point in explaining, not when the wound was still raw.
    “Did I wake Ben?” I asked, suddenly worried. My eyes darted to the hallway where his door was open. His room was still dark and quiet.
    She shook her head and smiled. It was a sad smile. “He sleeps in. And he sleeps through everything. Just like his father.”
    I watched her face carefully for telltale signs of insincerity. There wasn’t any.
    I carefully smiled back. “I’ve gotten better. I get up at nine