The woman said it like

  it was a group decision to be made.  "At some point we just stop remembering the bad stuff.  And only remember the good."  Holes in the ceiling were part getting ready for recessed lighting and had partly been made by bullets.  Hands trembled the tea and coffee on the little black server tray.  She'd pawned the silver tray. 

  Grown ups focused wild eyes on taking tea.  Smoothing ironed edges of clothing.  Framing self's body wearing dress shoes, dangling a bracelet on a precise spot of the wrist, seeing another person.  One elderly lady hummed.  Words that might have formed a conversation jumbled into an abstract, unseen but with weight.

  Not much older than barely a teenager, the girl was dressed in a long black skirt, a prim white shirt, and black cardigan.  Before fumbling with a sleeve to bare a key on bakery string the girl put her bubble yum only three bites chewed behind her ear.  She crossed herself in the way of the crucifix.  Slipped the key into the lock and opened the door and shimmied the key back up her arm as she relocked the closed door from inside.  Her hands smoothed the skirt before she opened her eyes and stood as if in the wings of a stage.

  If the grown ups in the room noticed her, no one acknowledged.  The girl went to the refridgerator and using finger as fork, ate two scoops of cottage cheese.  She looked in the cupboard and counted the glassware.  Opened a drawer and forced through a pained look at the plastic silverware.  Her face smoothed strong into resolution and she asked loudly, "Gamah.  Why did I see your tea tray at Yoey Vandersmoot's house?" 

  "Maybe I loaned it to them?" 

  "Like maybe the Titanic never sank?" 

  "I don't know from history.  How was your day?" 

  Instead of answering the girl crossed the room and told her relation to close her eyes.  She took the woman's hands in her own and put them on her hips and then turned in place so the woman could feel the hard object stuffed between her back and the skirt.  The woman drew her hands back to herself.  "I don't want this," the woman said quietly but sternly.  "Put it back." The girl crossed her arms.  "Where you found it.  Put. It. Back." 

  "That will happen tomorrow not this late." The girl bent and kissed the woman's cheek.  The woman ordered, "Sleep."

  Outside, the moon waxing gibbous, came from behind a cloud.  An Italian family's teenage boy made to take up his position beneath the girl's window but this night a tall, skinny, balding man grabbed the teen by the back of his clothing like he weighed no more than a briefcase.  And carried him as such to a cleared space in the hedges.  He set him upright on his feet and asked, "What gives Romeo?" 

  "She is the one.  MY one.  The ONE for me." 

  "Not sure she feels the same." 

  Silence. 

  "And, even if she does, she, ah, oy, she's promised to another." 

  "Noooo." 

  "Yes." 

  "That can't be." 

  "Yes.  It can.  And it is." 

  "No." 

  "Yes.  Capiche?" 

  "A cigarette?  No.  But thanks." 

  A neighbor walking a dog close by stopped the talking. Then the teen asked, "To who?" 

  The skinny man gave no answer as he was rubbing a spot on his stomach.  "Promised?" The teen asked. 

  "Not to a Vandersmoot," the man said through a wince. 

  "But I'm," a car drove by and a mama called out a child's name, two, four times before the sounds receeded.  The car lights had shown the man's bloody hand.  The teen silently urged the man to sit and moved the man's knees into a bent position.  "Whoever you are, you need help." 

  The man waved his words away with the hand not clutching his stomach.  "I will be ahright.  You.  Leave here." The teen pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket with his wallet.  He gave the man whatever bills were in the wallet by pressing the money and the hankie onto the man's chest.  Then he walked onto the street.

  As it was there was no regular tomorrow.  The tea tray was placed on the floor beside the door as the girl slipped out.  She'd left the key on the string hanging on the knob of a bedside lamp.  She'd neatly folded her CandyStripe uniform and tucked it in between her back and the skirt. 

  "Where are you going?" The skinny man stepped into the yellow lighting of a streetlamp and asked the back of the girl.  She kept walking towards the town.  Once when she glanced back to cross the street, the man quickly stepped into shadow.  She pretended not to see him and kept walking.  Past the closed shops.  Past the hulking quiet library.  Through an alleyway that shaved off a Main Street corner of the walk.  And up a weedy old walkway to the hospital.  The man followed but then sat on a bench to catch his breath.  Sleep overtook the man and an orderly was sent outside in the dawn's early light to see about a man with a bloody hand.