Chapter Text
The entire swanky uptown apartment smells of soured vomit.
“What a mess,” I mutter.
Chief of Police McKenna Hall startles. Then she catches sight of me crouched in the window, and I remember how much she hates being snuck up on. “It’s astute observations like that that make me so glad I called you.”
“What are you doing here personally?” I say, slipping into the room and keeping to the shadows outside the clamped-up work lights the forensics team set up. “Don’t you have minions for this?”
Hall ignores that. I guess the brand new Chief of the most corrupt department in the country is entitled to a little micromanagement.
“Richard Belfort, fifty-nine,” she says, sliding her hands in her pockets and pacing a circle around the contorted body on the floor. His tailored suit is covered in his own waste, and his arms and legs are locked at horrible, crabbed angles. “Venture capitalist and philanthropist. His wife found him a few hours ago.”
One of the dining room chairs has been overturned, and at its empty place stands a glass of red wine all by its lonesome. “Poison.”
Hall nods. “It will go to the lab, but the EMTs say it’s most likely strychnine.”
In my ear, Watchtower makes a noise of distaste. “Not a nice way to go at all. You die of exhaustion and oxygen deprivation from the convulsions, and that can take hours.”
I look at Belfort’s bared, gritted teeth, scrunched-shut eyes, and arched back. “I thought that went out of style decades ago.”
“No one who’s trying to be sneaky kills with such a well-known poison anymore,” Hall say, “but our murderer wanted to make a statement.” She gestures to the trendy paint job on the far wall, where a knife has carved out DEUT 19:20.
“Deuteronomy. That one’s the law, right?”
“You sound unsure,” Mom mutters in my ear. “How are you not sure? Oh God, I’m the worst Jewish mother ever.”
I close my eyes and think as loudly as I can: Trying to work here, Mom.
“Sorry,” she says, businesslike again. “The rest of the people will hear of this and be - ”
“The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid,” Hall says at the same time, reading from her glassbook, “and never again will such an evil thing be done among you.”
I sigh. “Because what is a revenge kill without some out-of-context Scripture?”
“What indeed,” Hall mutters.
I stand over Belfort with my back to the work light, and the shadow of the arrows in my quiver falls across his agonized face. “What did he do that was so evil?”
“He had ties to dozens of organizations a psycho could target him for,” Hall says, dragging up a list on her glassbook and pulling the holograph off the surface to show me. “Environmental groups hate his oil industry connections. Pro-life groups hate the big checks he writes to Planned Parenthood. He donated millions to Congressional candidates in the last election, one of whom was involved in that tissue trafficking scandal. It will take some narrowing down.”
“You don’t need my help with that.” Mom can dig deeper and faster than the people who need warrants, but the end result is going to be the same. “Admit it, you just wanted to see me.”
She gives me the tolerant smile people give precocious children. “I have a bad feeling about this one. I figured I should fight weird with weird.” Hall holds out her glassbook, and I tap my phone to it to transfer the casefile securely. Then she looks down at my arm. “You’re bleeding.”
Damn it, the knife wound soaked through the bandage again, and it’s running down my sleeve. “See you when I’ve got something, Chief.”
She waves me off, and I slip out the way I came.
One of the advantages of Abigail knowing the big green secret is how much easier it is to bring work home with us. Mom was Watchtowering from her home office, and after a shower and change and a temporary bandage, I head home so she can take care of the gash on the underside of my right forearm. Even if stitching myself up did not make me want to puke, I can’t do it left-handed.
I walk into her study holding up my bloody arm and saying, “Hey, Mom, can you sew me back together?”
Curled up on the loveseat with a notebook and highlighter, my sister looks up wide-eyed.
Shit. “Hey, Abby.”
“What happened?” she says, sitting up. Mom gets up behind her desk and pulls down a suture kit from the cabinet full of med supplies.
“I had a disagreement with a carjacker. It’s ok, it’s nothing serious.” I sink into the chair in front of Mom’s desk and lay my arm out for her.
“So we're going to start with why our killer was so judgy about his victim?” Mom says as she swabs the area with alcohol. “Or her victim. I can’t remember if it’s the majority of poisoners who are female or the majority of female murderers who use poison, but I know it’s a thing.”
“I guess. I’ve never worked a creepy ritualistic murder before. It’s a little out of the Arrow’s wheelhouse, isn’t it?”
“Didn’t Dad catch the Dollmaker?” Abby says.
Mom shudders in recognition, but I have no idea what she’s talking about. Within a few months of learning the truth about the family business, Abby knew more about the history of Team Arrow than I did. She’d reference some long-ago argument Dig and Lyla had over Floyd Lawton or some zany scheme that ended with Mom kidnapped, and I’d stare at her blankly.
“I thought they told you all this.”
They told me what I needed to know. They tell her what they need someone to hear. I don’t think they do it on purpose. She’ll just ask you these questions with her wide blue eyes and her cute nose, and you melt into a puddle of emotional vomit and ugly confessions.
It was through Abby, for example, that I found out what Aunt Thea meant when she told me, I once tried not being Ollie’s sister. I tried as hard as I could. “After our grandmother died, she spent some time in Nanda Parbat.” It was Abby who explained that Mom still has nightmares about the way Cooper Seldon died. “Dad wasn’t the first person she ever loved, you know.”
It was Abby who told me that, an hour after I got out of surgery, she came into my hospital room to bring Dad coffee and found him sitting in the farthest corner of the room. “He was kind of bent over and sniffling a little bit. His face was wet.”
“He was - what?”
“He said you’d been scaring the hell out of him since you learned to walk, but this was a new record.”
I had seen my father on the verge of tears maybe two or three times in my life, and only when Mom was missing did I worry that they would actually spill over. Dig told me later that was the night when all the evidence was telling them she was already dead.
I couldn’t picture him actually crying, and it felt wrong to even try. If I’d walked into a room and found that, I’d have backed right out before he could look up, but I knew without asking that Abby went straight for him.
She’s a tough chick, in her way.
Unfortunately, she’s not the breed of tough chick who can watch a needle slide in and out of my arm without turning chalk white. Abby hides in her notebook until Mom is done suturing me up.
When Mom ties off the last stitch, she strips off her gloves and says, “Junebug, come wipe it down with antiseptic and slap a bandage on there.”
Still a little pale, Abby rolls her lips together. Then she gets to her feet and takes the chair next to me. I raise an eyebrow at Mom, who gives me a very definite I know what I’m doing look.
After that night at the mansion, we thought Abby’s nightmares and panic attacks would pass like they did after our first run-in with the Black Hand. But for every few weeks she spent as herself, we got a week of zombie. Sometime in August, after four months of wild mood swings and therapy and medication and more mood swings, my sister started hiding from us. It’s a big house, and you can spend ten or fifteen minutes checking all the reading nooks and closets and small spaces she might curl into like a cat in an Amazon shipping box.
The first time she hid to avoid going to school, I overheard my parents arguing downstairs.
“I’m not going to drag her to the car and force her to go,” Dad said. “Is it really going to do her any good, being completely zoned out at a desk instead of zoned out at home?”
“Oliver, that’s not the point. She had her world rocked not that long ago, and now what she needs most is predictability and consistency. She needs to know what’s coming each day. We have to give her structure.”
“She is the only person in this family who did not sign up for any of this. If she needs to take a day, she can take a day.”
“Signed up or not, she’s part of it now. She needs to feel like part of it, like she’s pulling her weight.”
“I am not asking a fifteen year old who can hardly get out of bed to pull any weight, Felicity.”
“I know you’re not! Is it any wonder she thinks we don’t need her and she’s not good enough?”
I heard two people’s fuming breaths in the sudden silence.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said at last. “I didn’t mean to blame you.”
It’s not like he needs the help. My father collects blame like a hoarder marathoning the home shopping channel. “When we talked about all the ways our past could come back on our family,” he said quietly, “we never talked about this.”
There was a soft, sighing noise. Then: “Oliver?"
Then I heard kissing noises, and I cleared right the hell out.
Ever since, I’ve noticed Mom giving Abby little tasks at the borders of her comfort zone. I guess tonight it’s cleaning the blood from my arm and taping down gauze.
“How’s that?” she says, throwing away the crumpled ball of wax paper backings.
I twist my elbow experimentally a couple of times.“Should hold. Thanks, junebug.”
She forces a smile, still looking a little green around the edges. “Night, Jonny.” She picks up her notebook and highlighter and slips into the hall.
I wait a few seconds for the sound of her footfalls to fade before I turn to Mom. “It’s two in the morning. Nightmares again?”
Mom takes off her glasses and pulls a little cleaning square from her purse. “Vivid dreams are a known side effect of fluoxetine,” she says, rubbing away smudges which may or may not be imaginary. “I think it’s time to try a different medication.”
I rub my temples. “Fourth time lucky?”
She slips her glasses back on. “You get grumpy when it’s past your bedtime.” She gets to her feet, and shuts down her glassbook and library, and hikes her purse onto her shoulder. I follow her into the hall.
Just before we part ways at the top of the stairwell, Mom pats my arm, glancing at Abby’s door. “This will pass. Just try to be patient, honey.”
“Yes. Patience. My strong suit.”
She smiles. “Get some sleep.”
I get a whole five hours before my uncle’s neck starts bubbling blood while my sister cries quietly nearby, cuffed to a water pipe in a dank warehouse. I jerk awake in the half-light, sheets tangled around me. Guess I’m up for the day.
This is going to pass. Patience.
When I dress for work, I put on the tie with the Budweiser frogs that Uncle Roy specifically told me not to wear to Panoptic. He’d know what I meant by it.
I don’t like to think about how many emails are waiting for me at the office.
With my leg in a shiny black cast, I wasn’t good for anything but paperwork. As it turned out, that was fine by Dig and Lyla. Our business is not all exciting fieldwork. It’s also cash flows and tax rates, assets and liabilities, retirement plans, and a thousand other kinds of wacky fun with Excel. For the first time since I graduated, my ability to read a balance sheet became relevant to my life.
In August, I got the official health care professional’s go-ahead to resume combat sports. Dad and I went twelve rounds in the lair, which I think he needed as much as I did, but Dig and Lyla only halfway unshackled me from the desk.
“You’re actually quite good at the business side of it, Jon,” Lyla said.
“No need to sound so surprised,” I grumped.
When I come through the big glass doors, approximately no one is doing anything productive. Dig and Lyla are announcing the new president this afternoon, and it’s all anyone can talk about. Mom shows up to take me to an early lunch, and she lingers afterward for the announcement.
“We’ll be passing the torch to someone whom we’ve been trying to recruit for years now,” Lyla tells the gathered crowd in the bullpen.
They’re going to give what should have been Uncle Roy’s job to an outsider? I glance down at Mom, who is sitting in my desk chair, but she just smiles at me serenely.
“Someone with both the practical knowledge and the executive experience this firm will need to continue moving forward,” Lyla is saying. “Most of you already know her, so I expect she’ll get a warm reception.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dig says, “meet the new president of Panoptic, LLC: Felicity Smoak Queen.”
Mom gets to her feet to very genuine enthusiasm.
I gape at her.
She takes center stage to make a nice little speech. She introduces herself, thanks Dig and Lyla, and tells us how much she’s looking forward to the bear claws in the conference room. “Also to working with all of you,” she says to appreciative laughter, “but I don’t think I’m the only one who’s had my eye on the welcome party spread since I got here."
As the crowd heads for the food, Dig, and Lyla amble up to me, grinning.
“How could you do this to me?” I demand.
“Do what?” Dig says evenly.
“My mom is my boss. My mom is my boss.”
Lyla smiles. “I’d have thought you’d be used to it by now.”
“Oh, haha. You couldn’t have warned me?”
“And miss out on the look on your face?” Dig says.
Mom comes up behind me and slides an arm around my waist. “Come on. Back to the salt mines with you.”
“Don’t touch me, corporate fat cat.”
She drags me back into her welcome party, and I whine theatrically all afternoon.
I wait until we’re in the elevator heading home at the end of the day to tell her, “Congratulations, Mom.”
She links her arm through mine. “Thank you, sweetheart.” Her smile turns pained. “It’s not how I would’ve ever wanted it to happen.” She lets out a long sigh. “He would have been so good at this.”
With his sense of purpose? With the loyalty he inspired in people, because they knew damn well that he had their backs? The way he could sum up a situation in a few smartass remarks that put it all in perspective? Yeah, my uncle would have rocked at this.
“I was kind of looking forward to working with him,” I admit. “In the field we got to be a hell of a team. It would’ve been…” I swallow. “It would’ve been nice at my day job too, you know?”
She turns that pained smile on me. “I do know.”
I give her a jostle. “Guess we’ll have to make do with you.”
“You want to get mouthy with the woman signing your paycheck?”
For the seventeenth time, I groan, “Ugh. My mom is my boss.”
Mom laughs. The elevator doors open, and I walk her to her car.
At home, Aunt Thea is busy organizing the sixth annual Couture for the Cure gala to benefit St. Somebody or Other’s vital work giving cancer patients access to designer handbags, probably. She has papers spread out all over the dining room table, which makes Mom purse her lips.
“Jon,” Aunt Thea says without looking up, “if we open up the west wing of the Ogden, can we - ”
“It’s covered,” I assure her. Officially Lyla is in charge of security for the event, but she basically handed the reins to me and then sat back to see what I’d do with them. “Are you going to be here for dinner?”
Aunt Thea makes a noncommittal noise.
She only sort of lives here. She comes and goes, spending a week at her house, three days here, one there, two weeks here. It seems random, when she can’t stand the places where Uncle Roy’s presence is most obviously missing and when she can’t stand to be away.
“It’s just that Mom is the new President of Panoptic, and I bet she’s going to want to open some wine or something.”
Aunt Thea finally looks up from her pile of paper, and she turns her big brown eyes on Mom. “You said yes?”
Everybody knew before me. Fucking everybody.
Mom adjusts the drape of her coat over her arm. “Yeah, I did.”
Aunt Thea smiles, and it’s the smile I’ve seen on Dad and Laurel and even Mom sometimes, when the wrong name gets mentioned. She starts gathering up her pile of papers. “We’re going to need the Pontet Canet for this.”
Dad makes a point of coming home early - seven-thirty is early for him these days - and Abby dresses up as if we were going out for the evening. It’s damn good wine, and Aunt Thea is the first to offer a toast.
“To new beginnings,” she says.
I’ll drink to that.
Two days later, the first sharp autumn cold front moves into Starling, and my leg aches.
“Is this going to get better with time?” I ask Dad.
“Worse.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
After dinner we start combing through Belfort’s personal information, and we find credit card payments to an escort service called Finest Companions. I look up at Mom, sitting across the kitchen table from me. “That’s motive for his wife, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t fit,” she says, reaching for her mug of chamomile tea. “You catch your husband hiring escorts without permission, you don’t announce to the world how evil he is and kill him in the flashiest way possible. You give him an air embolism with a hypodermic needle and collect the life insurance.”
Dad blinks at her. Then he leans in curiously. “Do you?”
Mom sips her tea. “Everyone knows that.”
“Of course. How stupid of me.”
“Now that we’ve established that,” I mutter, “can we talk about - hold on, without permission?”
Dad’s eyes flicker upward as if he’s tempted to roll them. “I couldn’t help but notice that Belfort was one of the earliest donors to the Chimera Institute,” he says, pushing his glassbook towards us. “Nowhere near the biggest, but without his money Cuvier’s project never would have gotten off the ground.”
Mom gathers the tax document off the screen to project it in front of her. “That’s one of dozens of organizations he was tied to.”
“It’s by far the most infamous. I wouldn’t be surprised if Belfort had gotten some death threats over it.” Dad’s expression darkens. “Thea did.”
Mom nods, pressing her lips together. “I’ll have a look.”
I glance at the time in the corner of the glassbook display. “Hey, uh, I’m late.”
Mom frowns at me. “For what?”
I get to my feet. “A thing.”
“Oh, well, if you have a thing,” she says archly, waving me away from the table. “Don’t let us keep you.”
If Tish were still staying with us, I’d have to explain myself, but since she moved into that efficiency apartment in June, I can just be on my way.
I text her: Running a little late. See you in 15?
No worries. Ready when you are.
The day the cast came off, Tish was at our house to give Abby a voice lesson, and she caught me on the sofa with my pant hem pulled up to my knee, staring at my weirdly skinny lower leg and running my fingers over the pink and silver ridges of scars. I looked up when I heard her come in, swallowed hard, and forced a smile. “Damn shame. No more heels and short skirts for me.”
Tish sat down next to me. “The physical therapist said you need exercise to rebuild the muscle, right?”
I grimaced. “Everything that woman tells me to do turns out to be excruciating.”
“I know a way that’s so much fun you’ll hardly notice it hurts.”
That perked me right up.
She actually blushed. “Not that, Jonathan.”
She took me dancing at Snug Harbor.
My high school offered ballroom and social dance. At fourteen, I noticed the male-to-female ratio in those classes, and I made one of the best investments of my life. Dance floors? I own them.
But when I led Tish onto the floor at Snug Harbor, I bumped into her three times in three minutes. Finally I figured out why: she responded to the slightest pressure of a lead. It was like taking a finely tuned race car out for the first time and faceplanting into the steering wheel because you don’t realize how sensitive the brakes are.
“You’re better at this than I am.”
She smiled. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
When the sixties bubblegum pop turned to dirty blues, I found a girl who looked a lot like Elaine and who knew exactly what she was doing with her hips. I let her grind all over me until my bad leg started to wobble, and then I took a seat next to Tish.
She grinned at me. “Having fun?”
I grinned back, slumping low in my chair. “You have the best ideas.”
“I know.”
When we left a couple hours later, my lower leg cramped and burned, but my blood hummed happily with endorphins. As we stepped outside, I saw the flash of a reflection among the cars parked along the curb. It was a camera lens, perched on the roof of a little Camry with the photographer keeping his head down.
“Shit.” In the three years that I completely failed to land myself in jail or crash even one expensive vehicle, CelebCast and TMZ got bored with me. Then I got kidnapped and shot, which made me all kinds of interesting again. “Tish, keep to my left and walk close.”
Without asking why, she stepped right up to my elbow. I put two middle fingers in the air, and I didn’t put them down until I’d walked her to the passenger door and closed it behind her.
As we pulled away from the curb, she turned to me. “Please explain what you just did.”
“Gossip rags can’t run a photo with obscenity in it.”
Her eyes widened. “There was a photographer?”
“Not again, there won’t be.”
I don’t know what Mom does to paparazzi, exactly. I just know that when I tell her about them, they suddenly become very respectful of our privacy. No one has bothered us at Snug since, and at this point all the bartenders start mixing Tish’s favorite the moment they see us come through the door.
When I pull up in front of her apartment building, she comes down the front walk looking like some GI’s sweetheart in a World War II propaganda poster. It must be Throwback Night. When she climbs into my car, I tell her, “We could paint you on the nose of a B-17.”
I should probably keep thoughts like that to myself. It has not escaped my attention that Tish is beautiful, or that she has a nice rack, or that you could hang a sign off her ass that says Sponsored by Sir Mix-a-Lot. But if she were at all interested in me, sometime in the past six months she might have at least batted her eyelashes once or twice. Nope. Nothing.
“Thank you,” she says. “But I think I’d rather have a Navy destroyer named after me.”
I stomp on the brakes in my head. I stomp hard. But my mouth does not stop on a dime. “And be full of seamen?”
There is a long silence, in which I mentally recite every curse word I know.
“Jonathan,” she says in a choked voice. It is hard to tell in the dark car, but it’s a good bet she is blushing again. “I cannot believe you just said that.”
Then she covers her mouth with her hand, and her shoulders shake silently. Thank God.
At Snug Harbor, we show everyone up, at least until the band’s first set is over. I’m still working on a basket of cheese fries when the second begins, so I have no objections when somebody else asks Tish for a dance. I chat to the bartender and do a little recreational flirting with the thirty-something woman on the barstool next to me. All the while, my eyes scan the room, exit to exit.
So I notice when the sandy-haired guy gets obnoxious with Tish. Drunk and clumsy, he tries to pass off an ass-grab as an accident, and with stone cold politeness she bids him good night and turns to walk away.
“Hey, I’m sorry, honey,” he says, laughing and grabbing her wrist. “I was just playing around. I promise I’ll behave.”
He tugs her backward against his chest, gets an arm around her, and presses his face to the hollow of her neck. Breathes in, sways on his feet, rocking both of them sideways.
Something jolts in my gut. I’m on my feet, heart rate spiking. Joseph Risdon is dead, but there he is in the middle of the dance floor with his nose in Tish’s hair. There’s things I can do, won’t even leave a mark.
I’m halfway to them before I know what I’m doing. I can peel that arm away from her waist and break it at the elbow. Left jab to the throat, and I’ll put him on the floor.
Tish catches sight of me, and her posture goes rigid. “Let go of me,” she commands. “Now.”
And he does. The guy steps back, and he’s just a drunk asshole in his twenties. Doesn’t look a thing like Risdon. His laughter turns condescending. “Fine. Relax, Jesus.”
Tish doesn’t even glance at him. She walks straight for me and reaches up for my shoulder, hand right over the ridge of scar tissue. “Are you okay?”
I take a deep breath. Aside from feeling completely ridiculous, “I’m fine.” I’m all revved up with nowhere to go, and in a second the adrenaline rush is going to turn to jitters.
Behind her, the sandy-haired guy scoffs at us. “A boyfriend. Of course.” He shakes his head. “Might want to keep her on a shorter leash, man.”
Wrong moment to say that to me. Wrong fucking moment. I make it half a pace before Tish steps into my path and splays both hands on my chest. “Hey, hey,” she says soothingly. “Why don’t we go get some air? Come on, come with me.”
She herds me to the exit. When the door swings closed behind us, we stand in the sudden quiet of the sidewalk at midnight, and I suck down cool air and get a fucking grip.
“I’d say there was no need to defend my honor,” Tish says, and licks her red lips, “but that looked like something else.”
I scratch the back of my neck. “He, um - with his face in your hair, for a second it looked like…” It sounds so stupid I can’t even string the words together.
I don’t have to. Her eyes soften. “Yeah, I can see how it would.”
Walk it off. No reason this should ruin the evening. “You want to go back inside? They haven’t played ‘Reet Petite’ yet, and you know they will.”
She loops her arm through mine. “Can we go for a drive?”
Yeah. We can do that.
On a winding stretch of Lakeshore Drive, she syncs her phone's playlist to my speakers and sings along to jazz standards. The night turns velvety and simple, and we roll down the windows and let the wind tear apart her forties hairstyle. When I pull up in front of her apartment building half an hour later and walk her to her door, the big curls are loose around her face.
“‘S wonderful,” she sings to herself, “‘s marvelous, that you should care for me.”
She accepts the hand I offer and twirls under my arm on the next step.
“'S awful nice. 'S paradise. 'S what I love to see.” She spins to a stop right at her front door, coming back into closed position with me.
I can’t help smiling, and I can’t help reaching for her. Her eyes widen as my hand curves around her neck. Thumb on her pulse, I lean in to kiss her.
At the last second she draws in a sharp breath and presents her cheek to me.
Oh. Shit.
But now I’m an inch from her face, and the only thing more awkward than kissing her cheek would be not kissing her cheek. I give her a close-mouthed peck, and then I step back and slip my hands into my pockets. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t, um.” She licks her lips. “It wasn’t unwelcome. But better not to go down that road, don’t you think?”
No, I most certainly do not. “Better how?”
She looks at the cement. “I don’t do casual, and it seems like you don’t do serious. That is a recipe for unpleasantness.”
I think she just called me a slut, and she is not exactly wrong. The longest relationship I ever had was the one with the fewest strings attached. A year of the best sex of my life, zero I love yous, and no hard feelings when she transferred to Tulane.
My one attempt at serious flamed out spectacularly when I slept with one of her Zeta sisters. I was blacked out at that party, and to this day I don’t remember how it happened. I just know the next morning one of my pledge brothers told me, laughing his ass off, “Yeah, man, she kind of dragged you upstairs. Julie is going to kill you.”
No kidding. When I told her, Jules started pounding her fists on my chest. I let her land a few hits - I figured she was entitled - until she took a swing at my face. Then I got her in a bear hug before she could break her hand, and I held her still until she calmed down enough to break up with me.
The rest is a matter of public record - for which I am eternally grateful, CelebCast.
But whatever else kissing Tish might be, it could never be casual. “You think I’m looking for a fling?”
She avoids my eyes. “What do we really have in common, except for the same nightmares?”
I suck in a slow breath, because where do I even start with this? “You know my family. You know about my night job. My little sister loves you. And you love her - which, by the way, is a thing we have in common that is not horrific nightmares. If all I wanted was a casual fuck, you’d be the last girl on the list.”
She lets out a little huff of laughter, chancing a glance up at me. “Aren’t you a sweet talker.”
“Tish. I don’t understand.”
“For a long time, it was just me and my father,” she says quietly. “Now it’s just me. Your family means a lot to me.”
I almost want to laugh at that. “No one’s going to shun you if this blows up in our faces. Ten to one, they take your side.”
“Jon, I just...” There’s that tight smile again. “I’m sorry.”
I want to point out all the reasons that none of this makes sense, but I hear Dig’s voice in my head. Never argue with a woman’s feelings. Rookie mistake.
She tangles her fingers together nervously, and it occurs to me that she knows who really killed Joseph Risdon and how. Thirty seconds ago that guy was towering over her with his hand on her neck - not two hours after that creep at the bar had his hands all over her. I shove my hands deeper into my pockets. “Okay. Forget I tried anything.”
“I hope we can keep on like we have been.”
Let’s just be friends. That is what that means. I assume she’s not using those words because everyone knows they actually mean, Let’s awkwardly hang out, like, twice and then never speak again.
After all, I don't really see Elaine anymore, do I?
I swallow. “Like I said, just pretend I didn’t.”
“Okay.” She offers me a polite smile. “I had a wonderful time tonight. Thank you.”
“Good night.”
She hesitates with her hand on the doorknob, considering and reconsidering, and finally she goes up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek like she has every night after Snug Harbor. I have to bend down a few inches for her to manage it. “Good night.”
I watch the door close behind her. I know from experience that this mule-kick-to-the-gut feeling is going to fade, but for the moment I'm careful easing myself into the driver's seat of the car. On the way home, I don’t catch a glimpse of the red lipstick print on my face until I turn onto Providence Street. I rub it away before I go inside.
Just to prove we’ve already forgotten and nothing at all has changed - almost-kiss? what almost-kiss? - the very next night we go to Snug again on definitely-not-a-date. I brace myself for awkward smiles and stilted small talk.
What actually happens is much weirder: we keep on like we have been. On the dance floor she follows my lead like a mind reader, and off it she laughs at my jokes even when she should probably smack me for them instead. When I drop her home, she leaves a lipstick print on my cheek.
I don’t know how to feel about this, which I guess is the next best thing to being totally cool with it.
That is, until my father chooses the very next morning to look up from his newsfeed and say, “I don't mean to tell you what to do, but your mother's feelings are a little hurt that you haven't told her you’re seeing someone.”
"That’s because I’m not."
He gives me a look over the rim of his coffee cup.
I put my mug down a little too hard. "Not that it is any of your business, but she turned me down, ok?"
He raises his eyebrows in faint surprise, then looks down at his newsfeed again with a murmured, "I'm sorry."
I poke my glass of orange juice, and it slides an inch or two in its own puddle of condensation. "Hey, probably would have fucked it up anyway. I have kind of a track record."
“Jon,” Dad says, meeting my eyes again. All I ever told him about how things ended with Julie was got drunk, screwed up, she dumped me. But he of all people knows what I'm talking about. “You don’t have to pay for your mistakes indefinitely. Not if you learn from them. And you already know how to do the hard parts: trust, loyalty, putting someone else’s needs before your own.” He turns his attention to his newsfeed again. “When you’re ready, you’re going to be just fine.”
I mop up egg yolk with my toast. “Or else the air embolism.”
“Well, yes.” The corners of his mouth twitch. “Everyone knows that.”
We go back to our glassbooks.