B008KQO31S EBOK (40 page)

She fell back against the pillows, exhausted, hating the loud echo of her breath in the room.

“We can blame everyone else for the shortfalls in our lives,” Bill said quietly, “but in the end, we each are our own creation.”

“Yeah, well, no one ever gave a crap what became of me, that’s for sure.”

“Is that right? There’s a certain young lady who was prepared to murder just to see that you had your chance.”

“She did a pretty lousy of job of it.”

“Lucky for you. You can go to anger management classes together, instead of visiting her in jail for the rest of her life. And your grandmother can give you a job, which she couldn’t do if she were dead.”

“You’ve been taking the path of least resistance,” Lucia croaked. “Just like piss running into a gutter. Look where it’s gotten you. Grow up, Sean.”

“Your grandmother’s offering you the best chance you’re likely to get.”

“I don’t need to be lectured to for my whole life.”

“End of lecture,” Lucia’s eyes drifted closed despite her efforts.

“It’s a one time offer,” Bill concluded. “Take it or leave it.”

She heard her grandson hesitate, could imagine him working through the possibilities. “You’re really going to spend it all?”

Lucia smiled without opening her eyes. She’d known that would be the persuading factor. A party boy, like his father, he wanted comfort and the luxury of money in his pocket. “I’ll probably die owing a fortune.”

“And you’ll give me that other job, the good one, if I do this shit one first? Guaranteed?”

“There are no guarantees, Mr. Sullivan, but if you do your best, I’ll wager that your luck will change.”

“Yeah, and get that geezer his groceries.”

“It would certainly be the gesture of a compassionate citizen.”

Sean snorted and Lucia guessed that he rolled his eyes. She couldn’t open her own to check though. “Any other conditions before I sign up?”

“Nicholas’ girl,” Lucia whispered and felt Bill pat her hand. His touch seemed a thousand miles away. She was losing the battle, the sedative claiming her bit by bit.

“You really want to press charges over that broken nose?”

“Damn straight! She bopped me, right in front of everyone and for no good reason!”

Bill’s words were gentle but firm. “Which is different from your striking Josie for no good reason when no one could see?”

Sean made an exasperated sound and Lucia smiled. Bill had a natural flair for bringing disparate elements to closure that she admired. He could keep track of imbalances over the years and gradually ensure that justice was done, one way or the other. She suspected that the gentleman with the arthritic knee hadn’t come up with the idea of calling her all by himself, but Bill’s gentle meddling suited Lucia well.

It was the mark of any good production to tie up all the loose ends, to mete out retribution and reward, by the time the house lights came up. Bill did a better job than most.

The last word she heard was Sean’s reluctant agreement, then Lucia permitted her own curtain to fall.

Y
ou’ve got to believe that the next week was tame in comparison.

Mrs. H. called Monday morning, smitten with the pink hellebore and anxious for us to begin. A sweet little deposit check started the week off on a high note and by Tuesday, Joel and I were walking off the plans again and starting to dig.

She was even warming to the possibility of more pink “since my instincts were so good with these things”. Over the weekend, she’d decided that the new sketches looked kind of dull in comparison with the ones she’d nixed.

I wasn’t asking a lot of questions about her change of heart. I was excited about the project, particularly about going back to those pinky plans. The brace on my fingers annoyed the heck out of me, but it’s amazing what you can get used to.

On the family front, there was definite fall-out from the weekend. Zach was going to Venice to take pictures, off on his dream of becoming a photographer. When he called to tell me, I knew that he felt cheated of the family’s disgust. I assured him it wouldn’t last long. My father would recover himself soon and be outraged all over again.

Zach had that effect on him. Maybe my father didn’t believe that Zach would really do it.

Zach, of course, did.

My mother, by the way, called to complain that my father was demanding that James take a DNA test to determine his paternity. James had been shocked by Mom’s revelation but this shook the foundations of his castle.

Truth be told, it shocked me. My father was threatening to take away everything James had worked to earn, because of an accident of birth. Forty years later, he was going to disavow the man he’d raised as his son. James had put a lot of hours into that partnership and its success was as much a part of his efforts as my father’s.

I was betting that James and Marcia’s household wasn’t a happy one. They certainly weren’t returning phone calls.

All through that week, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Nick didn’t seem too inclined to pack up and disappear. He spent a lot of time at the hospital, sitting vigil with Lucia, but invariably, he showed up at my office in the late afternoon, laden with groceries. He cooked for me, he actually talked willingly, he told me of his travels and a thousand places I’d probably never see.

But he left after the dishes were done, every night.

I thought it was his way of saying farewell, but he never seemed to get to that part. Maybe he was weaning me off. Maybe he was weaning himself off. I didn’t worry about it as much as I had thought I would. We had great talks, there was a little simmer of electricity, but I was happy.

I finally decided that he was waiting for Lucia to be released. He plundered my books on hothouse flowers once Lucia was more reliably conscious and I figured she had demanded he ensure their survival. I didn’t offer to do it, and he didn’t ask.

At the end of the week, Joel had another worker fade into the great beyond without explanation or apology, but to my astonishment, Nick offered to help.

Which meant I got to watch two fine specimens of masculinity tear off their shirts in Mrs. H.’s garden, laboring beneath my command like slaves before the queen.

They sent Lucia home on the weekend and the first thing she did was light up a cigarette, according to the Chief who drove her home. But Nick showed no signs of heading out.

If anything, he bought more kitchen gadgets.

Midway through the second week, I figured it out. He knew Mrs. H.’s contract was a critical one for me. So, he was waiting to see this contract through, to make sure I didn’t stumble or get tripped by Lady Luck again. Once Mrs. H. wrote that check, he’d be gone. No doubt about it.

The project proceeded without a hitch.

It was done in twelve long working days, precisely three days early, two and a half weeks after Lucia made her acquaintance with Josie’s knife. It looked gorgeous, if I do say so myself.

But any triumph was short-lived. Nick left the site early, with nary a word to me, though he shook Joel’s hand. He even gave Jez’s ears a good scratch, leaving me feeling like the city mouse’s poor cousin.

But maybe it would be easier this way.

As if.

* * *

Elaine was trying to clear her desk before she went home for the night. The windows were open and the sound of evening traffic carried into the office on the warm winds of May.

She knew she was dallying, but there was something about seeing Philippa and Nick together that cut deep. Elaine was alone, she’d been alone all her life and she was starting to realize that she would probably always be alone.

Her apartment rang hollow to her ears these days, even her new tabby kitten Snickers doing little to fill the gap.

Worse, it was her own fault.

She filed with a vengeance, in enough of a foul mood that she didn’t notice the hum of a foreign car parking in front of the little office building. She didn’t even notice the shadow of the visitor who hesitated outside the door. When the door opened, she jumped like Snickers discovering for the four hundredth time that his tail was attached to his butt.

“Got a minute?”

Elaine blinked, but it was still Jeffrey McAllister. Not only was he here, but he didn’t look pompous and irked as he usually did in her presence. He was carrying something—it looked like a framed print or painting—and she guessed he wanted her to drool over some nifty new Picasso he’d picked up on sale.

She wasn’t feeling terribly charitable. Elaine nodded once. “About a minute is it,” she declared and started stuffing things haphazardly into her briefcase.

“Got a date?” Jeff looked uncertain.

“Yeah,” Elaine lied, then forced a smile.

Jeff shrugged and crossed the office, pausing opposite her desk. “Lucky guy. I won’t hold you up.”

Elaine regarded him with suspicion, but before she could question his manner, Jeff started to talk. “Look, I want to tell you a little story. It won’t take long.”

Jeff telling stories. Elaine could just bet that this one had a moral, one that showed the poor quality of her integrity and the failures of her lineage. “Hurry it up, then. I don’t want to be late.”

“Fair enough.” He unwrapped the package he was carrying and set it on her desk.

To Elaine’s surprise, it wasn’t a legal document or a fabulous piece of art, but a piece of red construction paper in a cheap frame. Something was scrawled in the middle of it in purple and green, crayon and marker respectively.

Elaine stared at it in surprise for a moment, then looked to Jeff. “Is this a joke?”

He shook his head. “Wasn’t to me.”

“What is it?”

Jeff pushed his hands into his pockets and gave her a rueful glance. “I don’t know.”

Elaine half-laughed, then folded her arms across her chest to study him. “This is a joke. It has to be, although I don’t get it.”

“No, I really don’t know what it’s supposed to represent,” Jeff corrected, “but I do know what it is.” He flicked her a glance, then looked away, as though he was afraid to see her reaction. “It’s the first drawing I ever did. It’s, in fact, the only drawing I ever did. I don’t even remember doing it.”

He picked it up and turned it, squinting at the lines. “My grandmother kept it. She said I gave it to her when I was about five, that I told her it was love. She, not surprisingly for a grandmother I guess, framed it and hung it in her kitchen.” He looked to Elaine and smiled. “As you can imagine, this mortified me, particularly in my teenage years when she insisted on regaling everyone with the story.”

Elaine smiled reluctantly and Jeff held her gaze long enough that her heart went thump.

“But I was never any good at drawing or anything in art class. I used to explain this to my grandmother, but she insisted that what was important was that I tried. And she would not take this picture down, not for any price.”

He paused for a long moment, a frown pulling his brows together. “She died a month or so ago and I was her executor. My cousin came to the house and just plucked the picture off the wall. He handed it to me and joked that this was one thing we couldn’t argue about. Everyone had a little laugh. I took it home because I didn’t know what else to do with it, but I’ve found it tough to just chuck it out.”

Jeffrey McAllister having a heart. Would wonders never cease. Elaine struggled to not soften towards him. There had been a lot of tough words between them, after all.

But missing someone was a little too close to the loneliness she was feeling for her to make a joke about it. “Because it reminds you of her?”

“That and a couple of other things.” Jeff sighed. “I’ve been really lucky, Elaine, and I’m only just starting to realize how lucky. Lots of things have been easy for me, lots of good things have come to me without much effort on my part. Opportunities have come my way because of where I was born and who my parents were. I guess I always assumed it was that way for everyone.”

He was watching her closely and Elaine felt her cheeks pinken, knowing very well that he was referring to her.

“I was wrong,” he admitted, looking at the drawing again. “And the truth is that I never bothered much with things that demanded any real effort on my part. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how to try.”

He cleared his throat and Elaine couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “I know that I never really appreciated how hard you’d had to work to get what you have, or how much uncertainty you’d faced while I was having good fortune piled in my lap.”

Elaine clenched her hands together and stared back at this astonishingly earnest Jeff.

“Someone recently reminded me that not everything is guaranteed, that sometimes you have to just take a chance.” He looked up. “That sometimes, you have to listen to your heart.”

His smile flickered tentatively, then died when Elaine didn’t respond. “I miss you. For a long time I thought that was some kind of moral weakness on my part—” he shoved a hand through his hair “—but I see now that it was more than that. I miss the way you laugh, I miss how much you celebrate everything that comes your way, I miss your sheer bloody-mindedness. I miss how you take everything life gives you and enjoy it to the utmost.” His voice dropped. “I miss your perfume on my sheets.”

He bunched his hands into his pockets again. “And I miss the way every head would turn when you walked into a restaurant with me.”

Elaine stiffened but he hurried on.

“Not because you were some kind of a trophy that I’d won and I wanted everyone to be jealous—though I might have thought of it that way at one time—but because you were the most bright and beautiful woman I’d ever known. And you’d chosen to be with me.” He met her gaze once more. “I guess I thought relationships wouldn’t require any effort on my part either.”

Jeff stared at his shoes. “I got fired last weekend because I decided to do what I thought was right.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. It’s a good thing, an opportunity to head out on my own that I might not have taken otherwise. I guess realizing how the odds are stacked against me now made me think of you, of how easy you make it look to get what you want.”