by Riley Ashby
“You’d have to find a new job.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I’d been thinking that over all morning, weighing how to answer him when he inevitably asked me if I’d be willing to walk away from my heart’s passion.
“There are nonprofits everywhere.”
“But not the one you’ve poured your heart and soul into over the last year.”
“No.” Tears froze in my eyes before they could even spill over. “No, it wouldn’t be the same.”
“Then we’ll stay.”
He spun me in my arms, and I thought of the morning after I’d almost died, hours after we’d first slept together. Had that really been only a week ago? We both were entirely different people now.
“I don’t think you can handle it.”
“Have some faith in me.” He smiled without showing his teeth, bringing his cold palms to my cheeks. “We’ll destroy every structure he built and start again on the other end of the property.”
I searched his eyes, trying to determine if he was truly comfortable with that or if he was just trying to please me. “We have to do this together, Meyer. I can’t be happy in a place that causes you pain.”
“Which is why we’re making our own. Why should Conrad drive us away even after he’s dead?” He swallowed and cleared his throat, looking away. “Plus … shit, I’ve never told anyone this.”
I waited in silence as he gathered himself. It was a challenge to hold still, keep my emotions in check. I didn’t want to startle him and make him change his mind.
“My mother is buried here somewhere. My birth mother, I mean. I don’t know if there’s a chance in hell of ever finding her body, but being here … it makes me feel close to her. Even though I don’t know her name or what she looked like. This is the only piece of her that I have left, and I don’t want to give it away.”
My feet acted of their own accord, pushing me to the tips of my toes so I could kiss him. Our lips were cold, but our mouths were warm, and as he pulled me ever closer against him I lost all sense of where we stood on the globe. The ground sank away beneath my feet and I began to spin as wildly as if I'd been flung from the earth itself. He'd never spoken of his birth mother, not even when I tried to goad him. And all this time he was harboring the secret deeper inside himself that even I could ever imagine. But he told me. He let me in.
All this time, we've been at war. Even when we acted in the same interest, we never knew enough about each other to truly be on the same side. That would have to change now. We've been protecting ourselves, trying to avoid being hurt anymore deeply then we had to. The wounds were already so profound. But even though it hurt him, he continued to open up to me more and more. I owed him the same.
“We could find your mom,” I said suddenly, without thinking. “It might take awhile, but dogs could help. We could give her a proper burial.”
He nodded, kissed me again for a few minutes before trusting himself to speak. “Let her family know. Wherever they are. Christ, I don’t even know her name.”
I squeezed him tight. “We’ll find out.”
Behind us, Her Majesty whinnied, and before I could turn around she pushed her snout against my back so hard we both fell against the fence. I prepared for Meyer to leap out of the way, but he just laughed and helped me stand back up straight. He smiled at her, holding out his hand tentatively for her to sniff.
"I know, I know, it's cold out here. Ready to go back inside and get under a blanket?"
Her Majesty snorted and raised her head a few times as if nodding. Meyer and I looked at each other as we burst into laughter.
"You heard the lady," I said. "I'd also like some hot cocoa."
"As mesdames wish," he said with a kiss on my nose. "I'm ready to get out of this weather myself."
Her Majesty followed us back inside without a lead, and settled into her stall without complaint. I took a few minutes to brush her down. Her winter coat was coming in quickly, but the staff Meyer had hired had done a good job of taking care of her while I was … indisposed.
Meyer sat his chin on his hands, elbows hanging over the edge of the stall as he watched me tend to the horse he bought me long before either of us could acknowledge the way we really felt about each other. The day she arrived he’d been too afraid to get close to her, much as he’d resisted letting me in. I kept pushing him until he couldn’t hold me off anymore, and when we fell into each other, the collision almost killed us both. But we’d crawled out of the wreckage together, hands clasped tighter than ever before.
Maddie
The day after they dragged Conrad Schaf’s body out of the lake where I once told Meyer he and I would be enemies until we died, Anita was officially arrested for her role in the sale of the company’s weapons to terrorists. She was placed in Federal prison without bail, but she still found a way to cause problems with her constant collect calls. We took the ancient house phone off the hook; Meyer and Joshua both changed their cell phone numbers. Meyer wanted to let her languish, but Mom insisted he pay for a decent lawyer.
“It wouldn’t look right for you to let your sister waste away in prison,” she said. "You have to put on a good face. She's your sister. As far as anyone knows, you still love her like family."
"Still." Meyer snorted. "I never loved her."
"Sweetie." Mom put her hand over his, stilling his movements as he sorted through the book shelf in his father's study.
Meyer wanted to tackle the office first, get everything boxed up, so that we can move on to other, less painful parts of the house. The blood had been cleaned up, the brain matter scraped away, but whenever we walked into this room I thought I could still smell death. This was the room he’d been called to as a child whenever he had to be disciplined; he never left without a bruise or a cut.
"You used to dote on her. You are the one who found her, remember? You came and got me, pulled me to the front door, and there she was all wrapped up. You thought she was a doll."
"And then she opened her mouth and screamed." He snatched his hand away and grabbed a book at random, tossing it over his shoulder like a football. "Here it is," he muttered, picking up a large silver coin encased in plastic. "He told me once this coin was worth half a million dollars. I guess now we'll find out."
Mom sat back and sighed, but never took her eyes off him. "Try to remember that she's human, Meyer. I know it doesn't seem like it. What she went through with Conrad was as painful as what you suffered, just in a different way."
Meyer snatched the coin and walked out of the room, a glare on his face directed at the floor, but from then on we only heard from Anita's lawyer.
One week after Meyer watched his father's body get loaded into the back of an ambulance, the autopsy results determined that he died of a single gunshot wound to the head. The police requested any and all security footage from the house in the days leading up to his death, but of course there was none. Even looking through his phone records yielded no suspects that didn't have an alibi. Thanks to Joshua's final payment to Detective Brantley, no one ever looked closer at us, and the case was filed away as unsolved.
Meyer went back to work, somewhat reluctantly, but it was expected of him, and he couldn’t leave. Not yet. Most days I went with him, working in a corner of his office on trying to help round up refugees wounded by his company's weapons. Both of us were on the phone constantly, and it would have been easier for me to work at my real office, but when I suggested it to him, his face fell so far, I immediately retracted and pulled him into a hug.
"You can do that if you want," he assured me. "You need space to do good work."
I squeezed him tight against me, hoping to push out all his concerns that I would leave and he never see me again. "I can do good work here. With you. One of these days, we won't be so afraid to let each other out of our sight."
"I wouldn't bet on that," he murmured into my hair.
Every time I looked at him, it felt like seeing the sun for the first time. Before, he had
been so cold that getting close to him meant slowing my own heart beat. But summer was back, even as the weather outside grew progressively colder, and when we lay down together at night, it always ended with a fine sheen of sweat covering both our bodies. And no matter how hot we were, how rapid our breathing, he kept me tucked against him until we both fell asleep. Sometimes in the mornings we would wake up on separate sides of the bed. Whoever opened their eyes first would crawl across the mattress to the other. Whatever had pulled us together before was still there, only stronger, frayed thread turned to steel, binding us together too tightly for anyone to break apart.
I pushed back from him, putting some space between us, and beamed at him as widely as I could. “Can I have my own assistant?”
“No.” He pecked me on the nose and finally released me. “I’ll take care of whatever you need.”
“Even complicated latte orders?”
“Even complicated latte orders.”
“Then I want a vanilla soy latte with extra foam and caramel drizzle on top.”
He rolled his eyes. “Is that the best you can do?” He walked to his desk and picked up his phone, pushing a button. “Jessica, could you please get a vanilla soy latte with extra foam and caramel drizzle on top for Miss Sheppard?”
I smiled as I returned my chair and watched him work. He’d been talking about quitting, starting a search for a new CEO and COO to replace his father and himself, but he was so in his element here. He enjoyed being busy, even if he couldn’t admit it.
“Do you know the reason I was smiling that day in Shawn’s apartment?”
A shadow passed over his face at the memory. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”
“I do, though.” I wrapped my arms around my knees, pulling my feet underneath me on the chair. “It wasn’t because I was glad to see your company go down. I knew you by then, Meyer. I knew you were a decent person who had lived too long under a terrible man’s shadow. I was smiling because I thought your father was finally going to be exposed to the world for the monster he was. It wasn’t until we fought in here that I realized just how deceived you had been; how much you were still on his side even though he had tortured you for so many years. I thought you had finally come around.”
“But I didn’t, and it almost cost us everything.” He blinked rapidly. “It did for Shawn.”
Finally. I’d been trying to get him to bring up Shawn for days, but he danced around the subject expertly. “What happened to him wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
“How could it not be? I had so many opportunities to save us all, and it wasn’t until I nearly lost everything that I finally decided to act. I’ll carry that with me forever.”
My fingers twitched, itching to touch his, but something held me from running across the room to him. He was too fidgety. I didn’t think he wanted me weighing him down right now.
“It’s Conrad’s fault. His and Anita’s.”
“But if I’d—”
“But nothing. Anita wanted to hurt you. She spent all her time and energy putting up this pretty face so none of us could see the monster she was hiding. I was taken in by it. So was Shawn.”
“I could have warned him better.”
“You did as much as you could.” I couldn’t hold myself back anymore. I rose to my feet and crossed the room to him once more. He kept his eyes on his laptop, trying to type, but I grabbed his hands and enveloped them in mine. “You didn’t know she was capable of such things, Meyer. None of us did.”
He slid his thumb against mine reassuringly, but kept his eyes and head turned away.
“He was my best friend.”
“I know, baby.” I ducked my head and kissed his fingers. “It wasn’t fair, what happened to him.”
“His family won’t talk to me.” He pulled his hands free and rubbed at his face. His bloodshot eyes met mine as he finally looked away from his computer. “They think I’m holding back information about what happened. Since I won’t tell them the truth, they blame me. And why shouldn’t they? Anita will never confess. They’ll never know exactly what happened to him.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. My tongue sat in my mouth, dead and useless, as I struggled for the words to fix him.
“Sometimes there are no good answers.”
“You can say that again.”
We turned toward the door in unison as it opened and Jessica entered a moment later with my latte. I smiled at her, but my lips felt tight. When we were alone again, I set my drink on the desk and pushed it away.
“I don’t really feel like teasing you anymore.”
He swiped the cup and took a large gulp before making a face. “How do you drink that? It’s so sweet.”
I couldn’t help laughing. But deep down, it still hurt me that in the midst of his pain he was just trying to make me feel better. “Stop deflecting.”
“I’m not. But I do have to get back to work.” He handed me my drink and patted my hand. “It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t think you should quit,” I blurted out.
He blinked at me in surprise. “What? Why not?”
“If you leave, you’re just leaving this place in the hands of men who are just as focused on profits as Conrad was. You’re different now, Meyer. You know how to make things in the world better.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” He stood from the desk and buttoned his jacket, smiling. “Follow me.”
We went to the basement. The room was empty and dark, lit only by the glow from a dozen brand new computer monitors lighting up freshly installed cubicles. The smell of sawdust still hung in the air; there had recently been construction here.
“Why are we down here?”
Meyer stepped back from me and put his hands in his pockets, beaming. “How would you like this to be your new office? I’d absorb Amnesty Abroad, but you would continue to act as an independent entity. You or whoever you designate will be involved in all business decisions and evaluate them to ensure we don’t get into this kind of situation again. And we’re going to start pulling out of deals with certain parties.”
My eyes watered. “You’re serious?”
“I can’t deny that I was influenced by the idea of having you here rather than across town. But I think it’s the right move for the company, too. There will be major pay cuts to some of the higher ups that they’re not happy about, but I managed to convince them it was a necessary move to improve our image. I’m meeting with your president tomorrow to finalize the deal.”
I jumped into his arms and laughed with relief as he hugged me. No more leaving. We could be together every day, only a few floors from each other, and we didn’t have to miss each other ever again. “This is amazing. Thank you so much.”
“Anything for you, my love.”
Meyer
The dogs started barking two days after we began digging the foundation of our new house.
Maddie convinced me to bring in dogs to find my mother’s body. I dragged my feet for weeks, trying out every excuse I could think of. I didn’t want to disturb her. Using dogs didn’t seem dignified. I was afraid of the ensuing police investigation.
“Her family misses her,” Maddie whispered to me, tugging on a lock of my hair in the dark. Wind howled outside the window, and I shuffled deeper beneath the covers. “It’ll give a lot of people closure.”
“What if they blame me?”
“They won’t,” she promised.
I wasn’t so sure.
I didn’t wake her the day they came; I got out of bed as quietly as I could but she still shifted toward me. I bundled myself in layers of flannel and down, and walked out to the lawn to meet the handlers and German Shepherds that would be searching for my mother’s body.
“Do you have any idea where we should start looking?” The lead handler smelled like day-old cigarette smoke, but she was pleasant enough as she shook my hand and followed me toward the trees.
“No. She might not even be her
e.” I didn’t know if I wanted that to be true or not. “But maybe the area where we’re building would be best.” I’d halted construction after fears of disturbing her body with backhoes and shovels finally broke through my fear of finding her to begin with. If I had to see my own mother’s grave, I didn’t want it to be as a pile of mismatched bones.
She grunted in agreement. “Good idea. I’ll take them that direction and then fan out from there.”
“Let me know if I can help,” I said, but she was already in the brush, and the wind threw my words into the sky.
I turned toward the house on a whim, and could just barely make out Madeline in one of the upstairs windows. She was tapping one finger on the glass lightly, then raised her hand in a wave. I lifted one hand tentatively and then turned back around. I didn’t want her to go, but I couldn’t have her gaze on me just now. I followed the sounds of the dogs into the forest.
*
With so much property to search, they checked the construction site first, but turned up nothing. I should have brought them in before we even started digging, but I couldn’t bring myself to think of it. They worked north to south, and when they found her, it was shockingly close to the place where I’d been forced to bury my dog so many years ago.
Her parents joined me first, but I heard Maddie coming long before she touched my arm. I paced with my hands in my hair, then my pockets, never stopping. Eva and Joseph were still as statues.
“Here,” a man called, and we surged forward as one. In the hard winter dirt were the small bones of a woman’s hand. “We’ll have to call the police.”
I dropped into a squat next to the grave. The hand was so much smaller than I would have imagined.
“Are we sure this is an adult?”
“Possibly an adolescent,” the handler said as he roped off the area with red plastic tape. “The autopsy will say for sure.”
“Jesus,” I muttered, pressing on my eyes. Maddie rubbed her hand across my back, but I could barely feel it. I was so cold.