“Grumpy, huh?”
How much had he seen? Pree squinted and looked at him, but his face was guileless.
“Hot enough for you? Or are you watching sex tapes again?” He was teasing her—there really was no such thing as politically correct in the gaming industry.
“If I were going to complain about anything, I’d complain about Leif.” She pointed behind Jimmy to where Leif was skipping toward the back hallway wearing a Pikachu outfit and a strap-on. “I don’t even want to know what’s going on back there.”
He shrugged. “Some Furry poker game.”
“They’re not really Furries.”
“Does he look like one?”
Pree had to laugh. “Yeah. He does.”
He swung a folding chair around and straddled it. “Come on, it’s quitting time.”
“It’s four.”
“Like I said. The guys have beer.”
“I’m not playing Furry poker.”
“I’ll give you a raise.”
“Couldn’t offer me enough.” It was good, this give-and-take. Somehow intoxicating, easy, sweet, and heady. He felt it, too. She could tell, by the way he leaned forward, tipping the chair toward her, by the way he kept his eyes on hers. Pree focused on not looking away, not giving up first.
“You want a beer in my office?”
Saying yes would mean something right now, so much more than a beer.
“Drinking with the boss?” She didn’t mean drinking.
He knew she didn’t. “No strings.”
Her stomach flipped. This was the moment she’d told herself she’d walk away from. She’d sworn it to herself, knowing herself to be smarter and better than just some girl Jimmy was interested in for the moment. She thought about his wife. The fact that he was a father. “Yeah,” Pree said anyway. “Sure.”
In his office, Jimmy didn’t even bother with the pretense of offering her a beer. He reached behind her to lock the door. She didn’t move away from him. “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” he whispered against her mouth.
“I really think we should have an HR department,” she said, pulling at his belt buckle so his pelvis hit hers. Fuck Flynn. Fuck everything. Nothing mattered but this man with the sad, smoky eyes who knew exactly what effect he had on her. “Who am I going to complain to tomorrow?”
“Me, of course. I’m great with people.” Then he kissed her with calculation and talent, and Pree forgot about everything else. His mouth was harder than Flynn’s, rougher, just as she knew it would be.
His words were rougher, too—darker, dirtier—making her instantly wet. “Come on, little girl. I want to know what that tight little pussy of yours feels like. Little thing like you, can you take it?” She didn’t let him take off her pants, but she allowed him to slide his fingers inside her. He was good at it and she almost came, but she wouldn’t let herself. That would be cheating. Like this isn’t, her mind chided.
Pree bit Jimmy’s shoulder so he’d know she’d been there. Later, she wanted him to take off his shirt in front of the mirror and see the little ring of teeth impressed next to his clavicle. She wanted the family man to have to hide it from his family.
Then she took him in her mouth. He came with a guttural growl that sounded fake but obviously wasn’t. He tasted different than Flynn—thinner, somehow. Watered down. Pree gasped on the floor, pulling her bra back on. The dust of the carpet made her nose itch, and her knee was wedged against two surge protectors.
For just a minute, Pree wished that he’d been inside her, that she could just pretend the fetus inside her was his, that she could backdate the pregnancy somehow. Wouldn’t it change things? Wouldn’t it be better, carrying the child of a proven family man?
“I’m going to complain to management,” she said. “Jesus Christ, it’s hot in here.”
“I could say the same about you.” Jimmy twisted and wriggled sideways and opened his mini-fridge, pulling out a beer. “Want one now?”
Beer. God, Flynn loved beer. It was his religion, he always said. The only three things he needed: Pree and beer and heating iron till it twisted.
Pree flopped backward so she could look under Jimmy’s desk. Later in the week, when he was gone for the night, she’d come back in here and slap her RARE right there, just above where his right knee probably was most days. He’d never know.
“I have to go,” she said, buttoning her jeans.
“Hey. Are you all right?” He smiled at her, and she couldn’t read it. Was it a smile he would have given to his wife? Or his daughter?
“Yeah.” She racked her brain, and then her cell beeped. She dug it out of her pocket and scanned the text.
Want to come to my place and talk? I’ll grill something.
Kate.
“My birth mother,” she said, waving the phone at him, grateful for the excuse. “We’re meeting again at her house for dinner.”
“Hey, are you really okay?”
Jimmy started to reach for her, but Pree let herself out of his office before he could say anything else. She didn’t meet Steve’s surprised eyes in the hallway. She would blame it all on the heat in the building. And raging hormones. That’s what this was.
Flynn’s face filled her vision, his sweet blue eyes, those innocent, full lips. Those hands that knew what she needed before she did.
Grabbing her backpack, she raced out of the building toward her car. She texted as she walked. Is now ok? Maybe Kate was working; maybe she’d disturb her flow. For one second, she allowed herself a brief fantasy of going to the art store with Kate to look at supplies. Everyone who worked there would know her, would know she was Kate’s daughter. They’d remark on the resemblance. Kate would put her arm around her in a quick hug, and they’d discuss the merits of oil sticks versus tubes.
Another text landed, a response from Kate. Of course. She sent the address, though Pree didn’t need it—she’d had it memorized since she’d first looked her up in the adoption database.
Pree should feel guilty, and she didn’t—not real guilt, anyway. Feeling remorse about not feeling more guilty was somehow unfair, right? Sorrow was stuck like a lump in her throat and she was sure if she tried to talk to anyone, she would cry.
You should have been smart enough to not get pregnant. The words rattled around in her head, knocking against her cheeks red-hot with shame.
She was smart enough. Or she thought she had been, anyway. Newly graduated, in a new town, new job, she’d thought she’d pulled it off, what she’d planned. She’d been so proud of herself. That was, really, the worst part.
Chapter Nineteen
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
6 p.m.
I apologize if this is the last thing you want to think about but my six-year-old is really sick. She’s in a coma. The doctors say that it’s up to us when we want to take her off life support. I know that’s not what you went through, but I thought you might be able to help. To tell me how to feel. I don’t think I can kill my baby.
• • •
Nolan snapped his computer shut at the knock. He opened the door to find a camera and microphone pointed at him. A skinny man wearing an ill-fitting polyester jacket and under-eye concealer stood in front of him, so excited he was almost hopping.
The guy stuck his fist out to introduce himself. “Carey Pike, Channel 7 News. I managed to track you down as one of the people who saved Officer John Collins today, and we’d love to talk to you for a minute.”
The last time Nolan fought his way out from under the press’s interest, they were anything but polite, shouting at him as he held his hand to his face to cover his eyes. How do you feel knowing your child’s last moments weren’t with his mother? How does it feel to be found guilty of criminally negligent homicide? How does it feel to kill your only child?
“You gotta be fucking with me.” Nolan was still off the record, right? The camera didn’t look like it was on. He pushed the barking Fred Weasley back. “Stop, Fred. Quit it.”
&
nbsp; Pike looked amused. “No, sir. We love a good hero story.”
Didn’t he know? Surely reporters did at least a cursory Internet search when they went out to do an interview? “What’s your real angle?”
“Just that, sir. You’re with an Oakland Public Works crew, and you saved an officer who wouldn’t have made it today. Makes a nice piece, don’t you think?”
Nolan looked at his feet. “It’s all right. I guess. I was just doing what anyone else would do in my position.”
Pike’s face lit up. He was a young one, this guy. “Would you mind saying that again with the camera on?” He gestured to the man behind him. “Joe, you ready?”
Nolan stepped farther out onto his small porch, shutting the door so maybe Fred would quit barking already. The apartment where he lived was arranged like one of the old sixties motels, but there was no inner courtyard, just doors that faced their small parking lot. The manager, Sammy, had done what he could with flowers in halves of wine barrels, but he had also been MIA for the last three months while he recovered from open-heart surgery, and the plants were showing it. Some were spindly, and some were all the way dead, unhappy with the rainwater that was all the nourishment they got. Nolan had felt sad for them before, but now felt only embarrassment. This wasn’t a good idea. What if Kate saw him on TV? What if she saw where he lived?
But it was too late. The bright light was in his eyes, and Pike held the microphone at the ready.
“I’m here with Nolan Monroe, who just hours ago saved the life of a man important to our community. Officer John Collins is well respected on the Oakland police force and has been with the department for twenty-two years. He’s served on SWAT and Vice, and three years ago made the news when he was stabbed while stopping a rape in progress. Hailed as a hero by many, Officer Collins has a new hero tonight. Nolan, we understand that you found the officer unmoving by his car?”
So far it was okay. “Yeah.” Nolan nodded.
“What did you think had happened?”
“I thought he might be having a heart attack.” So much for excitement in journalism. Nolan knew he sounded lackluster, but wasn’t sure what he should do about it. Jumping up and down as if he were winning an award didn’t seem like it would be a great idea. He settled for pasting a semblance of a smile on his face. “So I started CPR.”
“This was after you used the officer’s own radio to alert emergency personnel of your position.”
“I, um. Yeah.”
“Did anyone help you?”
The reporter knew the answer to that, Nolan was sure. He remained silent.
“You did CPR on him for how long before the paramedics arrived?”
“I don’t know. Maybe four minutes? Five?”
Pike looked at the camera. “Five minutes can mean the difference between life and death. And that’s something that Nolan Monroe knows intimately, don’t you, sir? Three years ago, Nolan was convicted of criminal negligent homicide, killing his son, and almost taking his own life in the process of asphyxiation by carbon monoxide in their Oakland home just a few miles from here.”
Shit. Nolan took a step back, but the camera swiveled to his face and followed him. “Get out.”
“How long did the paramedics perform CPR on you, Nolan? The report says twelve minutes. They shocked you twice. They were the heroes that day, saving your life even if they couldn’t save your son’s. Do you feel like what you did today evens the score a little bit?”
This was a nightmare. A bloodbath. “I was just there—I told you.”
“You were there because you work on the roads, right? Picking up trash? You used to be a corporate lawyer, is that correct?”
Nolan managed to squeeze the door shut then, kicking out Pike’s boot with his own, twisting both locks into place.
His breathing was heavy. Fred panted next to him. For a second, Nolan imagined reopening the door and repeating to the reporter what he’d heard in his head for the first two years, and still heard, every morning and night: I should be dead. I should be dead. It was the refrain that his blood sang in the morning when he woke, that his breathing echoed when he slept. He shouldn’t be here now, and he shouldn’t have been on the side of the road earlier that day when Officer Collins fell, and when Pike knocked tonight, no one should have been there to answer the door.
Nolan was living a dead man’s life, and the pain of it was almost enough to kill him all over again. Almost, but not quite. It would be worse later, when the piece aired. When the guys found out. He’d known it was probably a matter of time, but he’d hoped anyway, hoped outrageously that he’d never be found out. That people he cared about would never look at him that way again.
Tears would hurt less than this perpetually sucked-in breath, he knew that—kind of like when you had the stomach flu and puking was the only thing that made you feel better. But he was saving them up for when he really needed them. He would bet that man who wrote him tonight about his little girl was storing them up, too, or at least he hoped he was. Nolan opened the computer and reread the e-mail.
It was still there. And in the time the computer had been closed, another had come in. Shorter and badly spelled, it carried the same sentiment.
How do u know its time? Once I put my dog down, but he told me with his eyes it was time. My boy keeps his eyes cloesed now.
Nolan wanted to answer them.
He couldn’t, though. He had no way to help. There was nothing he could say that could ease the pain of a parent losing a child, and god knew he wasn’t going to assist another parent to kill their child.
But what if the kid was for all intents and purposes already gone? Where did someone else presume to step in? To give advice? Shit, what would he have given back then for an answer that was true?
Anything. He’d have given anything, and everything—all he had, and then he would have stolen more to give if he’d had to. If only someone would have answered him.
The space in his throat just under his tongue felt like it was closing, and Nolan swallowed convulsively. Any day now, the tears would break free and the resulting flood would wash away everything he’d built up, would wash away Fred Weasley and his apartment and his beat-up Honda and the only photo of Robin he still had, dog-eared and tucked into the back of his wallet. It would all be gone in the rushing salt water, all of it, gone. And the easiest goddamn thing to lose would be himself.
Chapter Twenty
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
6:30 p.m.
The nervous energy burned in Kate’s hands, flaring from her elbows, combusting at her wrists. She moved through the house, touching things as if she could imbue each item with specialness, with clear and obvious originality. This lamp, this couch, this chair—would Pree like them? Would she hate them? Would Pree expect a bohemian artist’s studio, inspiration filtering in at the windows? Would she be disappointed to find instead a sturdy suburban home in which the Costco toilet paper was waiting in the hallway to be put away? Would she walk in and then immediately turn on her heel and leave after seeing that Kate’s bills were piled on the end of the kitchen countertop, their paper edges splashed carelessly with coffee? There was so much to do. Kate had broken a glass in the sink yesterday and had left it there, unable to start the process of cleaning it up, but it would be unforgivable if Pree got cut on the glass just because Kate was careless. (Of course, when Kate did try to clean it up, she nicked her careless, restive hands not once but three times on the slivers.)
She brushed her teeth once more, still trying to rid herself of the taste of the police officer’s mouth. God. It had been so different, so much more work, blowing into a full-grown man’s lungs. The sound had been the same, though, air whistling into a desperate vacuum.
She was still staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, unseeing, when the doorbell rang, shattering the silence. Pree.
Pree stood on the porch, the darkness of the evening folded around her narrow shoulders. Her eyes, caught in the dim porch light, looked m
iserable, but then the girl brightened as if on cue. So young. How could this girl be twenty-two? If she couldn’t see Nolan’s ears, her own eyebrows, she’d wonder if this was the right girl on her stoop. “Hi . . . hi there.”
No, even as young-looking as Pree was, this was Kate’s daughter, no doubt. That voice was Robin’s voice, always rusty as if it weren’t used often.
“Come in,” said Kate. Should she display how happy she was? How eager she was to see her? Or should she play it cool? Was that even possible? Feeling overcome by indecision, Kate stepped backward into the living room and let Pree follow her.
They sat, both carefully formal. Kate crossed her legs at the ankle; Pree crossed hers at the knee.
“So, how are you?” said Kate, but her words rang strangely, and she had no follow-up line. Her eyes fell to the carpet. She should have at least vacuumed. “Are you hungry? I have some chicken we can grill . . .”
Instead of answering, Pree bounced again to her feet and moved to the window. She frowned, and then cupped her hands to the glass, peering out into the dark. “Is that . . . ?”
“What?”
“Is that a bathtub down there? On the hill?”
Kate smiled. Of all things, she noticed that. “Yeah.”
“But . . . it’s out there. Outside.”
“No one can see.”
“I can see.”
“But we’re the only house that can see it. These are the only windows that look through the trees at it.”
“So you think. There’s a satellite up there with your name on it.”
It was funny, Nolan had always said the same thing, only he’d laughed and said he’d commissioned the satellite’s cameras.
Pree turned, shoving her hands in her jeans pockets, and she changed the subject abruptly. “So I had a brother?” Her eyes, the same pale blue as Robin’s, bored into Kate.
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