“No,” Michaela began, who’d been on her way to one of her many meetings, but halted when I shrieked. “You have to—”
“No! I have to donate! Platelets! Now!”
All background noise ceased. And I could feel about a thousand eyes on me. For once, literally for this one time, I didn’t care.
“I get to do one normal thing in this weird stupid life/lives of mine, and that’s go to the Red Cross and donate platelets! One normal thing! Out of a million-zillion abnormal things! Do I ask for anything besides that? Huh? Do I?”
George opened his mouth.
“Shut up, George!”
George closed his mouth.
“I read about murder and I hear about murder and I study murder, and when I’m not doing all that I go to murder scenes and look at dead bodies and try to catch murderers, and then I see a shrink or two or five, and then I see more bodies, and then I have a meeting while my boss chops everything in sight into tiny quarter-size pieces while we all pretend that isn’t weird weird weird and one of my personalities is a motorcycle-obsessed psycho and the other one is a competitive bitch who can’t leave the new girl alone for five seconds and now I have a dog even though I can’t have a dog and I have a boyfriend and possibly a crush on a man who isn’t him and I…” I groped behind me, felt something soft, hurled it. “Want…” Groped, threw. “To donate…” Groped, threw. “Platelets!”
Dead silence.
“So I am going and don’t you dare try to nail me with a Thorazine dart on my way out the door!”
“Furthest thing from my mind,” a wide-eyed Michaela said. “Though if you could come back straight after…”
“Fine! I will! But now, I’m leaving!”
“All right.”
“Yeah, chill out,” a pale George added.
“It’s not like you haven’t earned a break,” Emma Jan piped up.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Okay. I’m leaving.”
“Okay.”
I stomped toward the elevator, fully expecting the sting of a dart, followed by muddy unconsciousness. But it never came. Everybody just watched me go.
I kept the scowl on my face until the doors shut, then couldn’t help smile. My! That felt terrific! Should have done it a long time ago.
Then, inevitably, guilt swamped my brain and smashed my joy like a copy of Gone With the Wind smashed a bug.
* * *
I was the one who returned … it really was too soon to donate platelets, so Cadence had merely gone for a walk around the block, enjoying her independence. She could be so cute at times!
There on my desk, waiting for me/us, was a note asking that I see Michaela. Which, after Cadence’s tantrum, I expected.
Still, I had to force a pleasant expression when I got to her office. “What can I do for you?”
Michaela had gotten up to close her office door. Now, on her way back around her desk, she sat and looked at me. “Did you know Patrick was in jail?”
Nothing. Silence. The last two words, “in jail” … I could almost feel their weight.
No. I had not known. But I would get to the bottom of it. Immediately. I stood, only to hear her sharp, “Sit down.”
I sat.
“I must apologize; this is literally the first chance I’ve had to address this. Your boyfriend was arrested late last night. Apparently you and he had a fight—”
“It was not a fight.”
“—and Adrienne showed up. She did a great deal of property damage while she was driving the body. For reasons I do not understand, when the authorities showed up in response to the alarm, Patrick took the blame. He confessed to everything Adrienne did. As Adrienne was long gone and he stayed behind to face the music, he was arrested.
“My understanding is that Adrienne went back home and fell asleep. And Cadence woke up a few hours later, and you know the rest.”
I could feel my eyes getting bigger and bigger.
“I will be going down there within the hour. He’ll be released OR. Trial date will be in a few weeks, unless I can persuade the DA to see things my way. And I can be quite persuasive when I wish.”
No doubt.
“It helps that Patrick is willing to pay for the damages. I estimated the damage to be in the low six-figure range, and told him so. He didn’t care.”
“He’s rich,” I said through numb lips. Took the blame? Was willing to foot the bill? What … who…?
“Yes. I thought you might like to know the situation before I went downtown.”
I was as bewildered as I had ever been. I was having to process a lot of information in a very short time. And that was just about George Stinney. “What is the situation? And how is it that you know all this?” And why hadn’t I, you treacherous wench?
“Because I was his phone call.”
I was silent, brooding over that one. It was doable. It was even plausible. Patrick and Cadence had recently exchanged address books. He traveled a great deal for work, and wanted the three of us to always be able to reach him. Cadence had felt reciprocation was only polite, and I did not care enough to intervene. So he had Michaela’s contact information.
I had to say, I admired his cool head. It had taken some brass ones to call Michaela. Especially when he could afford the finest lawyer in the state.
Especially when he had done nothing wrong, except frighten me. And whose fault was that? Not his. Not this time. I had assumed the worst, and fled, leaving Patrick to face Adrienne in one of her rages.
I was shamed by the nobility of a baker.
“He said something about Adrienne making a mess of the local PetCo being his fault.”
I wondered if Adrienne had brought Olive along on her rampage. That poor dog. Having to tolerate one of us would be difficult for any animal.
“He said he had done something that had set the entire thing off, and because of that, he felt the blame should lie with him.”
The house. His house. He was talking about moving in. He knew I had been upset. He must have realized how upset once he knew Adrienne was coming. So he … he …
I burst into tears. This was a first. Normally Cadence cried in here. If I had not been so miserable, I would have been still more ashamed.
Michaela, thank all the gods, never changed expression. I might have been discussing her stock options. She wordlessly handed me a box of Kleenex. BOFFO should buy stock; we went through hundreds of boxes a week.
“That fool. That idiot. He should not have … he … fool, fool, oh, Patrick, I am going to strangle you!”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Good.” I ferociously blew my nose. “I did not say it. I did not threaten assault on an innocent man, certainly not where my supervisor would have overheard. I would like to see Patrick.”
She smiled, the half-smile I had always found mysterious and charming. “I thought you would. Run along, Shiro. You’re no good to me if you’re weeping over an incarcerated boyfriend.”
Weeping! The horror. I stood. Blew my nose again. Tossed the Kleenex into her garbage can. “Thank you, Michaela. For everything. I know I … I know I don’t tell you enough. Express enough gratitude for … for all that you do for us. I am grateful. Even if it’s difficult for me to show.”
My life was a nightmare. Emma Jan … was she right? Did I see Michaela as a mother figure? Did I want to please the only maternal person in my life?
She had brought me here, privately. Told me bad news with subtle kindness. Overlooked my inappropriate behavior. Comforted me … in her way. Offered me Kleenex.
Soon death would claim me. It had to. This couldn’t go on, surely.
“I just … cannot thank you enough,” I finished, sounding far too watery for my taste.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she yawned. “Run along, Shiro. I desire you to be on the other side of my door, now.”
Thankfully, I left. She might be a mother figure, but she would be the last to a
dmit it. Which was fine with me. So fine, I might faint from sheer gratitude.
But first things first.
chapter sixty-eight
When they brought him into the room, Patrick looked astonished to see me. Clearly, he had been expecting Michaela.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m your attorney. Thank you, Officers, I would like some time alone to confer with my client.” As they left, I sat across from Patrick, put my briefcase aside, and folded my hands on the table.
Patrick blinked at me in the powerful fluorescent light, then leaned forward and whispered, as if the microphones weren’t sensitive enough to pick up someone breaking wind in the vacuum of space, “Shiro, look, I really appreciate this but you can’t do this! You can’t pretend to be my lawyer.”
“Who is pretending? I am a lawyer.” I pulled the business card out of my left lapel pocket and slid it across the table to him. “In fact, right now I am your lawyer.”
He stared at me. He was still in his clothes from last night. No blood, thank heavens.
“You—you’re my lawyer?”
“I had nothing to do one week so I took the bar.”
Patrick slowly lowered his head to the table, then began banging it up and down. I stuck my hands in the way, so he was mashing his face into my palms. “Of course you did. Of course you did, it’s a perfectly normal thing, someone who doesn’t want to be a lawyer hanging around long enough to take the bar exam and passing it and every once in a while being a lawyer.” Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Stop that; you’re going to make my hands numb. And I do not understand your shock. I must say, it wasn’t especially difficult. Which really only lowered my general opinion of the legal profession,” I confessed. “Besides, once upon a time, all FBI agents had to be lawyers. That is why I took those courses in the first place.”
His head jerked up. “Once upon a—yeah, but Cadence isn’t.”
I snorted.
“And Adrienne isn’t.”
I laughed out loud.
He bent once more, kissed my palm, then ceased banging, to my great relief. He sat up. “Okay, Counselor. What’s the plan?”
“Stop breaking the law.”
“Got it. Step two?”
“Stop telling the police you’ve broken the law when you haven’t.”
“Oh.” He looked abashed. “You know about that, huh?”
“Of course, you hirsute moron.”
“I don’t shave one morning and here comes the name calling,” he complained as he ran a hand over his stubble.
“I also know that you foolishly assumed Adrienne’s actions were your fault. I know you foolishly confessed to crimes you did not commit: destruction of property, breaking and entering—”
“Mostly it was just breaking.”
“Do not interrupt your attorney. You will be relieved to know I have arranged for your release. And Michaela knows the DA, so there may not be a trial. It was kind of you to offer to pay the damages, but I cannot allow that; I already have to deal with too much shame on this issue, so we shall work something out.”
“Shiro, you guys don’t have that kind of money and you know I’ll never miss it, so—”
“In the meantime. It would be a tremendous help if you … yes?” I prompted.
“Didn’t break the law?” he guessed.
“Correct. And?”
“Didn’t say I broke the law when I didn’t?”
“An A-plus for my star pupil. Come along, Patrick. You idiot.”
He didn’t move. “I’m really sorry I scared you. I shouldn’t have said anything. I messed it up and…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t figure out how to make it right.”
So in typical Mars fashion (as in, Men Are from Mars, Women et cetera), he had tackled the larger problem. The one he knew he could influence.
“I’m really sor—”
“Do not apologize for inviting me to move in with you. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.”
“And one of the scariest.”
“Well. Yes. But that is hardly your fault.”
“But the big problem was, I was the coward. Not you. I was the chickenshit.”
“What are you talking a—”
He wriggled in his chair; I was betting he wanted to stretch more, or pace, but was forcing himself to sit still and keep eye contact. Interesting.
“When we were talking about dogs. How I knew about dogs. My sister had one when she was little. When she started … to get sick. Really sick. My parents…” He shook his head. “They couldn’t handle it. Okay, that’s not right … they wouldn’t handle it. Cathie was getting sicker and sicker and at first they said it was just for attention, then they decided it was a learning disability. They grounded her and got her new teachers and tried everything except what she needed, what it was obvious to all of us what she needed: a shrink. They never tried therapy, they thought it was something weaklings endured.
“Meantime it was ‘Patrick, are you packed for college?’ and ‘Patrick, have you signed up for Freshman Orientation?’ and ‘Patrick, are you sure you want to be prelaw?’ and that’s all they wanted to talk about. Their youngest, something was very wrong with their youngest, but they didn’t want to talk about that, they wanted to talk about their brilliant oldest, headed for college at seventeen.
“And I kept … I kept asking about Cathie, if she was better, maybe she should go to a hospital or something, you know … anything, right? And they were all ‘don’t worry about a thing, she’s fine, shouldn’t you be packing,’ blah-blah. They were lying and I knew they were lying and I just … just let them take me away.”
“Patrick, you were just a kid yourself, and Cathie’s mental instability obviously wasn’t your fau—”
“Shut up, I can only say this once.” He made a slashing gesture with his hand I had never seen, which went with the tight, hard tone of voice I had never heard, and though I mentally raised my eyebrows I let him continue.
“So after I was gone, after I’d been at school, I found out they committed her. A little kid! They went right to the out-of-sight-out-of-mind option and signed her over to the goddamned institute!”
His hands were fists on the table between us and he was breathing hard. After a long moment I said, “If you are awaiting condemnation, I trust you packed a lunch. Patrick, it was not your fault. Cathie being ill was not, and your parents’ cowardice was not, and you wanting to continue your life by leaving for college was not. Do you wish she and I had never met? We might not have, if things had happened another way.”
“Of course not.” Still he would not look at me. “It’s just … I went to school and I made a life away from all of them—her included—I just let them shut her away from the world. And when she met you—when I met you—I think I loved you before we met. Because when I found out…”
“Found out?” I asked gently.
“When I realized what my parents had done … what I had let them do because I let them send me away … I could actually feel myself start to go crazy. I could feel … I thought, Yay, I’m going nuts, too, I can keep Cathie company, wheee! I could … actually … I could actually feel my sanity sort of … teetering.” He held me with his dark gaze, where tears shone but did not fall. “Like it was a boat. Like my sanity was a boat on a lake and the lake was in the middle of a storm. I could feel my … my self tipping and tilting. I could feel my self start to want to split. I could feel that.
“And when Cathie told me about you, and I met you, I thought, Here’s someone who had that happen … she split into pieces, only she couldn’t stop it in time. It was like … when I knew you, it was like I always knew you. All the pieces of you. Not just the ones you thought were safe to show the world.”
I realized I had been staring at him, openmouthed. My pretty baker, the boyfriend I assumed I had taken on my terms!
“I have taken you terribly for granted,” was all I could say to his extraordinary story. Oh. There
was one other thing. “And feeling responsible for Cathie’s mental illness is not only foolish, it is arrogant and self-serving.”
Now his mouth was hanging open. “What?”
“In a nice way,” I assured him. “With the very best of intentions. You should have a chat with Cathie about just this sort of thing.”
“I told Cathie all about it ages ago,” he snapped. “We used to talk about it every week in therapy.”
“You and Cathie have therapy?”
“Not anymore. But once I got out of college and actually grew a pair, of course I was going to talk to her about … about everything. Now my folks are … fading, I guess is the polite term, now they want to see her. It’s their own fault she doesn’t want to see them, but that’s—” He shook his head. “I didn’t plan for any of this when they told me my lawyer was here.”
I laughed. “No doubt! I brought enough of my own baggage; I never dreamed you had some of your own to share. And this,” I said grimly, “this is from someone who does have all sorts of therapy a week. Patrick, the truth is I was afraid. I was a coward. You were just a boy; I don’t even have the excuse of immaturity. You offered me something wonderful and my response was to run away from it. You deserve better.” Yes. So run, Patrick. Run like the wind. I can only offer you more pain.
He raised dark brows at me, and smiled. “Sure about that?”
“Yes. I…” I looked away, then back. “I love your house.”
His smile widened. “My house?”
“Yes. And I would love to live in your house. With you. I just do not know how the three of us—”
“Five,” he said, his smile widening.
“Sorry?”
“The five of us. You, me, Cadence, Adrienne, and Olive the Dawg.”
“Olive the Dawg?”
“Yeah.”
I sighed and picked up my briefcase. “We will have to talk about this.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At length.”
“Yep.”
“Because it will be tricky. The sleeping issue. The sex issue.” Specifically: we weren’t having any with Patrick yet. Cadence was still a virgin. I was not, though it had been several months since I had indulged. And I didn’t know what Adrienne was. No one knew. No one wanted to know. Ever. “We will have to have a plan. Why are you smiling?”
Yours, Mine, and Ours Page 22