“I thought you said you loved to play,” Corgi says suspiciously after his second easy victory.
“I didn’t say I was good at it.”
“Good thing,” notes Jorge.
Dad was so genuinely bad at the game that losing to him was more challenging than beating most casual players. Once I realized other people were more likely to let me stay and play if I wasn’t a threat to their pride? Well. Maybe part of me keeps the losing streak alive for Dad, but it’s also a strange form of pragmatism. Playing to lose lets me keep playing without any kind of pressure or drama.
We reset the pieces for the next game, and Happy comes around the tables to take my place, threatening to beat Corgi black and blue for some perceived insult. Corgi’s grinning.
Men say I love you in the strangest ways.
“Come play with me, Miss Priya,” Gunny invites, nudging his pieces back into starting position.
Everyone rearranges, finding new partners and squabbling over colors. I take the nothing man’s seat, but he just slides down one to face a (relatively) young Desert Storm vet who introduces himself as Yelp.
I managed not to ask with Corgi and Happy, but Yelp?
He grimaces, cheeks pink and stretched in a sheepish smile. “Got the name in Basic,” he mumbles. “Sarge would sneak up behind and bellow orders in my ear. Jumped a foot damn near always. Named me Yelp.”
And those kinds of names stick.
The nothing man looks at me with a small smile, but doesn’t offer his name. I don’t ask—there’s something about him, and I don’t want to risk him conflating courtesy with interest.
Gunny’s focus on the game isn’t great. He loses track of moves, forgets whose turn it is. Sometimes he gets caught up in a rambling story and doesn’t realize he hasn’t made his move yet. I don’t try to remind him, unless he looks confused. To be honest, I’d much rather be hearing about him and his buddies getting blitzed on fine wine in an abandoned chateau and trying to teach a cow to ski. It’s a little hard to picture this old man having that kind of energy, but he couldn’t have been much older than me when he got shipped out.
Every now and then Yelp looks at our board and shakes his head, giving me a wry look. I shrug, but don’t try to explain. My reasons are my own.
Gunny dozes off halfway through our second game. One of the Korea vets, who introduces himself as Pierce, drapes another blanket over the older man’s shoulders, tucking it up under his chin and over his hands. “Store offered to let us use their café,” he says gruffly, embarrassed, I think, by his own kindness. “Gunny said he’s old, not dead, and we’ll be out here or nowhere.”
“Nothing wrong with a little pride,” I reply. “At least not when you’ve got brothers to temper it with a bit of sense.”
He blinks at me, startled, and then smiles.
“I should probably head out anyway. There’s schoolwork I need to look over before tomorrow.” I ease off the bench, stretching stiff, aching muscles. “I’ll be back on Friday, if that’s okay.”
“Come on back whenever you want, Blue Girl,” Pierce says. I have a feeling Gunny will be the only one to call me Priya. “You’re welcome here.”
A little bubble of warmth blooms beneath my sternum. I’ve been allowed into a number of chess groups over the years, but this is the first time I’ve been truly welcomed since Boston.
I fix my coat, pull my hat back on, and head across the parking lot into the Kroger to get a hot drink. The space heaters keep the pavilion comfortable, if a bit on the chilly side, but the walk back home is long enough I’d rather have cocoa to keep me company.
It’s a pretty long line in the café, which seems to be the result of a new barista, working solo, trying to fill the constantly changing orders of a horde of older women in purple and red.
Is there a collective noun for the Red Hat Society ladies?
Next to the line, just a few feet away from me, someone settles into a chair, draping his heavy brown coat over the back of another chair. It’s the nothing man from chess. He pulls a book from the pocket of the coat, a large paperback so battered and busted it’s impossible to know what it is. The pages curl at the sides, the spine is cracked in too many places, and the front and back covers are gone. Just gone. He opens the book, but he’s not looking at it.
He’s looking at me. “A drink does sound just the thing.”
Then why isn’t he in line?
I shift my weight, sidling a few inches away. He’s not even that close, really, it just feels invasive. And I probably shouldn’t keep calling him the nothing man; that’s the kind of thing that spills out by accident and causes problems. “I don’t think I ever got your name.”
“I don’t think I ever gave it.”
I shuffle forward as the line moves. One of the red-and-purple ladies is scolding, and the barista looks about to break down.
“It’s cold outside,” the man says after a little too long being silent.
“It’s February in Colorado.”
“It makes for a cold walk,” he continues, either missing or ignoring the sarcasm. “Would you like a ride?”
“No, thank you.”
“You like the cold?”
“I need the exercise.”
I don’t turn, but I can feel his eyes move down, then back up. “You don’t, not really. You’re fine as you are.”
What the hell is wrong with people?
I move forward again, a little too far away for him to politely speak, and after another couple of minutes, up to the register. “Venti hot chocolate, please.”
“And your name?”
“Jane.” I pay, get my change, and slide along the counter to the pickup spot. The Red Hat ladies are flocked around the condiments bar, gradually migrating to a corner where they push all the tables together.
“Jean!” calls the barista. Close enough.
I wade through the last of the purple-and-red horde, doctor my drink, and start toward the door.
“It gets dark early; are you sure you don’t want that ride?” offers the nothing man as I pass him.
“I’m sure, thank you.”
“My name is Landon.”
No, his name is Creep.
But I nod to acknowledge and walk off.
Creepy men are an unfortunate fact of life. I watched Chavi get harassed from a young age, and I had to put up with it myself even before I got walloped with the puberty stick. I’ve never seen anyone brave enough to be inappropriate to Mum, but I’m sure it happens. It probably just comes out in more subtle fashion.
There’s only one surprise when I check the mail: a plain white envelope with a return address I don’t recognize, but my info is written out in Vic’s blocky print and the frank is from Quantico. Inside the house, I peel off layers and hang them in the front closet, then turn to the spindly, tile-topped table at the base of the stairs. A butterfly with open wings spans the four tiles, all soft, dreamy greens and purples, but it’s almost completely covered with a circle of yellow silk chrysanthemums, a fat red candle, and a picture frame.
That’s where Chavi lives now, in that frame and others like it. The frame is coated in gold glitter, worn away to the gold paint beneath in the upper left corner. The three of us spent a long time deciding which picture to put in there. We knew which one we wanted, which was the most quintessentially Chavi, but it was also the one the police and media used, the one that was plastered all over the Web and the papers and the posters asking if anyone had information. Eventually, we went with it anyway. It was Chavi.
It was her senior photo, and even against the standard mottled-grey background and the self-consciously awkward chin-on-fist pose, the things that make her her blaze out. There’s a light in her eyes, framed with heavy black wings and shimmering white-and-gold shadows, with a bright slash of red at her mouth to match the streaks in her hair. Her bindi and nose stud were red and clear crystal, set in gold, bold and warm like the rest of her. Her skin was darker than mine, dark like Dad’
s, which just made the color stand out that much more. What made the photo most Chavi, though, was that she’d completely forgotten that was the day of her appointment. She’d spent the morning playing with a new box of oil pastels, then had to rush to get ready, and she managed to look flawless—save for the rainbow smear of pastels on the outside of the fist propping up her chin.
Digging out the box of matches from the tiny drawer under the tabletop, I light the red candle and lean over to kiss that worn corner. This is how we keep Chavi with us, part of our lives in a way that doesn’t feel too clingy or creepy or crazy.
We don’t have a picture up of Dad, but then, Chavi didn’t choose to leave. Dad did.
Settling onto the couch, I turn the envelope over in my hands, looking for clues about the contents. I don’t really like mystery mail; I got too much of it after Chavi died, people all over the country finding our address and sending us letters or cards or flowers. Hate mail, too; it’s astonishing how many people feel the need to write complete strangers to tell them why their loved one “deserved” to die. Vic’s handwriting is reassuring, but also strange. For anything more than a card, he usually warns me to keep an eye out for it.
And it is definitely not Vic’s writing inside. The script matches the return address, the letters elegant but simple, easy to read. There isn’t a greeting, just a launch straight into:
Victor Hanoverian tells me you know what it’s like to put yourself back together after terrible things.
I do too, or I used to. Maybe I still do, for myself, but there are others now, and I’m not sure what to tell them, or how to help them. Not the way I used to know or be able to guess.
My name is Inara Morrissey, and I’m one of Vic’s Butterflies.
Oh holy shit.
I glance over the rest of the letter, not even skimming so much as checking the handwriting to see if there’s a note from Vic, something to indicate why he decided to mail this. Doesn’t that break a rule or something? I know her name, of course—the Butterflies have been national news for almost four months now—but our cases are only connected through the agents. Isn’t there some Bureau regulation about keeping things separate?
But then, Vic was careful, wasn’t he? He didn’t give my address to Inara; he mailed it himself. I don’t have to reply, I don’t have to give her my information. How does she even know about me, though?
I go back to where I left off.
I saw your picture on Eddison’s desk a few weeks ago, and Eddison being the prickly bastard that he is, I was curious. I didn’t think he even liked people. Vic was the one to tell me who you were, or rather, what you were, at least when they met you. He said you lost your sister to a serial killer, and my first thought was “Huh, me too.”
I think that’s the first time I ever called any of the girls my sister, and I was surprised by how much it hurt. To lose them again in a new way, maybe, or that I felt that way about them and I never said.
I’m not asking what happened to you. I know I could look it up, but I don’t want to. To be honest, I’m far less interested in what happened to you than I am in what you chose to do after.
It was easy to be strong in the Garden. The others looked to me and I could let them because I knew how to tread water and I could hold them while they learned. We’re out now, though, and they’re looking to me to be as strong as I was in the Garden, and I don’t know how to do that with everyone watching.
I don’t know how to do any of this. I was always broken, and I was always okay with that. I was what I was. Now people are clamoring to see how I’ll fix myself, and I don’t want to fix myself. I shouldn’t have to. If I want to stay broken, isn’t that my choice?
When Vic mentions you, or just hears your name, he looks like it’s one of his own girls being talked about. Eddison actually seems to like you, and I was fairly convinced he hated anything with a pulse. And Mercedes smiles, and looks a little sad, and I’m coming to understand that she’ll smile at anyone, but she’s only sad for the people she loves.
They adopted you, in their way, and now they’ve adopted me and I’m not entirely sure how to let them.
You don’t have to write back. I find I can’t talk to the other girls about any of this because they need me to seem stronger, and I don’t want to let them down. But Vic smiled when I asked if it would be okay to write, so I’m hoping it’s a better idea than it feels.
How do you put yourself back together when the pieces permanently lost are the only reasons anyone’s looking at you?
Um.
She’s asking me how to do something I’m not sure I’ve actually done. If I had to guess, that’s exactly why Vic sent the letter: because she’s right. We shouldn’t have to fix ourselves if we don’t want to. We shouldn’t have to be strong or brave or hopeful or any such bullshit. Mum has always emphatically stated that it’s okay to not be okay. We don’t owe that to anyone else.
I need to sit on this for a few days.
When Mum comes home a few hours later, laptop bag and briefcase in one hand, bags of takeout in the other, I have my journal out, searching for a way to explain how much it meant when Pierce said I was welcome at the chess pavilion. “Get the plates?” she asks, leaning down to kiss the frame and almost lighting her scarf on fire. She drops the bags beside her, the takeout with more care than her computer.
She looks beautiful and fierce in her work clothes, the grey pencil skirt and blazer severely tailored and not much softened by the lavender silk blouse and patterned scarf. Her long hair is pulled back into a tight twist and pinned to within an inch of its life, and her heels are just high enough to be authoritative, just low enough to still kick your ass. The only things that seem out of place are the things that carry over with her to after-work, the emerald-and-gold bindi and nose stud, and the slim gold hoop curving over the middle of her lower lip.
Mum very purposefully left her family and most of her culture behind in London when we came to America twelve years ago, but she kept the bits she liked. Mostly she kept the things that kept people from assuming we were Muslim. Mum didn’t much care if she was being somewhat sacrilegious as long as it kept her brown daughters safe. The bindi, the jewelry, the mehndi when we do it, they’re all supposed to have more weight than we give them.
I get up and get the plates and silverware. After bringing the takeout bag into the living room, I head back and grab a couple glasses of milk and some clean Tupperware. I wait, though, to let Mum dish out. It’s that self-control thing. I just feel better letting her control the portions.
She comes back downstairs in yoga pants and a loose, long-sleeved T-shirt that used to have the logo of Chavi’s high school printed across the front. You can still see bits of it, if you squint and already know what it’s supposed to say. The rest is faded and peeled and comfortably worn. Her hair is out of its pins, twisted into a haphazard braid down her back. This is the Mum who likes to bury her fingers in soil and help things grow, who’s always been as quick as her daughters to launch a pillow fight.
Plopping down onto the carpet so we can treat the coffee table like an actual table, she reaches out for the boxes and starts dishing out. Orange shrimp and lo mein noodles for her, sweet-and-sour chicken and white rice for me, each meal split about evenly between the plates and the Tupperware containers. She parcels out the sack of egg rolls but doesn’t try to separate the bowls of soup—wonton for me and egg drop for her. Takeout soup just doesn’t reheat well enough to bother. Tomorrow, we’ll both have the leftovers for lunch and some other kind of takeout for dinner.
Most of the kitchen is still in boxes, something that is unlikely to change in the coming weeks. Cooking is just not a thing that’s going to happen.
“How was chess?” she asks around a shrimp.
“It was good. I’m looking forward to going back.”
“Get a good feeling from everyone?”
“Almost everyone.” Her gaze sharpens on me, but I shrug and bite into a piece of sauce-covered
chicken. “I’ll avoid the exception.”
“You’ll take your pepper spray just in case?”
“It’s on my keys. Outer pocket of the coat.”
“Good.”
We eat in silence for a while, but it’s not awkward or uncomfortable, just a way to let the day process and filter out so we can enjoy the evening. Eventually she turns on the TV to a news channel and mutes it, skimming the headlines on the ticker and under the inset photos. When we’re done eating, we both stand to clear the table. She grabs the leftovers and trash, and I take the plates and silverware. We have a dishwasher, currently blocked off by two stacks of boxes, but there’s not really a reason to use it, not for only two of us. I rinse and wash everything and pop it on the drying rack next to the sink.
Mum settles back onto the carpet after, turning on the Xbox and a Lego game. I curl into the couch with my current journal.
For a long time, the only words on the page are Dear Chavi.
Chavi started the journals even before I was born. She took plain composition books and decorated the covers, and started writing me letters so she could prepare her baby sister for life. When I got old enough to learn how to write and start keeping my own journals, it just made sense to write back to her. We didn’t exactly read each other’s books. Sometimes we’d copy out sections or entries for the other, or read a bit aloud. We used to sit next to each other on one bed or another and write after Dad shooed us to bed—because if Dad was tired, we must all be tired—and I can’t even think how many times I fell asleep with my face on the page and a pen in hand, and woke up to my sister tucking me in next to her.
“Are we leaving Chavi behind?” I ask suddenly.
Mum pauses the game and looks over her shoulder at me. After a moment, she sets the controller on the table and leans against the couch.
“Going to France,” I clarify. “Are we leaving her behind?”
“Did we leave her behind when we left Boston?”
Her ashes are in a subdued urn that looks a bit more like a wine tube than anything else. Dad insisted we keep it on the mantel, but Mum and I keep it packed away, waiting for France and the chance to spread the ashes in lavender fields. Not that Chavi ever asked for that, because how many seventeen-year-olds have to think of funerary wishes, but it feels appropriate. She loved excursions to the Loire Valley when we used to visit, back when we lived in London.
The Roses of May (The Collector Trilogy Book 2) Page 4