As if he realized we were talking about him, a massive gray and white extremely fluffy cat sauntered into the room, tail high in the air, side-eyeing me while also acting as though I didn't exist.
"He's got an attitude problem," she told me, smiling down at Mal as he whacked his backend into her leg before disappearing under the couch, though I wasn't sure how the giant fluff ball fit.
"Think you have a thing for that personality trait," I told her, smirking.
"Apparently," she admitted, giving me hope. "Want something to drink?" she asked, waving a hand toward her kitchen, all white and stainless steel, the kind of clean that suggested she never used it. The only item that pointed to her actually spending any time there was the big bowl of peaches on the island that separated it from the rest of the space.
"Is that your whiskey?" I asked, nodding toward her glass bar cart.
"You want to try it?" she asked, sounding pleased in my interest.
"Two-hundred-dollar a bottle whiskey? Yeah, I think I need to try that."
With her distracted by getting my drink, my gaze moved around her space, seeing a wide doorway without a door that showed me the corner of a king-sized bed with pristine white bedding covering it, with a white nightstand on the side, and plants hanging from the curtain rod in the window.
Again, very clean, very organized, and kind of impersonal.
Turning, I glanced at the wall where the door to the hall was situated.
And there it was.
Something very personal.
And entire wall of pictures in mismatching white frames.
All of them with her brother Luis and the woman from the picture in her office with the darker skin and stunning eyes.
I was wrong about her being a friend.
Because many of the pictures were the three of them at various ages through childhood. Some with popsicle grins, some with missing teeth, some on vacation, some as teenagers, happy and light and carefree. Others were clearly from adulthood, the three of them seemingly as close as my siblings and I had been.
The woman was her sister.
"I just made it neat. I don't know how you take it," she told me, voice tense.
Why? Because I was looking at her pictures? Because I was maybe starting to uncover something?
Clearly, if that was all it took to set her off a bit, then I needed to be very careful about easing more information out of her.
"Neat is how I like it. You're not having anything?" I asked as she handed me the glass then moved back a couple steps, dropping down onto the couch, reaching for Mal despite the cat's protests to be left alone. Even from several feet away, I could see a few raised red marks from his claws.
The cat clearly hated her. Yet she had transformed her home into a feline sanctuary with stairs and catwalks and beds and a pile of toys. Hell, the damn thing had a water fountain instead of a normal water bowl.
"I'm more of a wine drinker, but I am not opening a bottle just for myself," she said, shrugging as she petted her ungrateful cat's head. "How is it?" she asked when I took a sip.
"Damn near worth the price-tag," I told her.
"Well, maybe when the price-tag comes down a bit, you will buy some for your personal collection."
"What? I don't get a free lifetime supply for giving you your brilliant new marketing strategy?"
"I will have to run the idea past my parents. Though, I would have to explain who you are to them. And that could get sticky."
"I'm a... consultant," I offered, shrugging, moving over toward the couch, sitting down on the far end from her, giving her some space.
"Maybe we can work something out," she agreed, finally releasing the cat when it nipped at her fingers. "Fine, suit yourself, Mr. Fuckwad," she called to him, and the cat had the audacity to flick his tail back at her as he disappeared into her bedroom. "He's going to throw up in my shoes. I know it."
"You got yourself a real companion animal there."
"He's an asshole. But I love him. Do you have any pets?"
"No. Though I am half-expecting Savea to show up at my door with some hideous rescue thing someday. She thinks I need a dog."
"Do you like dogs?"
"Yeah. I just work a lot. Cats are okay with that. Dogs, not so much."
"I'm pretty sure if I got an automatic feeder for Mal, he wouldn't even know if I disappeared for a year. They are low-maintenance that way. I wouldn't be able to get a dog right now either. I practically live at the office. He's not much, but at least he is something at home. This place feels really empty a lot of the time."
"Well, that might be because it is a space big enough for a family of five, and you barely have any shit in it."
To that, she gave me a small smile. "You know, I didn't realize my home didn't feel homey until I saw the Mallick house. Everything about it said to pull up a seat. My house says you better take off your shoes, and don't eat on the furniture."
"That's a pretty accurate description," I agreed, nodding at her apartment.
"I honestly didn't know any better. I was raised in homes like this. Beautiful, but un-lived in."
"A coat of paint could help a lot. You practically need sunglasses to be in here."
"That's funny," she said, folding forward, reaching for a box hidden under her coffee table, opening the lid, pulling out pieces of paper. "I actually picked up swatches yesterday."
"Those are some very daring shades of beige, babe," I agreed, looking at the dozen or so variations of almost the same color.
"Baby steps," she told me, tucking them back away.
"Gotta start somewhere."
"What's your house like?" she asked, pulling her knees to her chest, encircling them with her arms.
"Small," I admitted. "Got this old ranch on a song when the owners wanted to move to Florida for their joints."
"I sense a fixer-upper," she guessed.
"There was pink tile in the bathroom. Pink," I repeated, cringing at the memory. "I don't know. It's a two-bedroom. Has nice hardwood floors, a great fireplace, a decent yard."
"Why a yard? When you don't have kids or a dog. And, well, you don't strike me as a gardening sort."
"I don't like being on top of people. My siblings and I, we lived in cramped apartments for most of our lives. Never any breathing room. Next to no privacy. And when we did find some, we gave it to Scotti. When I could finally afford my own place, I decided I wanted to be as far away from people as possible."
"Well, yeah, you can't be a crotchety old man without a yard to tell the local youths to stay off of," she agreed, smiling at me.
The glass went from my hand to the coffee table a second before I lunged toward her, grabbing her at the hips, pulling her body toward mine, "Smartass," I told her, settling her on my lap, my hands sinking into her ass.
"We can't do this," she told me, shaking her head, eyes darting away. But before they did, I was sure I saw regret there.
She said we can't do this. Not that she didn't want to.
"Tell me you don't want it," I offered, her, my hands massaging her ass, making her hips drop down and do a needy little wiggle. "And I'll stop. I'll leave right now. I'll leave you alone."
It wouldn't be easy. But if she gave me those words, I would respect them.
"It doesn't matter if I want it or not."
"From where I'm standing, babe, that is the only thing that matters."
"That's not what I meant."
"Then tell me what you meant," I suggested, pinching her ass, shocking her enough to make her gaze find mine.
"We can't get involved," she insisted. "In any way."
"I am closing the case, babe. Kingston wants me to wrap it up. It's going to be over as soon as I get the call into him tomorrow. There's no issue."
"Except for the one where you think I am some psycho stalker," she objected, planting her hands on my chest to shove away, moving to find her feet, walking behind the couch to stare out the windows.
"I never said you we
re psycho. I think I said creepy," I clarified, earning me a look over her shoulder, making me realize that 'creepy' wasn't much better than 'psycho' in her book. Noted.
"Well, whatever. I don't want to get involved with someone who thinks those things about me, Nixon. It's not healthy."
"You know what is unhealthy?" I asked, waiting until she turned, leaning back against the wall, arms crossing over her chest.
"What?" she asked when she realized I wasn't going to answer until she asked to be told.
"Whatever happened to you outside of the Mallicks' last weekend."
"Nixon, don't," she pleaded, head shaking.
"I'm no shrink. Hell, I suck at understanding half of people's emotions. But I know enough to know that whatever the fuck is going on inside you is big. And that hurt runs deep. And you work hard and you paint your life in real pretty shades, so other people don't see all that rawness inside. But sometimes, you can't control it, and it bursts out because you have been trying to ignore it for too long."
"Nixon, stop."
There was a break in her voice.
A part of me wanted to let it go, wanted to allow her to keep her pieces together. The other part of me, though, understood that this was what needed to happen. We needed to smash all this to pieces and put it back together in the right way. The way that would allow her to stop falling apart randomly. In a stronger way, a more resilient way.
I could help her with that.
But I had to brandish the sledgehammer first.
"I think all that pain," I went on, gaze holding hers, waiting for the reaction to prove I was right because, fuck, I knew I was right, "has something to do with that woman in your pictures. Your sister. And I think it has to do with Michael too," I concluded, watching the flinch, the way her gaze fell, the tightness overtaking her body. "Tell me I'm wrong, and I'll leave."
It took a long time for her to speak, needing to swallow past the lump in her throat first.
"You're not wrong."
I knew it.
It was the only explanation.
She didn't want anything to do with Michael. I'd seen it with my own eyes. She was disgusted by him.
She'd never had any business dealings with him.
So there was no connection there that would be a reason to stalk the man.
But she clearly had a reason.
One that meant a fuckuva lot to her.
So much so that she wouldn't let it go even when she was found out.
That kind of comment was personal.
And what was more personal than family?
No, Reagan never personally had experience with Michael, but her sister did.
Whatever happened, it couldn't have been good.
No, it had to be bad enough that it brought out the stalker in her.
I just didn't know the exact details.
But one look at her face said she was one invitation away from giving them to me.
"I think it's time you tell someone about it, don't you?"
TEN
Reagan - 2 years ago
I was distracted that day.
That was what my memory reminded me, shooting images of me rushing around my apartment, texting without looking, trying to find a file I had somehow managed to misplace from just the night before.
Work was crazy.
I was being pestered about three events over the same weekend.
My parents were waiting for an answer from me about my thoughts on buying one of the houses they owned and were unloading, wanting to scale down. And by "scale down" they just meant in the state of California. They were going to buy a villa in Tuscany the next spring.
But I had a million and a half things on my mind that day.
I would never forgive myself for that, for being caught up in my own world, for not stopping, taking a deep breath, really taking in every minute detail.
Maybe things would be different.
Maybe my world wouldn't have fallen apart.
But no wishful thinking could change the cold, hard truth.
When my sister showed up at my door, I was more worried about my date to get my hair colored than why she had shown up randomly.
Of course, as many therapists would tell me in the months following, I wasn't to blame. There was no reason to be suspicious. My siblings dropped over at my place all the time.
We had always been like that. We didn't call or text. We didn't knock or ring the bell. We used our key and let ourselves in because we knew we would always be welcome.
And she was.
Sammy.
She was always welcome.
I was happy to see her even as I overturned couch cushions looking for my missing file. I absentmindedly decided we would order in Chinese, would spend the night binging Gossip Girl on Netflix like we were in high school all over again.
"Everything alright?" I asked, finally finding my file, sitting down on the chair across from her, taking my first deep breath of the day.
"It's been a rough week," she admitted, reaching up to glide her hand over her smooth hair. I always thought it was prettier when she didn't get it straightened, but she liked the shine it got when it was ironed.
There were a lot of things to admire about Sammy. She'd always been the prettier girl--because, let's face it, Luis was the prettiest of us all. She had flawless skin even through the teen years that had me at a new dermatologist every month to try to get my skin sorted out. Her high cheekbones and gently pointed chin gave her an almost doll-like appearance. She was tall like me, but a little curvier than I turned out. She was also the softer, sweeter sister, all patience and love, easily likable. And everyone did. Like her. Immediately.
And yet, somehow, I had never felt any animosity toward her for being so pretty, so sweet, so agreeable.
Parents didn't have favorites, but Luis and I were sure they appreciated Sammy's nurturing side more than his vanity and my tendency toward being overly opinionated.
The last to be adopted and requiring months and months of nearly round-the-clock care for various niggling ailments she came into our family with, due to malnourishment at an under-funded orphanage, she was the baby of the family, the one who always needed our parents just a little bit more than we did. And they, getting older, knowing she would be their last, had fawned over her.
Which had turned her into the picture-perfect woman she turned out to be. No vanity like Luis. No bull-headedness like me.
We all loved her more than we loved ourselves at times.
"I know, right? Is Mercury in retrograde or something? Why is this an 'everything that can go wrong, will' week?"
I didn't notice it in the moment, but when I searched back through my memory later, I saw it. The glassy look to her eyes, the way she avoided eye-contact.
"I want it to be over."
"Me too. You know what, I was going to say we should order in and watch trashy TV. But maybe we deserve better than that. I have to go into work for a meeting. But then we should get dressed, and go somewhere fancy. Just you and me. Have a few drinks to celebrate this week being over. What do you think?"
"I love you," she told me, voice deep with emotion.
"I love you too. And we both love some fancy sushi. Our place? Seven?"
I hadn't waited for an answer because I never needed one before. There was never a time one of us suggested our place, and the other one said they had other plans. Never.
I had pressed a kiss to her temple before gathering my purse and the file.
"I'll see you later, k? Love you!" I said, already out the door.
At least I could comfort myself with the knowledge that the last words I said to her were love. That was a small sort of consolation.
I sat at our table in our restaurant for an hour before I decided to call her. Sammy liked to spend time in front of the mirror, trying on pieces of her massive wardrobe until she found what was just right. It was expected, so I thought nothing of her being an hour late.
Wh
en one hour stretched to two, I remember being annoyed. It was one thing for a date to stand you up, it was a complete other for one of your siblings to do so.
I paid my bill and went home, wondering if maybe she had passed out and forgotten to set an alarm, if she had suddenly been struck down with one of the skull-splitting migraines she'd been afflicted with since her high school years.
I felt a surge of remorse for having been annoyed as I moved through my house, looking for her in the living room, in the guest room, in my room.
I called.
I texted.
I went to bed with a knot of concern in my stomach.
When the phone rang at three a.m., panic didn't grip my system.
Luis had a tendency to call me tipsy from wherever he was in the world, which often meant we were in different timezones. I never bothered to be annoyed about it. It was just part of our dynamic.
"Luis, I need to get some sleep," I answered even though I was ready to listen to his escapades about which heiress he'd bedded that night, which pop star he had partied with.
"Reagan..." That was my mother's voice.
It was right then that the panic set in, making my nerves skitter around my skin, making my belly feel wobbly.
No call from your parent at 3 a.m. was good.
But my mother's voice cracked.
It cracked.
"Is Dad okay?" I asked, sitting up straight, swinging my legs off the side of the bed, already digging for pants in my dresser, ready to hop in my car and head to the hospital to be there for him, for her. "Mom?" I asked when she just broke off on a hysterical sob.
"Reagan," my dad's voice, loud, booming as ever, but sounding winded, met my ear, giving me a wave of relief.
Not Dad.
"Dad. What's going on?" I asked, placing the pants back down on the open drawer, sucking in a steadying breath, willing my heartbeat to settle back down.
"It's Sammy," he said. And his voice cracked too. This was the strongest, most stoic man I had ever met in my life. I'd never heard him angry or frustrated or impatient. I'd never heard him sad. And his voice cracked.
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