And Then Everything Unraveled

by Jennifer Sturman

  “Do you think you can help?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to make any promises, Delia. But let me poke around and see what I can find out.”

  I was so relieved that he hadn’t been skeptical or dismissive, and so happy to hear him say he’d poke around, that I almost forgot about my little problem.

  “Um, about your fee—” I said.

  He brushed the question aside. “Let’s not worry about that right now. If I decide to take the case, we can discuss it then.”

  I refused to get caught up on the “if I decide” part. I was sure that once he saw how much substance there was to everything I’d told him, he’d definitely have to take the case. “That sounds great,” I said.

  “There is, however, one thing I’d like you to do for me.”

  “Sure. What’s that?”

  “While I’m doing my preliminary investigation,” he said, “I’d like you to put your own investigation on hold.”

  “Why?” I asked. I didn’t see how what I’d been doing really qualified as an “investigation.” I was only a high school student, after all, and it wasn’t like I had anything more interesting going on. And despite Carolina’s warning and Natalie’s endorsement of Carolina’s warning, I didn’t see how continuing to play around on the Web was going to put me in danger.

  “Please, humor me on this until we know more. All right, Delia?”

  He was looking at me like he was waiting for a solemn promise, and I didn’t want this to get in the way of his offer to help. “All right,” I said.

  He gave me his card and walked me to the door. “You just leave everything to me,” he said as he shook my hand. “I’ll be in touch soon.”

  I didn’t know whether it was his kind smile or the dancing ponies or the simple fact that he was a sane adult who took me seriously, but I left his office in an exceptionally good mood. Even not knowing where I’d get the money to pay him seemed like a problem that would solve itself when the time came.

  Out on the street, I wasn’t about to waste what money I did have on a cab, so I checked the subway map I now carried everywhere to figure out how I could get back to the loft. And as I was returning the map to my bag, something made me look across the street and up, to where Rafe’s office was.

  The late-afternoon sun glanced off the glass, making it hard to tell, but I thought I could see him standing at his window, looking out. I wasn’t sure if he could see me, but I smiled and waved.

  It was reassuring to know he was there, like he was watching over me.

  Twenty-one

  When I got back to the loft, Charley was on the phone with Patience, which she signaled by using a finger and a thumb to mime shooting herself in the head. “Yes, I am listening,” she was saying. “Yes, I understand it’s important…No, I’m not making any inappropriate gestures while I’m on the phone with you…Yes, I will be sure to tell her…No, she’s not home yet, but I’ll tell her when she gets here…Okay…Good-bye…No, I won’t forget…Bye…Yes, bye. Bye.”

  She hung up and gave me a pained smile. “That was Patty.”

  “I figured.”

  “She’s got a bee in her bonnet about Thaddeus J. Wilcox. I wonder how that saying ever got started? I mean, did anyone actually have a bee in his or her bonnet?”

  “Was she able to get in touch with Thad?” I asked.

  “No, and she’s furious about it. Usually everybody jumps when she snaps, and there has been no jumping on his end. His end has been a jump-free zone. But his people are working with her people to get a teleconference on the calendar. She’ll let you know when they schedule it. Personally, I don’t have any people.”

  “I’ll be your people,” I offered.

  “That is very kind of you,” said Charley as the phone started to ring. “Ugh. If this is Patty again, will you pretend you’re having an emergency of some sort? Nothing fatal or permanently scarring, but just enough of a crisis so I have an excuse to get off the phone?”

  She picked up the call, and I started toward my room to change out of my uniform. But the way Charley’s voice went from cautious to friendly and then filled with poorly suppressed excitement made me turn right back around. “Hello…No, this is her aunt…May I ask who’s calling? Oh! I mean, just a moment, please. I’ll see if she’s available.”

  She held the phone out toward me. “Quinn Riley,” she said with an elaborate casualness that was completely at odds with the look of intense interest on her face.

  I tried to compose myself and then took the phone from her. “Hello?” I said.

  “Hey, Juliet. What’s the deal?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Charley didn’t even bother to pretend that she wasn’t listening, though she did make a big show of rifling through the pile of takeout menus on the counter.

  “I mean, we’ve got this scene due on Monday but you keep cutting class. Which means we haven’t even started rehearsing. And that would be fine except that the last thing I need right now is to flunk drama. I was counting on an easy A. I need something to offset my grade in calc.”

  “Oh, uh—”

  “You know, if you don’t want to do it, that’s cool.”

  “No, that’s not it—”

  “I can get Mr. Dudley to cast someone else. I just need to know one way or the other.”

  This was a disaster, and meanwhile I was having a hard time thinking on my feet. To make matters worse, it wasn’t like I could explain why I hadn’t been in class or tell him how much I wanted to do the scene without then having to tell Charley why Quinn thought it was even an issue. And if I took the phone into my room for some privacy, that would only make her all the more curious.

  “Hello?” Quinn asked. “You still there?”

  “Okay. I’ll see you then,” I said, which was the best way I could think of to reassure him I’d be there tomorrow without letting Charley know that I hadn’t been there today.

  “So, you’re in?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I hung up and handed the phone back to Charley. “Everything all right?” she asked. I might’ve set a dangerous precedent by telling her so much about Quinn already—now anything less than full disclosure must seem strange to her.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “He just had a question he forgot to ask me today in class.” She gave me a searching look, but I pretended not to notice and changed the subject to the one thing I knew would distract her. “What’s for dinner?”

  She fanned the menus in her hand. “I’m thinking either mac and cheese and Sixteen Candles or chicken pot pie and St. Elmo’s Fire. What do you think?”

  I thought it was getting hard to keep track of all of the things I couldn’t let Charley know.

  The next morning I told Natalie all about my meeting with Rafe. At this point, she was the only person I could tell. I expected her to be just as thrilled as I was, but she was bizarrely lukewarm. In fact, lukewarm was generous. It was more like suspicious. She was harder on him than she’d been on Carolina.

  “So, he just called out of the blue and you don’t know for sure how he got your number?” she said.

  “He told me that someone I’d contacted had referred him to me. And it’s not like he’s a fake. He has an office and a license and everything,” I said, trying not to sound defensive.

  “Doesn’t it seem a bit too convenient how he just sort of fell into your lap like that?” she asked. “And then he just offers to help you for free?”

  “He’s only doing a preliminary investigation for free. I’ll have to pay him if he decides to take the case,” I said, not that I had any idea how I was going to do that.

  “Why does he want you to stop your own investigation?” she persisted. “Don’t you think that’s weird? Are you sure he’s not connected with EAROFO or anyone else like that? What do you really know about this guy?”

  She hadn’t met Rafe, so she couldn’t understand. I tried to figur
e out how best to explain him, searching for the right words as I watched people passing by on the sidewalk. It was an unremarkable parade of nannies taking kids to school, a dog-walker with a posse of Wheaton terriers, and all sorts of other Manhattanites starting their days. But then a woman walked by all dressed up in a business suit and trench coat and with her hair in a knot, and that reminded me.

  “There were dancing ponies on his tie,” I said. “What kind of bad guy would have ponies on his tie?”

  For once, I’d stumped her. The first bell rang before she could come up with an answer.

  Twenty-two

  All day I still had that pleasant lightness I’d had since leaving Rafe’s office, and I wasn’t about to let Natalie spoil it, or even the pop quiz Ms. Seshadri sprang on us in precalc. And while part of it was because of Rafe, I’d be fooling myself if I didn’t admit that the other part was from looking forward to seeing Quinn in drama.

  After all, it was entirely possible that the reason he’d been back to his elusive ways on Monday had to do with how I’d run off on Saturday. And while it wasn’t like he’d been declaring his undying love over the phone the previous night, the fact that he’d gone to the trouble to track down Charley’s unlisted number said a lot. At least, I hoped it did.

  But I was still a bit nervous about which Quinn I’d find when last period finally arrived. I was sitting on the edge of the stage, waiting for class to start, when he came over and sat down beside me. “Hey, Juliet,” he said. “Glad you could make it.”

  I looked at him, wondering if he was being sarcastic. But he was smiling, and I couldn’t detect even a hint of snarkiness, so I smiled back.

  As soon as he’d finished taking attendance, Mr. Dudley gave us permission to go off on our own to rehearse our respective scenes.

  Quinn turned to me. “Do you want to do this outside? We could go to the park.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Central Park was less than a block away, and on our way there Quinn started telling me his ideas for the scene. “The obvious thing would be to play it straight, like we really were in sixteenth-century Verona, but that seems sort of tired. I was thinking that maybe we could set it in the present day instead. Nothing hokey, like on a spaceship or anything, but just having Romeo and Juliet be regular people, like us. We’re not supposed to do costumes, so we’ll be in our uniforms, but it would still be interesting to think through how we can deliver the lines and block it and everything to make it feel contemporary. What do you think?”

  I thought he was surprisingly into this assignment for somebody who only cared about an easy A. And before I could stop myself, that’s exactly what I said.

  We were stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to change so we could cross Fifth Avenue. He smiled again and held a finger to his lips. “Shhh,” he said. “Don’t let anybody hear you say that. It’s bad for my image.”

  “Do you care about your image?” Even as the words were coming out of my mouth I was mentally kicking myself. He’d been kidding around, and meanwhile I sounded like an afterschool special. But he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Sure. It’s my armor.”

  “Your what?” The WALK sign flashed, and he put a hand on my elbow as we crossed the street. And yes, even that faint pressure on that one small spot made my entire arm tingle.

  “My armor. You know. Self-protective camouflage. Everybody has armor. Even you, I bet, though I still haven’t figured out what form yours takes.”

  His tone was as light as always, but there was an undercurrent to his words that wasn’t light at all. I wasn’t sure how to respond, but my phone started ringing right as we reached the other side. The number on the screen was Rafe’s.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said to Quinn. “This’ll just take a second.”

  “Good news, Delia,” said Rafe when I answered. “I contacted my source in Chile, and he reached out to his own network of sources. More than one reported hearing rumors of a shipwrecked English-speaking couple hiding out in a remote area in Patagonia. It’s a man and a woman, and descriptions of the woman match your description of your mother.”

  I tried to stay calm, but this was the first confirmation of T.K.’s whereabouts that wasn’t based on assumptions about who might’ve made a phone call or the words of a Quik-swilling psychic. “Does anyone know where they are exactly? Is there any way to get in touch with them?”

  “Remember, these are only rumors, but I trust my source, and he thinks his own sources are highly credible. I believe it’s worth pursuing.”

  “Does that mean you’ll take the case?” I asked.

  “I’ll take the case,” he said. “In fact, I’d like to leave for Santiago as soon as possible. I’ll just need a retainer to get started.” Then he began reeling off his daily rates and explaining how I would also be responsible for reasonable and customary expenses and a lot of other things like plane tickets that sounded like they’d add up pretty quickly.

  Yesterday’s confidence that this was a problem that would solve itself when the time came started melting away in the presence of concrete numbers. I hadn’t expected Rafe to work so fast—I’d thought I’d have more time to figure out how to pay him. And it was also becoming painfully clear that I’d significantly underestimated just how much it would all cost.

  “I’m unable to accept credit cards, but as soon as I get your check, I can begin,” Rafe was saying. “Twenty-five hundred should suffice for now.”

  It might as well have been twenty-five million, but I wasn’t about to say that. I didn’t want him to lose interest or momentum. “I’ll get right on it,” I said.

  Quinn was watching my face when I got off the phone. “I think I know what your armor is,” he said.

  “Oh?” I asked, distracted. It was hard to concentrate on anything else when all I could think was twenty-five hundred dollars, twenty-five hundred dollars, twenty-five hundred dollars.

  “You remotely trigger a mysterious phone-based communication whenever you want to change the subject,” said Quinn.

  I had a credit card for emergencies and I could use it for a cash advance, but the bill went to Patience, and I was pretty sure the limit was too low to cover more than half of the retainer. I ran through a mental list of everyone I knew, even though I’d already been through the list countless times. Charley and Patience were out. It was too much to ask of Nora. Erin and Justin didn’t have that kind of cash, and even if Natalie did and I was comfortable asking her, she wasn’t about to let me spend it on Rafe.

  “Or maybe you just don’t want to talk to me,” said Quinn.

  His tone was still light, but when I looked up at him, his expression was serious. “No, that’s not—I mean, I wasn’t—it’s not what you think—”

  And that’s when things turned into the cheesiest sort of after-school special: I started to cry. Even worse, this time there was nowhere to run.

  “Hey, Juliet, what’s going on?” Quinn asked, completely unfazed. And that made me cry harder.

  He steered me over to a park bench and sat there with me, occasionally patting my back but otherwise just letting me go at it. He even produced a clean handkerchief from his pocket. I didn’t know anyone still carried handkerchiefs.

  I guess in a big city, people are used to seeing all sorts of things, so nobody who walked by seemed especially surprised to see me having a meltdown on a park bench. I even saw some of the same people as I’d seen that morning, like the dog-walker, though this time he had a herd of waddling pugs, and the woman in the trench coat, too.

  Anyhow, none of them bothered us, and after ten minutes or so I was done. The reservoir hadn’t had time to fully replenish itself since my last crying fit, but the emotional roller coaster I’d been on of late was wearing me out.

  “You make Bea look like an amateur,” said Quinn mildly.

  “I’ve been practicing.”

  “I think you’ve nailed it,” he said. “So, is there anything I can do? To help, I me
an.”

  “Unless you know where I can find a big pile of cash lying around, probably not.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “I won’t even charge you interest.”

  “I was joking,” I said.

  “I wasn’t,” he said. And now his face was even more serious than it’d been when he was talking about my armor.

  “Quinn, really. I’m talking about a lot of money.”

  “I have a lot of money. Hunter’s a financial genius—he’s minting the stuff. And whenever he feels guilty about exploiting the global energy crisis, he makes himself feel better by giving me more.”

  “But you can’t just turn around and give it to me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because what?”

  “Just because.”

  “Okay, you cry better than Bea, but she’d totally crush you in a debate.”

  “I can’t take your money.”

  “Look. Money’s one thing I have. And I’m assuming you don’t need it to support your drug habit or anything like that.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” he asked.

  “You hardly even know me.”

  He shrugged. “You saved my life. That jellyfish could’ve killed me.”

  “No it couldn’t have and you know it.”

  “It’s not like I earned it myself,” he said. “I don’t deserve it any more than anybody else does. But I have it, and if you don’t use it, it will just sit there in the bank not doing anyone any good.”

  “But—”

  “But what?”

  On the one hand, it would have been so easy. On the other hand, there was something incredibly weird about feeling obligated to Quinn, especially given all of the other things I felt about him. But then again, maybe I was getting too used to everything being so hard.

  “I’d pay you back,” I said.