Hold Me Like a Breath

by Tiffany Schmidt

  I didn’t know my neighbors, but I knew this girl.

  “I’ve been waiting for you all morning,” she drawled in her Texan accent, coming out to stand on the step, and frowning up at the sky. “Come in, you’re getting wet.”

  Char had been lowering his umbrella when the door opened. I reached back and held it there, horizontal, blocking his face. He reacted to my movement with a stiffness of his own. “I didn’t know you had company,” he said. “I should let you go.”

  “Yeah,” I managed. The back of my throat itched with panic. I wanted to beg him to take me with him, keep me safe. Instead, I would just keep him safe—get him away.

  I stepped around the umbrella, using it as a screen to grab a kiss, this one fierce. Fearful.

  Char touched my cheek.

  “I’ll call you later,” I said.

  He nodded. Kissed me again. So quickly he didn’t notice my lips were trembling. “Good-bye,” he whispered.

  Then he left, twirling away so he was just a boy beneath an umbrella disappearing down the block. And I was left alone with a face I recognized from Christmas cards.

  I was weak with fear, with relief. No matter what happened next, Char was gone. Char was safe.

  The girl cleared her throat. “Still waiting here. And those shoes are going to be ruined if you get them much wetter.”

  “Hi, Maggie,” I said.

  Chapter 31

  Magnolia Vickers pivoted and opened the door, holding it for me. I considered not going inside. Maybe I could run for it. Catch up with Char. Get away.

  But every second I kept her here was a second he could get farther from us. I didn’t want her to think of him, I didn’t want her to remember I’d had a guy with me. If this was it—if it was not the Zhus, or Nolan, or Mr. Tanaka, but the Vickers, and this was it—I needed to know I’d saved Char. He was innocent, not a part of this lifestyle of blood and bodies and black market; he didn’t deserve to die for me.

  “There’s this concept called “inside”; shall I demonstrate it for you?” She flitted in and out the door, stepping around and behind me with the grace of a long-legged bird. “Now let’s see you try it.”

  Her hands were up, like she might push me, prod me, damage me. I darted forward to avoid the bruises, through the doors, the second propped open with her purse.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Just a minute, we’ll get to that. First”—she leaned close enough for me to smell her spicy perfume, tilted her head, whispered—“is cross-pollinating, like, a trend now? Just remember who started it.”

  I’m sure this was some sort of riddle. Perhaps I was supposed to respond with a coded answer, provide some words that demonstrated I was in the know.

  I was never in the know.

  I was the most peripheral of people. Even in my own life. And even if the answer to that riddle would save me, no one had ever bothered to clue me in.

  This knowledge slumped my shoulders, brought the weight of everything pressing down on me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Walk with me,” she said, tucking my hand over her arm. She squeezed it against her side—not quite bruising-tight, but the threat was there. Maggie had always been a voice that refused to be shouted down by the narrow-minded Family males. Not even the Ward brothers could tell her what to do.

  And now she was towing me toward the stairs.

  “The keys weren’t where they should be.” Her voice was still that lilting, throaty song I remembered. “I assume you have them? And the one to the new lock?”

  Everything was inverted again. The safe gone from my haven. How long had they been watching me? What else did they know? Char—

  I’d been selfish to pretend I could have him; that he wasn’t in danger every time he stood next to me. People willing to gun down my family would hardly stop and spare a rancher’s son who got caught in the crossfire.

  My steps felt heavy. I’d slowed, and Maggie tugged impatiently for me to keep up. On the fourth floor she knocked the rounded toe of her black lace-up boots against the door. It left a scuff on its surface.

  “The keys?” she prompted, releasing my hand to cross her arms.

  I dug them out of the bottom of my purse. Sheer carelessness. A testament to how dangerous it had been to participate in the fairy tale I’d been playing with Char. My keys should’ve been in my hand long before I approached the building. I should have been more aware. Not of his kisses or how good he smelled, but of the girl standing in my vestibule watching my approach. I should have seen her first and circled around, circled away.

  I squeezed my fingers around the keys. What would Carter have done in this situation? What would Garrett? Not the Garrett who’d asked to kiss me a lifetime ago—I couldn’t picture him clearly anymore—but the Garrett who wore a gun, shot tires, fought back.

  They’d say going in that apartment meant never coming out again. They wouldn’t go down without a struggle.

  I pulled my arm back and threw the keys—sending them arching up and onto the steps above us, then I spun to flee.

  Maggie was already blocking my path, a wry smile on her lips. “Really? Is that the best you can do? Don’t disappoint me. Your brother spoke so highly of you, I don’t like thinking he was wrong.”

  Carter. When had she spoken to him? How had she extracted information?

  “Let’s go get the keys,” she said evenly, circling her hand back around my elbow. “Then we’ll go in the apartment, have a seat, and you can tell me what you’ve been up to for the past few weeks and how you ended up with a lovely piece of rival on your arm.”

  “Lovely piece of rival” was a rather appropriate way for her to describe herself. But the Vickers hadn’t been our rivals. They hadn’t ever been our rivals. The least contentious of the inter-Family relationships had been between my father and hers. When had that changed? Why?

  “I don’t want anything to do with all of this.” I held my hands up, signifying my lack of weapon with my empty palms.

  “That’s sort of disappointing, Pen. I was really hoping you were more than a pretty-faced puppet.” She dragged me up the stairs. This grip would leave a mark. “Actually, it’s more than disappointing. It’s disappointing our mothers let themselves be just painted figureheads. It’s downright unacceptable you’d consider playing that role too.”

  She may be here to kill me, to make a clean sweep of the Landlows, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. She bent to snag the keys, and I wrenched my arm out of her grip.

  “Carter always said you were nothing but trouble and you were going to get someone killed … I guess he was right.”

  The keys dropped from her fingers, the animation dropped from her face, leaving behind something that looked like it might have been pain.

  Maybe.

  It was hard to tell because I’d taken the opportunity to push past her and run down the stairs.

  Chapter 32

  A couple seconds of surprise bought me a few stairs. But not many. Not enough.

  Maggie caught up before I’d hit the third floor. “Do not make me hurt you, Penelope,” she warned. “We’re going in that apartment, and we’re going to talk. I’d rather you be focused on me and not on the bruises I’ve given you while pushing you through the door.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “That’s okay—you can listen. I have plenty to say to you. I’ve got all sorts of things Carter made me promise to tell you, and I’ve got questions. So many questions. Like, why didn’t you call me sooner? How could you go to the Zhus and not me? And why did you add another lock on our apartment?”

  She reached in her pocket and pulled out a second set of keys. Two of them. Banded with the same colored rings as the ones Carter left behind.

  “Our apartment?” I asked.

  “Pen.” She sighed in exasperation. “Don’t even tell me you thought Carter painted a room purple and picked out those curtains.”

  “Y
ou’re not here to kill me?”

  She laughed. Maggie had always had the best laugh. It was loud and carefree, wild and throaty. I couldn’t imagine ever feeling uninhibited enough to make a noise like that.

  “I’ll be lucky if your brother doesn’t haunt me for that mark on your arm …” Her laughter choked to a halt, her gaze dropped to the keys in her hand. Her voice was quieter when she raised serious eyes to my face. “I wish he’d haunt me. I wish I could see him again.”

  Her implications made me narrow my eyes. Whatever game she was playing, I wasn’t going to participate. “What do you want from me?”

  “Inside.” She herded me up the stairs, slid the right keys into the right locks, turned them, pushed the door open, and entered. She didn’t wait to see if I followed, but crossed the room and claimed the big chair. Hooking her toes under the rim of the coffee table, she pulled it closer and propped her feet on top. Char’s roses wobbled in their beer-glass vases but didn’t fall over. Reaching behind her, she fished an afghan out of a woven basket. Pulling it up to her face, she inhaled with her whole body, arching forward, shoulders creeping upward.

  Then all of her seemed to melt in defeat. Her eyes sought mine where I stood in the hall. “It doesn’t smell like him anymore. I hoped …” She shook her head and dropped her chin.

  “You and Carter?” I stepped inside the door, leaving it open, and leaned against the wall. “How?”

  “You didn’t know? Whose clothing did you think was in the closet—that dress looks good on you, by the way. And did you really think the shampoo and such around the apartment were his?”

  I’d assumed—foolishly, selfishly—that they’d been for me. That Carter had set this whole place up for us.

  “He really never said anything to you—about me?” She leaned forward and searched my face. Then stood, five feet eight inches of bottled energy and compressed stress. She seemed to absorb all the space in the apartment as she paced a lap around the coffee table and into the kitchen. She snorted and called, “Nice job on the freezer.” Then opened cabinets and the fridge, helped herself to a glass of something, and came back into the main room.

  I was seated on the edge of the couch. Less because I felt comfortable around her—the door was still open—and more because my legs wouldn’t support me any longer.

  “No one ever tells me anything,” I said sullenly. I considered following Garrett’s advice about keeping my cards tipped up, but what was the point in flipping them over one at a time just to reveal they were all blank? “Garrett’s been in this apartment too, and he never mentioned it being yours.”

  “Ah, you and Garrett; Carter loved the idea in theory—but wanted to kill him when it actually happened. And your timing couldn’t have been worse; those two did not need something else to fight about.” She sat down on the coffee table. “Garrett didn’t know about me.”

  “Impossible. Carter told Garrett everything. He brought him with him everywhere.”

  “No,” she corrected. “He didn’t.”

  Maggie reached in her purse, then handed me an envelope. My name was on the front in Carter’s slash-and-dash handwriting. On the back he’d drawn a cube over the seal—something he and Garrett had done with their secret club messages when they were little. It hadn’t been opened. “I got an envelope in the mail from Carter the day of his funeral. This was in it.”

  “Why am I only getting it now?”

  “Because I was a little distracted by mourning, and then, sugar pie, you were dead.”

  “Your mom used to call me sugar pie.”

  “My mother calls everyone sugar pie. It saves her from having to learn their names.” She arched an eyebrow and answered my unasked question, “I only use it when people are being dumber than a box of hammers.”

  “So he knew?” I wanted to tear this envelope in half. Burn it. Shred it. He’d known he was going to be killed and he hadn’t done anything to stop it. He hadn’t told me.

  Maggie lowered her head. Her shoulders shrugged, and the rest of her seemed to slump with their descent. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a letter or explanation. I got a sticky note: Take care of Pen. I love you.”

  I looked at the envelope again. It was a paper betrayal.

  I hated it.

  I cherished it.

  “How did you figure out I wasn’t? Dead, I mean.”

  “The electric bill gets paid automatically from my account every month—this month’s bill was crazy higher than last’s. I didn’t know it was necessarily you, but it was clear someone was using the apartment.”

  “He brought me here, showed me the keys, and told me it was safe. How could he know he was in danger and not do anything to stop it?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Her voice wavered. “Why can’t you have any answers? Why did I come all this way if—”

  She put down the cup and walked toward the bedrooms. There were the thuds of drawers opening and things banging. A choked, broken sound of sob and triumph, then she reemerged. A sweatshirt draped over one arm and a letter in her hands. She held it up. This one was addressed to Mags.

  “I bought this for Carter.” She slipped the University of Texas sweatshirt over her head and burrowing into the collar to inhale whatever bit of him was left behind. “But we’d fight over who got to wear it whenever we were here.”

  She wasn’t lying. I wasn’t sure why an orange piece of clothing with frayed cuffs and a hem that hit her midthigh demonstrated that better than keys to the door or her presence here, but it did.

  “How long have you been dating my brother?” I demanded. When she didn’t look up from the envelope in her hands, I snatched it away. “Hey!”

  “Excuse me?” She was on her feet, towering over me with a thunderous expression, bringing flashbacks of the time she’d kneed twelve-year-old Garrett in the crotch for putting a spider in her hair.

  “You said you wanted to talk. To ask me some questions. Well, I have some too. Answer mine and I’ll give this back.” I was under no delusion I could really keep it away from her. But I could crumple it. I could tear it. And I didn’t think she’d take that risk.

  “I wasn’t dating him. I wasn’t some high school groupie. We were in love.”

  Love? Carter?

  Something jealous and acrid was crawling up the back of my throat; it settled sour on my lips, curving them into a bitter smile and coming out as a disbelieving laugh. “My brother—sleeping with the enemy. Why not? Everything I thought I knew about my life is wrong, why not that too?”

  Her own disbelieving laugh was twice as acidic, twice as loud. “How’s the view from your high horse, Penelope? And does Zhu Jr. think hypocrisy is an attractive trait?”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Ha. Nice try.” She stepped closer, snatching the letter from my hand and pausing at the apartment door to say, “I’m going to go find a quiet place to read this. I get you’re mad—I’m mad too—but don’t lie to me. I saw you with Ming Zhu earlier. If you say my Family is your enemy, then how do you categorize the guy attached to the lips you were kissing?”

  “Ming? No. He’s shorter than me. He has glasses. Char can’t be …”

  But Ming wasn’t still eleven or however old he’d been when I last saw him. He wasn’t frozen in real life like he was in my mind, at the cross section of awkward and adolescence.

  “No.” I breathed it out as a whisper, a single word, a lie I desperately wanted to be true.

  “Yes. Oh, so very much, yes! I saw him two weeks ago at your funeral. He was a mess—looks like you’ve cheered him up.”

  She didn’t wait for me to respond before she left, slamming the apartment door behind her, which was good, because I was speechless.

  Chapter 33

  I could have chased her down. I probably should have. But I wasn’t ready for any more secrets. I didn’t want to handle the implications of what she’d said.

  I didn’t want to stand. I wanted to sink. Sink into the couch,
and sink below the level of thinking required to prevent my mind from connecting the dots.

  I didn’t know Char’s last name.

  His reaction when I told him he didn’t look like a Charlie. He wasn’t a Charlie, he was a Ming. Ming Zhu. Or Zhu Ming, actually, if I remembered Mother’s lessons correctly. And no wonder he didn’t look like a Midwestern rancher. He lived in California, and the only thing his family harvested was organs.

  I pressed my hand over my eyes, wanting to reach behind them and claw this out of my brain. Unlearn it. Forget it. Scramble my neurons until everything made sense, or until I no longer cared that nothing did.

  Heartbreak was for another time. A time when it wouldn’t crush me. A time after I was safe. A time when I knew which end was up and where I belonged.

  If I ever belonged anywhere again.

  Now was for Carter. For grief. For his need to have the last word—always. And my gratitude for whatever was in this envelope.

  I couldn’t stay here. Not anymore. Not when Maggie had keys and Char wasn’t Char.

  I counted the bills in my wallet and swallowed. I hadn’t been planning long term. Stupid. Even after I realized Garrett wasn’t coming, I hadn’t slowed my spending. There was enough cash left for a few nights at a hotel, but not forever. Not even a week. I hoped I liked Connecticut, because I didn’t see any other option.

  But I couldn’t call Bob yet. I wanted one last night of independence and space to read Carter’s letter.

  I took off Maggie’s dress and put on the clothing I’d worn when I left the estate: my favorite jeans and a pale-blue cotton shirt. I packed up Carter doll, my notebook, and the few things that were mine. My purse wasn’t even bulging when I put the letter on top and stepped out the door, locking only the lock Maggie had the key for.

  There were several hotels within a ten-minute walk. I’d mentally mapped routes to and from them, just in case. I knew their prices and which accepted cash. I’d done all the proper planning except for budgeting, except for believing I’d really have to stay there. It was like I thought the preparation was enough, thought that by knowing the information, I’d never have to use it.