Torn. Part 8

Smoothing the covers of my bed, she removed Bogart from behind the pillows where I'd jammed him. She placed him front and center with a satisfied pat. "I'm glad that's settled. Billy said the police station went well?"

Of course she'd check with him instead of me. "The lawyer seems smart. I couldn't ID anyone, though. What if they don't find the people who did this?"

"They will," she said firmly. "And we'll put this whole thing behind us."

Was I the only one who didn't want to put Verity's death behind me? It seemed like abandoning her all over again.

She nodded toward the stairs expectantly. "Our guest?"

Sighing, I followed her down. Colin stood as we entered the kitchen. "I can wait outside, Mrs. Fitzgerald. Sorry for the surprise."

"Don't be silly! We haven't even fed you," she said, trying to wrap her head around the idea of a visitor who didn't stay for dinner. She made a show of peering around the meticulously organized fridge. "I don't have much on hand . . . cinnamon rolls? I made them yesterday, but they're still fresh."

Colin dropped back into his chair. "I don't know if I've ever had them from scratch."

It was the perfect thing to say. He even managed to sound sincere underneath the gruffness. My mom beamed and set them in the microwave to warm, then put on a fresh pot of coffee. As she plated the rolls on the plain white stoneware, the scent of cinnamon and b.u.t.tery dough filled the room. "Mo? Are you joining us?"

I didn't really want to. My mom had gone into a baking frenzy since we'd come home from the hospital, but even my favorites-the cinnamon rolls, her special brown bread, the lemon bars-didn't taste right. I wasn't in the mood for a lecture about keeping my strength up, though, so I stayed.

When the microwave beeped, I set Colin's plate down with a clatter and slipped into my seat, determined not to talk.

He took a bite, and a second later his eyes widened. "I am never buying those rolls in a tube again."

Mom patted his shoulder, completely won over. "It makes a difference, doesn't it?"

I stood to pour a cup of coffee for myself, but she waved me back. "Milk for you, sweetie. Too much caffeine, especially this close to bedtime . . . that can't be good for you."

"It's four o'clock," I muttered, feeling my cheeks turn scarlet.

Colin's mouth turned up for a split second, his eyes gleaming with what had to be a repressed snicker.

"Better for your bones," she returned, and I wanted to sink under the table. She might as well have offered to put the milk in a sippy cup and cut up my food for me. "You two chat while I start dinner. Colin, you'll eat with us?"

I scowled at him, and he gave a tiny, nearly imperceptible shrug. "As long as it's not a problem. Thanks."

She pulled a container of chicken, leftover from last night, out of the fridge. "No bother at all! Besides, it will give us a chance to get to know each other better."

Colin's gleam disappeared, and now it was my turn to smile. I took a small bite of the roll, letting the icing dissolve on my tongue while he shifted in his seat.

"It's just chicken salad, nothing fancy. Mo, honey, can you toast some bread?" I pulled a loaf from the bread box and started feeding slices into the toaster as she continued. "I hate to turn on the oven every night, with the weather so hot. Do you cook much?"

"A little."

"Don't tell me you're one of those men who live on frozen lasagna and takeout!"

"There's a good pizza place near me."

Mom shook her head, intent on cutting up celery and grapes. "Well, you're always welcome here. It's the least we can do. I haven't seen you at St. Brigid's. Do you attend a different parish?"

"I'm near St. Arden's," he replied, carefully sc.r.a.ping up the remaining frosting. This was not, I noticed, the same thing as saying he attended St. Arden's, but my mom seemed satisfied.

"Oh, did you grow up there?"

"Partly." He didn't elaborate.

"My brother speaks very highly of you."

Colin ducked his head, clearly uncomfortable. "He's always talking about your cooking. I can see why."

"Oh, Billy exaggerates," Mom said, but I could see her blushing as she plucked the toast from my hands and started a.s.sembling sandwiches.

"Billy says you're a carpenter. And you've known him for how long?"

"Since I was a kid." His voice was quiet but rough, like footsteps on a stony path, and I studied his profile. Secrets and lies. I wondered what mixture Colin held.

"Well, we just can't thank you enough for taking care of our Mo. When I think about everything that's happened, how close we came to losing my little girl. . . ." Mom wrung a dishtowel in her hands until it twisted back on itself. Smoothing it out again, she continued. "My brother has great faith in you, you know."

"I'm happy to help," Colin said. He didn't sound like he was lying, exactly, but it was pretty clear "happy" was overstating the case.

She finished securing the sandwiches with frilly, paper-topped toothpicks-for Colin's benefit, I guessed-and arranged them on a platter. "There! I think we're ready. There's some lemonade, Mo. Let's have that."

I poured the lemonade and turned, but Colin was right there. Wordlessly, he took the gla.s.ses and set them on the table.

We held hands to say grace. Colin's fingers barely pressed against mine, and I mumbled the words from memory, studying him from under half-closed lids. He kept his eyes open, but downcast, and his voice was a low, indistinct rumble.

My mother shook out her napkin and we started to eat, the kitchen falling quiet as the early-evening light coated the room like amber. After a few bites, my mom set her sandwich down, lacing her fingers tightly.

"I spoke to your father today."

I froze in the middle of reaching for a potato chip. Distantly, I heard a soft clink as Colin put down his gla.s.s, but I didn't look at him. Instead I stared at my mother's hands, red around the knuckles from all the hot water at the diner, the nails cut short and left unpolished. No jewelry except her plain gold wedding band and her engagement ring, with its tiny chip of a diamond. He'd been gone twelve years, but she wore them every day. I pushed my plate away, what little appet.i.te I had, gone.

"He's very upset, Mo, and terribly, terribly relieved you're okay."

I folded my napkin precisely, using my thumbnail to crease the checkered cotton. "Great."

"He'd like you to visit. This weekend. To see for himself you're okay." She drew her shoulders back and turned toward Colin. "I'm sure my brother has explained our situation to you."

He dipped his head in acknowledgment, turning the lemonade gla.s.s in his hand, looking uncomfortable. Had she thought asking me in front of Colin would shame me into saying yes? She'd thought wrong.

She tried again. "He misses you. Don't you remember when we used to go and see him?"

"Kind of hard to forget." Federal prisons tend to make an impression on an eight-year-old. I broke my potato chip into jagged halves, not answering.

"It's been four years since you visited. He's only seen you in school pictures. We should go."

I kept my tone just this side of respectful-not insolent, not enthusiastic, as emotionless as I could make it. "No, thanks."

"He's your father! How you can be so cold?"

I'd stopped visiting the prison when I was in junior high. The other kids had known all about my dad, and they went after me a million different ways. My PE uniform had a habit of clogging the toilet. My lunch disappeared from my locker at least once a week. When I was student of the month, and my picture was displayed outside the office, someone kept drawing bars over my face. For a while, girls would invite Verity to sleepovers, but not me, saying they didn't want their stuff stolen. Verity turned them down, every time.

My father had made his choices, and I'd had to live with them. Refusing to visit him in prison was turnabout, kind of.

I gave my mom the coldest, blankest look I could muster, even though I was boiling underneath. "May I be excused?"

Without waiting for an answer, I dropped my plate in the sink and stalked outside. Behind me, a chair sc.r.a.ped, and Colin's footsteps sounded heavily on the linoleum. I thumped onto the cement steps, tugging a wilted geranium from the white-glazed pot at my feet. The door opened behind me.

"Let me guess. I'm not allowed to sit on my own porch? I don't want to be inside."

"You don't want to do a lot of things," he returned through the screen. "Move so the door doesn't hit you."

I scooted toward the edge, and he turned his body sideways, opening the flimsy screen door as little as possible. Squeezing through, he sat down, back against the white metal railing.

"Don't lecture me," I said, mortified by the quaver in my voice. "I don't care what you think."

He shrugged. "Wasn't planning on it."

He kept to his side of the stoop, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, those large, beat-up hands dangling harmlessly. Cars were coming home from work, and you could hear people bring in their trash cans, kids playing in the alley behind us. Almost all the houses on our block were bungalows, differentiated by the yard decorations-geese in country garb, windmills, the occasional yard gnome-and the color of the brick. Ours was faded orange, with dark green trim, like living in a pumpkin.

"I'm not going to see him."

"I thought we weren't talking."

"We're not. I'm just saying, I have my reasons."

"Sounds good."

"Reverse psychology won't work, you know. It doesn't work if the person knows you're doing it."

"Mo," he said wearily, turning to face me. "I don't give a rat's a.s.s if you visit your dad. I really don't. It's not my business, and it's not my problem."

"What did Uncle Billy tell you about him? You said . . ."

"I didn't say anything."

He hadn't, actually. He'd kind of nodded, a little, but he'd been really careful not to answer most of my mom's questions, including that one. I wondered again what secrets he was hiding. "So you don't know anything about it?"

"Jesus," he muttered, looking skyward. "I know what your dad did. Do you?"

"I'm not stupid. I was only five when it happened, but I can read a newspaper. And this thing called Google? Have you heard of it? My dad laundered money for the Mob. Then he got greedy and embezzled from my uncle, too. Now he's in prison and my mother is guilt-tripping me into a visit."

He studied me for a minute. "Nice to hear you have it all figured out. Saves me some trouble."

"I am never trouble."

Colin snorted.

"Ask anyone. I am smart and quiet and cooperative. I have a 4.0 and perfect attendance since the sixth grade. I am, by definition, a very nice girl." Luc's words at the cemetery echoed in my head. You're a nice girl. Go have a nice, quiet life somewhere. Coming from him, it was a dismissal, not the praise I was accustomed to. I crumpled up the tattered blossom in my hand.

He looked back at the house. "You call that dinner cooperative?"

"You said you wouldn't lecture me."

"No lecture. Not my job to solve your daddy issues."

"I don't have daddy issues."

He looked at me, skepticism written clearly over his features.

"He's a terrible father. And husband. He wanted easy money more than he wanted us. It's not an issue, it's a fact."

"A fact that pushes your b.u.t.tons. Good to know."

"Why?"

He looked away, scanning the street. "It's my job to know you."

Right. Because without the promise of a payoff, who would want to? Not Luc, who was after whatever Verity had brought back to Chicago. And not Colin, who was only interested because of my uncle. Only Verity, and she was gone. Every time I remembered that, the world seemed to come off its axis for a moment. I clutched the step beneath me until it steadied.

The evening was warm but pleasant, even if I did have to share the porch with Colin. Anything was better than being inside my house. The sun was setting, street lamps turning on, and his gaze swept across the neat rows of bungalows. Parents were calling kids inside for the night, but I didn't move.

A hot wind whipped down the street, rustling leaves and stirring my hair. Next to me, Colin's expression changed from slightly bored to very skeptical, as he sat up, tension crackling around him like static electricity about to discharge. "You telling the truth about the boyfriend?"

"What boyfriend?"

He jerked a thumb toward the end of our block, six or seven houses away. Standing in the fading sunlight, the rays like fire as they struck his hair, was Luc. Without thinking, I pushed off the steps and started toward him, the air so heavy it felt like pushing through water. His gaze locked with mine, a mix of curiosity and challenge. I wanted, suddenly, desperately, to be worthy of both.

Colin stepped between us, blocking my view, and loomed over me. "Him. Boyfriend?"

I tried to signal Luc, to tell him we should talk, but Colin was like a boulder in front of me. I finally stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder.

Naturally, Luc was gone.

"Not mine." I reached for the screen door, hoping my voice and hands were both steady. The last thing I needed was Colin looking into Luc. "He's Verity's."

CHAPTER 9.

I kept the snow globe with me the next day at The Slice, which seemed silly, given that it was as useless as actual snow. I'd shaken the stupid thing like it was a Magic 8 Ball, and nothing happened. Verity had bought a defective snow globe, I had decided sometime around three AM. Once she'd realized that even she had standards for kitsch, and this one failed to meet them, she'd shoved it to the back of the shelf so she didn't have to stare at it. Who could blame her? The harlequin's dull eyes reminded me of a painting in an episode of s...o...b..-Doo, following me around the room.

Broken or not, I wasn't comfortable leaving it behind while I worked. Luc hadn't shown up again, and I wondered if he planned to. Maybe he'd found out, somehow, that I took the snow globe and was looking to steal it back. He probably never had any intention of helping me. The ugly little knickknack was my only clue, and I was going to keep it close.