“Neither is Chicago.” There was sharpness to my dad’s voice that I hadn’t heard before, and my mother started in her chair.
“She has her family,” Mom said, her voice trembling. “You just came home, and now you want to send her off halfway across the country all by herself? Who’d watch over her?”
Colin’s silence was deafening.
“Mom, you’re freaking out over nothing.”
“It’s not nothing!” Her eyes filled. “I’ve never liked this idea of New York. Never. Why would you encourage her, Jack? You know I don’t approve.”
“If she can go, she should. It’s a fresh start.” He helped himself to more pot roast, trying for nonchalance despite his death grip on the serving fork. I felt an unexpected rush of gratitude—he wasn’t going to back down, no matter how upset my mom got. But he knew about the deal I’d made with Billy. He knew I was stuck. Why would he push for me to leave?
“Why are you so consumed with the notion of fresh starts these days?” Mom asked. “We’ve already gotten ours. How many do we need?”
From where I sat, it wasn’t much of a fresh start—more like history repeating itself: my dad working for Billy, and me following his path. No matter what my reasons were, I was doing the same thing he had, all those years ago. What had Luc told me once?
What we hate most about other people? That’s usually what we hate about ourselves.
He’d been right. And the knowledge made me want to put my head down on the worn Formica table and weep.
But I didn’t. Instead, I met Colin’s eyes. “Right now, I’m planning on U of C.”
He fumed silently, but he’d have plenty to say later. I tried to figure out how to stall the discussion as long as possible. And another one of those unreadable looks passed between him and my father, who also said nothing.
My mother reached across the table and patted my hand. “I’m so proud, sweetheart. And don’t you worry about the money. We’ll find a way.”
I tried to smile but just couldn’t make myself. We finished dinner quickly and quietly, as if talking about anything except the week’s forecast would result in another confrontation. The minute my mom stood to clear the table, my father pushed his chair back with a scrape. “I need to run out for a bit.”
Mom turned, startled, still clutching the dish of pot roast and vegetables. “Now? We haven’t had dessert yet. There’s apple crisp.”
“I won’t be long. Save me a piece.” Before she could protest further, he caught her face in his hands and kissed her deeply. I stared at my shoes and Colin busied himself inspecting the caulking on the windows. “I love you, Annie.”
“I love you, too, you impossible man.”
My dad was gone before she could even set down the platter.
“Well,” she said, cheeks pink. “I guess it’s just the three of us, then. Mo, put on some decaf.”
“We’ll clean up,” Colin said, scooting her out of the kitchen.
She mock-protested, like she always did when Colin came for dinner. It was a routine they’d established, and yet another thing that endeared him to her. She patted him on the cheek, and the fact that he let her made me fall for him all over again. “You are a keeper,” she said.
He waited until she’d gone upstairs. I was in the middle of running a sinkful of soapy water when he leaned past me to slap the faucet off.
“When were you going to tell me?”
“When I’d decided, I guess.”
“Seems like you already have.”
I shoved him aside and started scrubbing pots and pans. “You’re the only guy I know who would actively push his girlfriend to leave town, you know that? It’s one thing to be supportive, Colin. It’s another to torpedo a relationship.”
“How many times do I have to say it? I want you to be free of Billy.”
“Even if that means the end of us?” For the second time that night, I stuffed down tears.
He didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely.”
Temper took over. It wasn’t fair. He kept secrets from me all the time. Not just Tess—I understood his need to keep her hidden—but other things. Information I had a right to, like the truth about Lena. The strange looks he’d been giving my father. But I was expected to tell him everything.
“So protecting me justifies anything else you might do. That keeping me safe matters more than anything else.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve been saying since the day we met. Good to see you’ve been paying attention.”
“And it works both ways?” I rinsed out the roasting dish and set it on a towel, wiped my soapy hands on my jeans.
He stopped loading the dishwasher and studied me. “What do you mean?”
I didn’t answer.
“What did you do?”
I swallowed, trying to dislodge the fear choking me. “You said keeping me safe was the most important thing.”
“What did you do?”
He dragged a hand over his face. “Mo. Tell me you didn’t ...”
“They were going to kill you,” I said. “He sent them there to kill you, and you wanted me to hide in another room and let them.”
“They wouldn’t have killed me.”
“I’m not
stupid,
” I said. “I know how Billy works. I had something he wanted, so I offered him a deal. A trade.”
“Ekomov for me.” His voice was rough, unrecognizable. A stranger’s.
I pushed on, hoping I could make him understand. “He’s got an apartment at Shady Acres. I make deliveries once a week or so. Billy gives me information to pass along—not every time, but enough to keep Ekomov happy. Sometimes he asks for specific stuff, so I tell Billy and he comes up with answers.”
“What sort of information?”
“Different stuff. Delivery schedules. Routes. Right now, Ekomov’s interested in figuring out which of Billy’s guys he can turn. I think Billy’s going to use it as a test. I pass along the names, wait for Ekomov to contact them. The ones who tell Billy about it are loyal. The ones who don’t ... he’ll know not to trust them.”
“Do you know what will happen to them? To the guys who double-cross Billy and the Forellis?”
“I don’t care. It keeps you safe. Isn’t that the rule? It doesn’t matter what happens, as long as you’re safe.”
He leaned on the back of the chair, hands gripping the wood like he was going to throw it across the room. Then he released it, very deliberately, and paced the room. “You threw away your whole future. Everything you worked for. You never should have done that. Not for me.
Especially
not for me. And then you lied about it. What about New York?”
I stared into the sink. “New York was for Verity and me. She is
dead
. You are
alive
. Excuse me for wanting to keep it that way.”
“What is it with you? Every goddamn time I turn around, you’re risking your life for somebody else. You’re like the queen of martyrs. Do you know why they’re martyrs, Mo? Because they end up dead.” He clenched and unclenched his fists as he walked.
“I won’t. This is temporary. The police are almost ready to move on Billy and the Forellis. They just need a little more evidence, and then we won’t have to worry about him anymore.”
He massaged his temples, like I’d given him a migraine. “Wait. The cops? You’re trying to double-cross the Outfit? Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
“It’s only for a little longer. And then Billy will be gone, and we can be happy.” I touched his sleeve, but he jerked away.
“You’re kidding yourself,” he said, the contempt in his voice like a kick to the stomach. “How the hell am I supposed to be happy about this? How are you? You’re going to end up hating me. Ten years from now, you’ll be stuck in the same place you are now, and you’ll blame me for it.”
“I
won’t
. Do you blame Tess?”
He looked at me blankly. And then understanding crossed his face, followed by disbelief, and finally, anger that went so far beyond anything I’d seen from him that I stepped back, afraid of Colin for the first time in my life.
“Say something.” The words came out in a whisper, but he flinched as if they’d struck him. “Colin. Please. Say something.”
The sound of the door slamming echoed in my head, simultaneously final and infinite.
I couldn’t move. I stood frozen in the cheery yellow kitchen as the truck started up and roared off. Even breathing seemed impossible, as if his rage had sucked all the oxygen from the room. I needed to sit down, but my legs wouldn’t carry me to the table. Eventually they just folded underneath me and I thumped to the floor.
I wanted to be angry right back. I wanted to find someone to blame. A target for my anger. Someone to lash out at, to make hurt the way I was hurting. But the only target I could find was me. I’d been the one to hurt Colin. I’d gone behind his back and lied to his face. I’d taken his need to protect me and twisted it into something unrecognizable to justify my own actions.
With an effort, I stood and finished cleaning up the kitchen. I scrubbed dishes, wiped down counters, put everything away. When I was finished, it was like the evening had never happened.
Except I was alone.
My mom appeared in the doorway. “Where did Colin go?”
“He left.”
“Before dessert?” She shook her head. “And your father’s not back?”
“No.” I wrung the dishcloth in my hands, trying not to cry.
“I guess it’s just us Fitzgerald girls again, isn’t it? Like old times.”
I choked out a laugh. “Guess so.”
She nudged me toward my chair and began dishing out apple crisp. “Colin is a good man.”
“I know.” I was more certain of that than anything, a fact as irrefutable as gravity.
“Proud, I think. Stubborn. A bit like your father, maybe.”
“Not helping,” I muttered, poking at my dessert.
“He’ll come around.” I glanced up, startled, and she nodded. “It will take a while. But the two of you will sort it out. Whatever the problem is.”
“How can you be sure?”
“People fail each other all the time, Mo, and they forgive each other, and start again. It’s a question of knowing the other person’s limitations. Knowing what’s fair to expect of them. Knowing what’s fair for them to expect of you.” She spoke with absolute authority, knowledge gained from hard experience.
I took a bite of apple crisp, and pushed the rest away. I didn’t have the stomach for it. “That’s how you and Dad managed?”
“Every day,” she said. “Go to bed. Things will look brighter in the morning.”
I went upstairs, but I didn’t go to bed. I sat at the window, watching the street for any sign that Colin might return. The cold seeped through the glass, through my sweater, sank into my bones. Lonely, Lena had said, when I admitted there was no one in my life who knew the whole truth about me. Now Colin did, and I was even lonelier than before.
I reached for my phone and texted Lena. She’d know what to do. She always did.
Can u talk?
While I waited for her reply, the magic stirred, trying to reassure me. But this problem wasn’t magical. It was all of my own doing, and I would have to be the one to repair it.
The phone chirped.
Tomorrow?
OK
.
No Lena, then. I fished Colin’s file out of my desk and read it again, all the horrible details of his past, the tragedy that had befallen him and Tess. It had shaped the man he was now, guarded and hard and honorable, gentle and brave and fierce. I’d hurt him so terribly.
And I would do it all over again, to keep him safe.
C
HAPTER
18
I
’d never doubted Colin before. It left me feeling like I’d swallowed a cereal bowl full of worms as I waited for him at the front window the next morning. When he showed, I nearly threw up out of sheer relief.
Instead, I crossed the yard on shaking legs and climbed into the truck.
“Hey,” I said, my voice almost inaudible.
He jerked his head in acknowledgement and pulled away, not waiting to see if I’d fastened my seat belt.
“Are we going to talk about this?”
“No.” There was no heat in his words. No emotion. His expression was equally indifferent. In chemistry, we called it absolute zero—the temperature at which all movement ceases, even at the molecular level. Doctor Sanderson was always careful to remind us that it was a hypothetical concept only, a theory.
Now I had proof it existed. She’d be thrilled.
“So that’s it? We’re done?”
He didn’t answer until we pulled up in front of the school. “I’ll pick you up at the usual time.”
“Okay.” I waited for him to say something else, but he kept his eyes on the wheel and his mouth tightly closed. “Bye.”
He pulled away the second I’d crossed the threshold. Doing his job, but no more.
Lena was standing by my locker, hugging herself and rocking, looking as miserable as I felt. When she saw me, she dropped her arms and took a deep breath.
“You look like hell,” she said.
“Thanks. You too. You want to go somewhere and talk?”
“Yeah. Chapel?” she suggested. “No one will interrupt.”
“Sure.” We ducked out a side door and crossed the courtyard to the tiny stone building. Purple linens decorated the altar, and the usual flowers were replaced by stark arrangements of willow and forsythia, the buds tightly furled. A few candles were lit against the gloom. I sank into one of the last pews. Lena chose the one opposite me, braced her hands on the pew in front of her.
“When my mom was fifteen and living in Texas, she dated a guy from the next town over. She knew he was bad news, but she didn’t care. When she got pregnant, he accused her of cheating. Then he beat her until she lost the baby. She stayed with him. They got married when she was seventeen. He continued to beat her. She got pregnant again. He beat her some more. She ran. When he found her, she tried to divorce him, but the court said she had to share custody. Let him have equal time with my big brother.”
She paused for breath, deliberately loosened her grip on the pew, and continued. “She ran again, but this time people from a battered women’s shelter helped her out. She was in Florida when she heard he’d been killed in a bar fight. She changed her name and my brother’s. Went to school nights and weekends. Got a degree in social work. Met my dad. Had me. Went to law school.”
She laid out the history of her life like a game of solitaire, neat and orderly and unemotional, one layer on top of another.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s ... awful.” More than awful.
Lena brushed the words aside and took a deep breath. “Now she’s a professor at Northwestern. She specializes in family law—specifically, custody cases involving battered women and children.”
“So they don’t have to go through what she did.”
“Yes.” Lena sat for a long time, hands folded in her lap, shoulders hunched. “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“I promise.”
“The man at the shelter,” she said. “I don’t know him. But I know what he’s done.”
I had a momentary vision of Raymond Gaskill’s mug shot, and everything came together in my head. “He said you knew where his family was.”
“I might have, at one point. But if they went missing recently, then they’re probably moving around every couple of days. Emily might have been his daughter’s name when he was hurting her, but I guarantee you it’s something else by now. And he won’t touch her again.”
“He lost custody?”
She spoke precisely, no quaver in her voice despite the horror of all she’d relayed. “He was granted custody, despite overwhelming evidence he is an abuser. Because those are the families we help. The ones the system failed. We hide them. We give them new identities. We help them start over, far away, so they can have a shot at a real life.”
I stared at her. Lena Santos, editor of the school paper. Honor student. Middle hitter on the volleyball team, left striker on the soccer team. “It’s like witness protection for battered women.”
“Right. Except it’s illegal. Identity fraud. If there’s a kid, we relocate them, too. But then it’s kidnapping.”
The secrecy. The practiced way she’d deflected attention. Colin’s willingness to keep Lena’s secret. Of course he would, considering his past. “The woman and the little girl at the soup kitchen?”
“She looked scared, like someone was coming after her. I gave her the number of a shelter where we have contacts.” She shrugged, the gesture defeated. “They haven’t shown up.”
It made sense. Now that I knew what I was looking at, the picture developed rapidly. “Jill said something once. About your family. It spooked you.”
“She’s always talking about how her dad is friends with the State’s Attorney.”
“You didn’t want her to pay attention to your family.” I knew the feeling well.
She made a face. “I know it sounds paranoid ...”
I shook my head. “It sounds careful. What’s your dad’s take?”
“He’s on board. He’s a criminal attorney, actually.”
“That’s why you understood the transcript from my dad’s court case.” She’d had a better grasp of the situation than I’d realized. “Does your mom know you’re telling me?”
“Yeah. I promised her you would keep quiet.” She grinned, though it wasn’t the full wattage of her normal smile. “Nobody keeps secrets like you.”
“What about the guy at the soup kitchen? Is there going to be fallout?”
“My mom was pretty freaked out at first. She was ready to make me change schools, but she’s calmed down. She was pretty happy about Colin being there.”
The wormy feeling in my stomach returned.
“Your turn,” she said.
“Colin knows. Everything. And now he hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“You didn’t see him last night. Or this morning. It’s like trying to talk to a glacier.”
“He’ll thaw out eventually.”
“It’s not just the deal with Billy,” I said. “I did some digging, found out about his past. He’d told me to leave it alone, but ...”
“Look, the man is overprotective, but that’s his nature. And you threw him for a loop, because you switched it around—you protected him. He’ll adjust, and he’ll forgive you for snooping, and you’ll go back to the way things were.”
I picked up a hymnal and flipped through it, suddenly restless.
“Which is what you want,” she added, peering closely at me.
I slid the hymnal back into its slot.
“Not a ringing affirmation, Mo.”
“I want to take Billy down. Colin doesn’t approve. He thinks it’s dangerous.”
“He’s right. But you still need to do it.”
“If we go back to the way things were, I won’t be able to.” Billy aside, there were still the Arcs to contend with. I’d be tied to them for the rest of my life, and I didn’t know if Colin could stand it.
Luc had warned me I couldn’t live in both worlds, and I’d ignored him. Now I had to wonder if he was right.