Because Eddison knows it’s ridiculous that he’s got his personal cell in or near his hand at all times, that he flinches every time any phone around him rings. He knows he’s twitchier than a long-tailed cat on the front porch of a Cracker Barrel, and it would actually be refreshing for his partner to needle him a little for it.
But of course, she knows why he’s twitchy. She agrees with it. So she won’t mock him for it, even if he sort of needs it (and how fucked up is that?), because it’s probably taking all her restraint not to tap her pen straight through her damn desk.
She’s off at lunch right now, an apology sort-of date with the gal from Counterterrorism she had to abandon on Sunday, and Vic is being silent support for Danelle as she goes through her newest round of interviews with the DA’s office. Danelle is fairly stable, all things considered, practical enough to acknowledge the nightmare she’s in, just optimistic enough to wait it out and hope for better.
His work cell goes off, and he flinches, checks his personal phone even though he knows by the ring it’s the official one. He frowns at the name on the display. “Hello, Inara.”
“Eddison. Vic still with Danelle?”
“Yes. What’s up?”
“Bliss and I aren’t coming down this weekend like we’d planned.” Under her voice, he can hear wind and car horns, the sounds of the city. She must be out on her fire escape, or maybe on the roof. Outside, anyway, and he’s not surprised she took the conversation away from her roommates. “I left a voice mail for Hanoverian, but he doesn’t immediately check his personal one if there isn’t a second call.”
“Something came up?”
“Sort of. Bliss is having A Day.”
There’s a snarled “Fuck you!” in the background, and it’s on the tip of his tongue to ask how that’s different from any other day, but he’s growing. Or something.
“Any particular reason?”
“Some. Her parents are pushing for her to come visit. They don’t like that she’s not ready.”
Bliss was missing for two and a half years. One year into that, her entire family moved when her father was offered a teaching position in Paris. As difficult as it is for the other girls to settle into families that never gave up, how much harder to reforge connections with the family that moved on?
“And they keep calling her Chelsea,” she continues after a moment, and he can hear Bliss’s swearing getting distant, softer.
“It’s her name,” he feels obliged to point out.
“It isn’t. Call me Maya, I won’t even blink. Call me Samira, I’ll cut you.”
He laughs in spite of himself, not because he thinks she’s joking, but because she’s absolutely serious. She spent years making sure Samira Grantaire didn’t mean anything, the ghost of a little girl left behind long before she was physically abandoned. Inara is the name she chose, Maya the name she accepted because the Gardener gave it to her and she wanted to live, and she’s too pragmatic to stumble over a thing like survival. Maya may be a scar, the ink on her back, but Samira is, in some ways, the wound that can only heal if it’s never, ever mentioned.
He clears his throat to get rid of the last of the laugh. “But she doesn’t want to go by Bliss forever, surely?”
“Not especially. For now she thinks it’s funny. She’s got a list of possibilities.”
“Any contenders?”
“I’m rooting for Victoria, myself,” she says blandly. “Think Vic will be flattered?”
Eddison chokes, and then gives up and laughs again. Vic would be flattered, is the thing, but it would never be less than hilarious. “Jesus.”
“So Bliss is feeling fragile, which means she shouldn’t be around breakable people.”
“I know you and your roommates have unique definitions of breakable when it comes to each other, but is it a good idea to stay in?”
“No, which is why we’re going to get a hotel for a couple of days. We already had the nights off from work. She can rant and rave, and not have to feel guilty about shredding innocent people.”
“I’m not sure we count as innocent. Or breakable.”
“Vic’s daughters are, and she would never forgive herself for hurting them.” Her voice is soft, probably too quiet for Bliss to pick up. “I know his girls are strong. We both know that. But they are innocent, despite his work, and it’s . . . it’s a bad idea.”
“What else is going on?” he asks, and receives a sour noise in response. Not that he’s often perceptive, but Inara always seems to hold a grudge when he manages it. “What else is setting her off?”
There’s a long silence, made staticky by wind and the distant sound of Bliss’s cursing, but that’s okay. Eddison may not be the most patient person in the Bureau, but he does know how to wait when he’s sure there’s an answer on the other end of it.
When Inara finally answers, her voice is pained, the words slow and reluctant. “I got another letter from Desmond.”
“A letter from—wait, another?”
“This is the fourth one. They come to the restaurant, and the return address is his lawyer’s office. I guess that explains how he knows where I work.”
“What is he saying?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t opened them.” She sighs. “I have them. I’ll give them over. I really did mean to tell you guys at the first one, but that was when Ravenna had her meltdown with her mother, and I forgot. Then the second one, and I meant to, I did.”
“But you’re used to keeping secrets.” He’s actually rather proud of himself, how evenly and neutral and nonjudgmental that came out. It might even sound supportive.
“The third one came once Amiko’s suicide hit the news.”
“Her you call by her birth name.”
“Her I saw safely lowered into the ground.” It makes more of a difference than it probably should, but he’s sure as shit not going to argue with her about it.
“And now a fourth one.”
“The envelopes are thick. They don’t feel like there’s anything but paper, but it feels like a lot of paper.”
In the least complicated sense of things—and since when has that been his life?—Desmond MacIntosh shouldn’t be contacting Inara because he’s a defendant and she’s a witness and a victim kidnapped by his father.
“If I give the New York office a heads-up, can you drop off the letters before you hole up in the hotel?”
Anyone who hasn’t danced with her in an interrogation room probably wouldn’t catch the hesitation before she says yes.
“Get out to a beach, if you don’t have a place already,” he suggests. “It’s not warm enough for tourists yet. Might help.”
“Yeah?”
“Wide open, wild. Endless expanse.”
She hums thoughtfully, and he knows she’s picking up on all the layers in the words: because the Garden was contained, perfectly manicured and maintained, artificial, but the ocean is untamed, big enough to make you feel tiny, and completely itself. There’s no fa?ade, no mask, no glitter.
It just is, and he thinks Bliss isn’t the only one who’ll find it soothing.
Even if neither she nor Inara will admit to it later.
“I’ll let Vic know about the change of plans,” he tells her, rather than make her commit one way or the other to the idea.
“Text me the name of the agent you talk to,” she says. “I’ll ask for them.”
He hesitates before signing off, because shit, this really isn’t his thing. “If you need anything . . .”
“Why, Eddison, are you going soft? What a terrifying thought.”
Maybe it shouldn’t be comforting, but it is.
She’ll be okay. Bliss will be okay.
Someday.
When I’m leaving the house for chess on Thursday and find the bundle of purple-throated calla lilies on the step, I realize that whatever Mum and I are trying to achieve in Huntington, it’s going to be more complicated than we’d originally planned for. I take the pictures, check the card—just Priya again—and leave them there for the police or the agents or whoever gets sent out in response to my text to Eddison and the email to Agent Finnegan. After giving myself five minutes to wrestle with the decision—mostly to make sure I’ll be able to live with it afterward—I send a second text to Eddison.
Tell me the rest.
If the rest of the game is going to play out, there’s not a way to avoid it. I have no doubt he’ll limit what he tells us, and Mum and I can pretend ignorance to the rest. No one has to give away any secrets yet.