“What’s going to happen to them?”
“I don’t know,” I sigh. I’ve been on the phone with the on-call social worker. Sarah and Ashley’s grandparents in California are willing to take the girls, but they’re apparently fervent racists and won’t take “the half-breed,” and Sarah has already announced that if she’s sent anywhere without both her siblings, she’ll run away. Which, you know, good for her, but still. The girls’ father is in prison for a white-collar crime, his parents have been dead for years, and Sammy’s grandparents haven’t been located. There aren’t any uncles or aunts, and it’s hard to find fosters willing to take in a trio and keep them together. “For right now they’re at the hospital until they’re sure the oldest one is okay, and then they’ll be taken to a group home while it’s being figured out.”
“And you’re all kinds of fine with this.”
“Are you just here to yell at me?”
She looks abashed at that. Tired, too, her eyes washed pink with exhaustion, and concealer can only cover the color of the shadows there, not the way the softer skin sags with fatigue. She hasn’t been sleeping. “I miss you,” she whispers.
“I miss you too, but you’re the one who walked away.”
“Bloodied children, Mercedes!”
“Victims, Siobhan, who certainly didn’t ask for their parents to be murdered so they could inconvenience you.”
“Wow.” She sits—perches, really—on the edge of my desk and stares at her feet. “Normally when we fight, you’re not this mean.”
“Normally when we fight, it’s over stupid shit.” I dig through the mess of papers on my desk until I can find my phone, which tells me it’s just shy of eight-thirty; I’ve been at my desk for almost five hours already. Madre de Dios. Swiveling my chair, I can see Sterling at her computer, typing rapidly, and Eddison at his obsessively neat desk nearby, feet up on the corner with a thick file opened across his lap. “Hey, hermano—” I say to him.
“Bring me back something.”
“Got it.” I grab my purse from the bottom drawer and head toward the elevator. A second later, a startled Siobhan follows suit.
“What’s—was that a conversation? What was that?”
“We’re getting coffee.”
“I have work to do.”
“Which is why you were at my desk?” I jab the call button harder than I really need to, and have to keep myself from doing it repeatedly. It’s that kind of morning. “Come or don’t.”
“Mercedes . . .”
The elevator opens and I step in, turn around, and raise my eyebrows at her. With a muttered curse, she follows me.
“I don’t have my wallet.”
“Have your ID?”
“Yes.”
“Then as long as you can get back to your desk later, I’m pretty sure I can spare the cost of a coffee, even yours.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you order ridiculously complicated coffee.”
“Oh. That’s . . . that’s true.”
I’m tired and angry and confused, and more than a little hurt by her recent choices, so I’m well aware my current mood is set to bitchy. We head out of the building and down to one of the coffee shops. Despite how many there are in the area, they’re all busy, feeding the addiction that keeps a large percentage of agents operating at something like capacity. A few blocks down, we manage to find one that’s a bit quieter, with a little patio holding a handful of chairs and tiny tables, and no people. Some are sitting inside with the air-conditioning, and there are others getting cups to go, but we should get the patio to ourselves. No one wants to sit in this humid heat, no matter how early in the day it is.
Siobhan’s order fills the side of her cup with arcane runes, and mine gets a quick smile from the barista for being so simple. I also grab a bagel and get a cannoli for Siobhan. It won’t be as good as Marlene’s, of course, but maybe it’s good to remember that the longer she’s pissed at me for something that isn’t my fault, the longer it will be before she gets superlative baked goods again.
I’m not above bribery.
We wait in silence for the drinks. She plays with the cuffs of her giant ugly sweater, and I check the newest text from Holmes: Why are so many of your neighbors in bed by ten? By that, I’m guessing no one noticed a car driving up and off-loading children. People on the street are friendly, but they keep to themselves. The arrangement Jason and I have for lawn and laundry is an unusual degree of coexistence. There’s not much reason to spend your time peeking through the curtains at the world outside when your life is inside.
Coffees and breakfast in hand, we retreat to the patio. She only picks at her cannoli, crumbling the thick shell between fingers and thumb. I am entirely too hungry to be delicate, and my bagel is gone in five bites. I maybe should have grabbed a second one.
“Mercedes? Why don’t we live together?”
Her hair is so bright in the morning sun, fiery red corkscrew curls that fight any attempt to tame or contain them. She can’t even use a hair band on it when it’s dry; this morning, her ponytail is cinched by a giant pipe cleaner in a cheerful pink. I’ve gotten spoiled the past three years, being able to feel it against my skin, the weight of it in my hands.
“Mercedes.”
“Because I don’t like sharing space on a permanent basis,” I say simply. “Because having my own space, having locks between me and everyone else, is important to me, and I’m not ready to give that up. Because I can’t have my only safe space, my only private space, be a bedroom, even if it’s converted to an office. Because I love you, but I can’t live with anyone just yet.”
“I stay over at yours, you stay over at mine, you and Eddison have sleepovers all the time. What’s the difference?”
“The ability to say no.”
“I don’t—”
“My bedroom door didn’t have a lock I could control, growing up. I went into foster care when I was ten, anywhere from two to six of us in a room, and if there was a lock, it was on the outside of the door, nothing we could touch. When my last set of fosters asked if I wanted to stay until I aged out, they did it by buying a lock and helping me install it on the inside of my door. They understood what that meant to me, how safe it made me feel, and that’s why I stayed. It’s the first space that was mine, not just because I was in it but because I could control who had access to it.”
She sips her drink, watching the cars pass by. “You were in foster care?” she asks eventually.
“Eight years.”
“You weren’t adopted?”
“The last ones offered. I said no.”
“Why?”
“Because family hurt me. I wasn’t ready to try again. But I stayed with them for four years, and I’m still in touch with them. We get together a couple times a year.”
“Three years, and you’ve never told me this?”
“You like to edit your world, Siobhan. You can’t tell me you’re not curious about why I went into foster care, but you’ll get angry if I explain it. Because that’s not what you want in your reality. Children don’t get hurt in your little world.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No, it isn’t, and I’m tired of pretending it’s something I can do.” My thumb taps against the scars on my cheek. I keep them covered most of the time, but not always. She’s seen them, and she’s never once asked how I got them. I used to be grateful for it until I better understood that she wasn’t granting me privacy—she genuinely didn’t want to know, because she suspected it might be something terrible. And it was, and it is, but still. “You constantly punish me for doing a job you think shouldn’t be necessary, while refusing to admit that it is. I’m tired of feeling like I have to protect you from my history simply because you don’t like that the world can be a horrible place.”
“I’m not that na?ve!” she protests, but I shake my head.