“Thank you,” she said quietly. “May I send you the details? I know it would mean a lot to him if you attended.”
I opened my mouth to refuse, but then she filled the silence quickly. “If not for him, come to meet your half-siblings.”
I sucked in a breath, my stomach flipping over.
Rowe looked at me questioningly, and I shook my head. I couldn’t even explain the turmoil coursing through me at that suggestion. I wanted to yell no and cheer yes all at the same time, and that was incredibly confusing.
I ended up just saying nothing.
“You don’t have to decide right now. The service will be done before the end of the week, I hope. I’ll text you the details and maybe you’ll come.”
I had no words. This woman was nothing like the villain I’d imagined in my head. She was going out of her way to be kind to me, even when I’d done nothing to deserve it.
“Maybe,” I managed to squeak out.
I could hear the smile in Angela’s voice. “Good. I know I never got to meet you personally, but your dad did talk about you and Jayela a lot. I feel like I know the two of you almost as well as I know my own children.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear that my father talked about me to his other family. Even if that were true, it was all too little too late.
“You might not be my blood, Mae. But you are my children’s. That means something to me. I hope you’ll come. I’d like to meet you in person.”
She didn’t wait for me to say yes or no. She just hung up.
While the part of me that felt orphaned, suddenly felt a little less lonely.
23
Liam
The elevator doors pinged open, and my assistant glanced over, mid conversation via a headset with a microphone that hovered at her lips. Her eyes widened when she saw it was me. “Gotta go, Mario. The prodigal son has returned.”
I chuckled and leaned on the desk in front of her. She’d been my assistant ever since I finished college. Well, the office assistant. We all shared her, but I knew I was her favorite.
She pressed a button on her headset, cancelling the call. “You’re back.”
“Why do you make it sound like an accusation?”
She ignored me. “Were you whistling when you walked in?”
I blinked. “I don’t know. Was I?”
“It sounded like whistling.”
I shrugged. “Guess I was then.”
Slowly, a smiled crept across her face. “You really are back.”
“In the flesh.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. When you came in that one day last week after the Michaelson trial, you were here…but not really here. And then you disappeared altogether.”
The vise that had let up on my chest threatened to squeeze again, but I refused to let it. I didn’t want to go back there, where I’d been when Heath had pulled me from my grandfather’s house. Our talk on the beach had really put things in perspective, as had a few days out in the woods with Mae and Ripley and Rowe.
Ripley called me Li-yam, his tongue not quite wrapping around the letters properly. I didn’t know why, but that one little thing had gotten inside my heart and taken up root. There was an easy relaxation at the cabin. One where it was just the four of us—or four and a half if you counted Ripley—against the world. I’d tucked him into bed last night and sat on the end of his foldout mattress and told him a story about a family who lived in a bubble. I’d been making it up as I went along, not really thinking about it, but in hindsight, it was the story of us.
Something about being around them, isolated and in nature, had helped heal the worst of my broken bits. Not fully. Some wounds would never heal completely, and I knew the things my grandfather had done would sit as a chip on my shoulder for the rest of my life, one I’d constantly need to watch to make sure it didn’t eat away at me.
But I was happier, if not completely happy.
My mind had turned back to proving Heath’s innocence.
The elevator doors behind me binged open again, and the smile slid off Elise’s face. “Back again, Officers?” She shot a worried glance in my direction.
I schooled my face into something pleasant and polite before I turned around.
I recognized the two men in uniform instantly. Johnson and Stewart had been the officers who’d beaten a confession out of Heath the morning after Jayela’s murder. Johnson crossed his arms above his beer gut that strained at his button-down shirt.
His eyes narrowed on me. “Just the man we’ve been looking for.”
I acted like I didn’t have a care in the world. “Oh yeah? About a case? Which one?”
The younger guy spoke up from beside his colleague. “Where have you been the last few days, Mr. Banks?”
First rule of lying was to stick as closely to the truth as possible. “At my apartment, mostly.”
“Doing what?”
“Getting drunk, to tell the truth. I needed a break.”
Johnson cocked his head to one side, studying me. “Stressed?”
“Always. Comes with the job.”
“Not stressed because your client is still on the run?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why would I be stressed about that? It wasn’t me who lost him. And it’s not me who can’t find him now. That’s your job. I’ll be stressed about him when he becomes my problem again. But until you find him, that’s not my department.”
Johnson rammed his lips together in a scowl. “You got anyone who can back up your story?”
Fuck this guy. I knew exactly what he’d done to Heath. I wanted to throw my fist straight into his smarmy face. So many of our problems had started with him and his negligence. It was nothing new, the police department in Providence had been poorly led for decades, their chief just recently landing himself in jail. But the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. He’d trained his men in his own image. The handful of good ones, like Boston and Jayela, either didn’t last or moved on to other precincts when they realized who they were working with.
“My girlfriend can confirm if you really need my alibi.”
“She got a name?” Johnson’s voice was barely above a sneer.
“Do you think I made her up?”