He pressed his lips together. “Because your brother wouldn’t have wanted you to know.”
“How would you know what was going though his mind?”
“He would have told you, wouldn’t he?” he pointed out.
“Maybe he just ran out of time.”
“Believe me, Emmy,” he insisted darkly, “Bill wouldn’t want you to know this much about his
life.” Cameron picked up our empty plates and glasses and walked them back to the kitchen.
“Okay …” I decided to let it go and moved on. “Why are you telling me this now?”
He came back from the kitchen and leaned against the counter, searching my face again. “I had
no other choice. I know how close you and Bill were and that it was difficult for you when he
died.” He forced a smile. “I also know that you wouldn’t let up until you heard the truth. I
wanted you to hear it from me … and to stop harassing my kid brother for information that he
doesn’t have. He had no idea who Bill was or who you were. You’re making it very hard on me to
keep the kid away from all that stuff.”
“Rocco wants to be part of all that stuff,” I reminded him.
“That’s not up to him.” He was adamant about this. I wouldn’t press him on that.
“Spider and Carly—they knew who I was, though.”
“Yes. They did,” he confessed quickly. He came to take the seat next to me. I could feel the
heat off his arm. I wondered if he did this on purpose, to confound me.
“I have to leave for a little while,” he told me quietly. “I know that you have a lot of
questions, but I meant what I said: the less you know, the safer you are.” He smiled his
crooked smile. “Please don’t start any more hunger strikes while I’m gone. Rocco will not
feed you, and from the smells that come out of his room I don’t think that he would even notice
the smell of a decomposing body.”
His brown eyes were fixed on mine. I wanted to touch him, just a little bit to see if he was
real, but I just yawned a long, boorish yawn. He chuckled and he reached out to gently squeeze
my shoulder. My heart thudded—he was very real. “It’s late. You need to go to bed.”
I squinted toward the clock in the living room. Though my eyes were burning and my neck felt
like it was holding up a bowling ball, I didn’t want to go to bed.
“When will you be back?” I asked, stupidly yawning again.
“I don’t know,” he told me. “Could be a couple days, could be a week. It depends on how
things progress. I have a lot of catching up to do.” He winked at me, “I have to finish the
business that was interrupted last time I was in the city.”
This time my yawn hit my eyes and made them tear up. This made him chuckle. “Go to bed, Emmy. I
promise we’ll talk when I get back.”
He got up and hesitated before extending his hand to help me up. I took it—without comment this
time. His hand was warm and it awakened something.
After he had led me to his bedroom door and after there was an awkward pause between us, he
turned on his heels and started to walk away.
“What made you think that Daniel was my son?” he asked as I was grabbing the door handle.
I shrugged shyly. “Why else would you be paying Frances?”
Cameron considered this for a moment. “He’s not mine,” he told me, and with my heart still
hotly pounding, I closed the bedroom door and pushed Meatball over before crashing into bed,
still fully clothed.
There was overwhelming desolation. I had sensed it as soon as my eyes had fluttered open; even
before I had noticed the string of light that was poking through the curtain borders and before
Meatball started whining at the door to be let out of our cave. Whatever place Cameron had come
to occupy inside of me was now being wrenched by distance. Weirdly, I felt him far away, and the
only way I could explain this to myself was that he had quickly become the only true tie I had
left to my brother. It was the closest I had ever come to knowing about my brother’s other life
and I was starved for more. The fact that Bill had been involved in something most likely highly
illegal wasn’t all that surprising to me—I was even a little proud of this. How entrenched he
had been in these extracurricular activities and what part Cameron had played and might still
have been playing in these endeavors, I didn’t know. Part of me wondered if the whole truth—
and I was starting to have an idea what that truth might look like—would even perturb me,
change how I felt.
My sixth sense was validated when I went outside to let Meatball get to his business and saw
that Cameron’s car was gone.
Rocco and Griff were on the front stoop, so I held back the deep sigh that was inflating my
chest and resigned to pinching my lips together.
“Ginger!” Griff exclaimed through a cloud of his cigarette smoke. “Where have you been
hiding, love?”