“It’s not even lunchtime.” Allie twisted in her chair to face him. “You never said much about Barry before.”
Ilya focused on filling the mug as close to the brim as possible without spilling it. A flash of memory slithered through his brain, a snake in wild grasses looking for something warm and scampering to bite. “He was boning my mother. Don’t you think that made him creepy enough in my book?”
“What does that have to do with Theresa now?” Allie got out of her chair to cross to him, getting in his space so that he had little choice but to back up against the counter with his mug in his hand to keep her far enough away. “What’s your problem?”
“I’m just saying that anyone could’ve worked for this development company, right? It could’ve been anyone. But who shows up after all this time but the one person pretty much guaranteed to get in with us, both of us, but especially me, acting like . . . family.” His lip curled as he spat the words, thinking of every single conversation he and Theresa’d had before she finally left.
“You think she took that job just so she could convince them to come around trying to acquire our property? Ilya, that’s beyond crazy.” She reached around him to pull the jar of sugar toward him. “Here.”
“Spoon?”
He was well familiar with her sigh.
“In the drawer,” Allie said.
“Which drawer?”
“The same drawer that the spoons have been in since about 1983.” She yanked open the drawer next to the sink so hard everything inside it rattled. “There. Right there.”
“Why do you always do that?” he asked her without taking a spoon.
Allie closed her eyes as she took a few steps back, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose before she looked at him. The carefully blank slant of her expression spoke more about her anger with him than if she’d been screaming. It had always infuriated him when she did that. Her sister hadn’t been that way. Jennilynn would’ve let him have it, laid into him. Maybe even smacked him a little, never enough to hurt even though he’d been sure she meant it to.
“Do what?” Allie asked finally.
“Treat me like I’m an idiot.”
She looked at him. “Stop it.”
“Is that what you think of me? That I’m an idiot?” Ilya poked her, to get some goddamned kind of rise out of her. To make her see him, to at least give him that.
“Yes,” Allie snapped and slammed the drawer closed. “Yes. Yes, I do, sometimes, think you are an idiot. Worse than that, I believe you make yourself deliberately obtuse as a way of somehow getting out of doing the things that an adult person should just be able to do. Like find a freaking spoon in a drawer, in the place where the spoons have been for as long as you and I have known each other. Why do you do that?”
Ah, this. Here it came. The fury, the fire. She would look at him instead of through him or around him.
“I don’t understand what the big deal is. I forgot, okay? Why couldn’t you just give it to me, without all the hassle?”
Alicia shook her head and turned, walking away. “Get your own spoon. Or go home. Your choice.”
He stared after her for a second. “Hey. Don’t walk away from me.”
“Did you come over here to start an argument with me or to talk about this offer?” she shot over her shoulder as she headed toward the living room. “Or is talking about the offer just a reason to pick a fight with me? Because I’ll be honest with you right up front. I have too much of my own shit going on right now to have any desire to go battling with you. Okay?”
He followed her. “Hey. Allie.”
She took a seat, her usual, in the rocker facing the television. She put her mug on the side table and covered herself with the faded, ugly, orange-and-green afghan that was always draped over the chair. She picked up the remote and lifted it with an arch of her brow.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked.
She looked faintly surprised before everything in her expression closed up tight. He’d always hated that look. The one that told him he’d gone too far, pushed too hard, and now she was going to shut him out.
“We don’t have to take the money. I know it looks like a lot of money, right there on paper like that, but babe—”
“Don’t call me that,” she warned.
“Allie,” Ilya said, “I know you think this deal is the best thing, but it really isn’t. The money’s not even enough to cover what we sunk into the business.”
She tapped the remote gently into her fist and then let it rest there. She sighed. “It’s not just the money. It’s the business, as a whole.”
He sank into the couch across from her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m tired of working at Go Deep.”
He shook his head. “So . . . so we hire someone else to come in, run the numbers, and handle the books. We can find someone to do that, no problem. You can start taking over some of the trips. You always complained about how I was the one who got to do all the exciting things—”
Her harsh bark of razor-blade laughter shut him up quick.
“Yes. That’s exactly it,” Allie said in a voice thick with tears. “I want to go and do exciting things. I want to go and do anything but stay here in this house, in this town, with—”
“Me.”
Her second wave of laughter was harder to hear than the first, sharp-edged and jagged. Poised to shred. Allie dropped the remote and leaned forward to hang her head, to drop it into her hands.
“No, Ilya. My God, no. You have nothing to do with what I want or where I want to go or who I want to do it with.”
He knew he should get up off the couch, but a sudden pressure at the base of his neck kept him from moving. He let it push him forward, echoing Allie’s position, his elbows on his knees. Fingers clasped, palms together.
“No,” he said. “I know that.”
Her quiet sniffle made him want to run. He could never handle a crying woman, especially if he was in any way responsible for the tears. And he had to face the facts: he almost always had a hand in it, somehow. Yet he couldn’t make himself move—not to get up, not to leave, not to go across the room and put a comforting arm around her—hell, if she even wanted that from him, and he was sure she wouldn’t.
“It’s time to give it up, Ilya.”
He shook his head, not able to look at her. Not able to see anything at the moment, not through the cloudy gray haze covering his vision. He wanted to blame it on a bottle of vodka, a couple of six-packs, but he hadn’t had so much as a shot of liquor. It would be better if he could pace, but in the kitchen she’d told him to sit or go, so now he was sitting, and he couldn’t make himself get to his feet.
“No. They’re just offering us money, Allie. It’s only money—”
Her voice rose. “It’s not money! It’s not about that!”