It took me four steps to get to the side door instead of six. I checked behind me, slapped the screen door open, and put in my code. The house was dark, and I left it that way, taking big but careful steps from room to room as quietly as possible.
No one was there. I knew it from the first few seconds, but I checked every corner with the bat ready to swing. Then I turned on the lights.
I went to the little closet with the bank of monitors and fast-forwarded through the previous hour, from the time I left to the current minute. The bat was still slung over my shoulder as I watched. Everything had been quiet. Not a bug or a bird.
Vince had just been to the house two nights before. He was still a threat.
But I couldn’t live like this anymore. I was sick to death of it. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and here I was being punished for a humiliation I hadn’t earned.
All of it, every second of shame for something that wasn’t my fault, every moment I’d wasted checking codes and locks, every quickened heartbeat, was inside that bank of closed-circuit monitors.
I lifted the bat off my shoulder. I could have just slid the length down my palm and put it away, but I didn’t. I lifted it higher and brought it down on my surveillance system. It scuffed the frame. Instead of feeling lucky to get a good swipe in without doing damage, I got frustrated. The frustration translated into rage, and the rage brought the bat into the leftmost screen from the side. The glass shattered into a web.
“That’s how you do it.” I sounded really sure of myself. I must be right.
I swung again at the next screen and the next, until all four were shattered and broken. I hit the black box with the hard drive, but the wooden bat did no discernible damage. Didn’t matter. I had a job to do, and I wasn’t going to let a steel casing slow me down.
Slapping the side door open, I went into the side yard. The camera’s light went on with the movement and shifted toward me. I swung the bat, hitting it hard enough for it to pivot a few degrees. The light stayed on. It would stay on through a nuclear holocaust.
I hit the arm that attached it to the house. Nothing. Again. Nothing. I swung until the stucco under the metal plate it was screwed into started to crack. My arms ached. My lungs burned. The sound of clanging metal, thumping wood, and grunting filled my ears, but I hit it until it came loose, dangling from the wall by umbilical wires, the light still on.
I wasn’t interested in hitting my house, so I went to the next camera, and the next. When I’d gotten all the cameras down, I went for the intercom at the front gate, smashing it with every bit of strength.
Then the bat broke. The end spun off and hit a parked Chevy, leaving me clutching a splintered stump too light to beat a chicken breast.
I hadn’t realized my hands hurt. The tender new blisters on my palms had broken into sticky white fluid. My wrists were shot through with pain, my elbows ached, and my cheeks were wet with tears I didn’t remember shedding.
I threw the rest of the bat over the fence and stormed back to the house.
The switch for the security system was in the little closet. I stepped over the busted monitors, put in my code, and just shut off the entire thing.
Relief—true relief—is like a drug. It flooded my system, pushing out stale worry and low-level panic. I smiled in a sort of disbelief, putting my hand over my mouth, sliding down the wall until I was crouched in the hallway, laughing. I rolled until I was lying on my back, arms spread, so happy, so liberated, so unencumbered that I couldn’t feel the wood under me, swearing I was floating inches above the floor.
CHAPTER 58
CARTER
Once I thought about putting on clean clothes, I had to think about showering. I’d lost my opportunity to chase her down the street anyway, so I was going to have to be more deliberate. She was probably home already, stewing about what an asshole I was.
I let the water run over me, thinking . . . could I do this?
Could I let Phin be alone for a few hours? Could we stay in Los Angeles and deal with the blowback over his mother? Could I commit myself to Emily and Phin? Didn’t people do it all the time? Didn’t men care for large families every damn day? What made me so special that I couldn’t?
“You’re wearing a suit?” Phin said when I came downstairs. He was petting the cat without sniffling or sneezing.
“Grandma will be back in an hour. You should go to bed.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, kid. Here’s the deal—”
He put his hands over his ears. “La-la-la-go-get-her-la-la-la.”
I could have argued with him about how important bedtime was, but he was a big boy, and he was right. I had to catch Emily.
CHAPTER 59
EMILY
The differences between Darlene’s life and mine were most visible in the drive up to her house. The trees got older, the streets quieter, the traffic lighter.
Darlene and I used to dream, and when we dreamed, we dreamed big. We’d get in my car, drive through the richest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and choose our houses. I’d take the one on the left with the circular drive, and she’d take the one on the right with the rose garden and the fountain. We’d argue over imagined bowling alleys in basements and the sizes and shapes of pools we couldn’t see.
But always, we were equals. We were going to make it together, buy two huge houses, and tear out the fences between them.
In the end, I bought a tiny place in Mid-City, and she got a three-story Tudor at the top of Van Ness. It didn’t matter at the time. We didn’t make comparisons. I’d traded my dreams for a chance to be something to someone. Maybe if the someone had been less of an asshole, the choice wouldn’t have been so obviously wrong.
In the end, I got my house. I just needed a place with high walls and a security system.
Darlene’s gate opened before I’d even stopped the car all the way. The lady of the house stood by her front door in her pajamas. She looked too small and too young for the structure behind her, as if she were sleeping over a rich friend’s place.
“Come here.” She bounded down the front steps in her bare feet and threw her arms around me before I was even out of the car. “Are you all right?”
All I’d told her was that I’d smashed my security system to bits, and could I come over?
“I’m fine.” I tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let me. “Really, I just got fed up. But I don’t even have locks on the doors. So—”
“We’ll take care of it.” She didn’t loosen up her hug.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“I want you to be safe.”
“I will be. But Darlene, I have to take some risks.”
She let me go. “Try Rollerblading without wrist guards.”
“Not always that. I know what you mean, but it’s not always breaking bones and imminent danger. Sometimes . . .” I took a breath.