This feels like bait, and she’s not willing to take it. What’s he trying to do? Sell her on the idea that he was always sweet on her and his constant bullying was just his way of dealing with the fact that he liked her? Does anyone really believe that crap anymore? Even if it’s true, how’s she supposed to feel about it now? Grateful for the attention, no matter how negative it was? And if he was paying enough attention to her to know her favorite beverage, could he not see how much his constant insults hurt her?
Somewhere out there, she thinks, there must be a man who wasn’t raised to believe his every cough in a woman’s presence is somehow a gift to her.
If Marty hadn’t sent her here with a clear objective, she might be giving voice to these thoughts, but instead she’s chewing her bottom lip in an effort to keep her expression neutral.
“I don’t have any Diet Coke,” he says.
“OK.”
“I mean, I don’t drink it. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have run out and bought some.”
“I get it. We surprised you.”
“No, that’s fine. I mean, if you’re only in town for a short while, I’m glad you came by.”
“Let’s go inside, Luke.”
His cheeks are ablaze. The sight pleases her, for many reasons, some of them too complicated for her to sort through in this moment.
He gestures to the front door. She follows him into the house.
21
The inside of the house, like the yard, has a hollowed-out feeling that makes memories of those long-ago parties ring in her mind.
The place is mostly empty except for the den, which looks as if a bachelor pad apartment has been slid through the front door intact and then wedged into this one room. There’s a flat-screen TV resting on top of a chest of drawers that looks like it belongs in a dorm. The bookshelves on either side are too small. The hunter-green curtains don’t match the yellow walls, and she doesn’t see the color anywhere else in the house.
Across the entry hall, in the dining room, cardboard boxes are shoved neatly against one wall, three rows deep. There’s no real mess, but it’s clear most of Luke’s belongings are still inside and he just moves between them to retrieve his essentials. In one corner of the room there’s a mostly empty desk and a desktop computer; its wide-screen monitor pulses with a succession of high-definition images. Snowy mountains, sparkling lakes, the peaks of the Scottish Highlands.
When she turns and sees the new alarm panel on the wall behind her, she remembers her own back in Arizona, and the sting of betrayal threatens to distract her.
Luke’s surroundings don’t fit with either of the two scenarios she was on the lookout for: the eruptive mess of someone who’s hit a brick wall in life or the too immaculate, too orderly domicile of someone who hasn’t fully committed to their new home, maybe because they don’t plan to stay for very long.
What she sees is something in between the two: order and a lack of commitment and an awkward marriage of his grad school life and his new, uncertain one. But who is she to try to analyze this house and his stuff in this way? She’s not a detective, for Christ’s sake. This thought gives her a second or two of relief before she remembers that if she’s going to survive the mess she’s currently in, she better acquire the skills of a detective, and quick.
“You like Sprite?” he asks.
“Sure. As long as it’s diet.”
Luke nods and ducks into the kitchen. She doesn’t follow, but she’s got a good vantage point from where she’s standing. Almost nothing on the counters. No blender, no toaster. Just a coffee maker and a stack of mail. The butcher-block table’s too small, just like everything in the house is too small.
He didn’t plan to live here, she thinks. That’s all I can figure.
Luke returns with an open can of Sprite Zero and nothing for himself, which makes her feel awkward and like she shouldn’t take a sip. But he wasn’t out of her sight for more than a second, and would he really drug her with Marty outside? If he did, would she be as immune as she’d been to the vodka and wine she’d guzzled the night before? Or is that something that only happens after Dylan’s wonder drug has been triggered? There’s still a part of her that wants to refer to the drug as Zypraxon, but she’d like to know if the name, like much of what Dylan told her, is complete bullshit.
“So what brought this on?” she asks, gesturing to the room around her.
“I needed a place to live. It’s cheap, believe it or not. Silver Shore was renting it out for some of their foremen on the resort project, but when that fell through, they broke their lease, and Emily was desperate to fill the place. Her dad’s been gone awhile.”
“No, I mean, asking to see me like this.”
“Marty didn’t tell you?”
“He said you were with the sheriff’s department now; that’s all,” she lies.
Luke nods.
This is not a secret agent, she realizes, or if he is, he’s super bad at it, because right now I could cut his discomfort with a knife. And he might thank me if I did.
Then she sees the stack of books on the shelf, the guides to criminal profiling and crime scene investigation. On top of them is a file folder, its thick stack of pages perilously close to sliding free, which suggests he shoved them in their current spot quickly. The top page sports a blaring headline. She can’t see the whole thing, but two of the words she can see make her stomach go cold—Mask Maker.
Tell me he’s not writing a book about serial killers, she thinks. Please, God, tell me he didn’t ask me here for some kind of interview.
“So is Altamira Sheriff’s consulting on the Mask Maker killings?”
“Oh, that. No. That’s just a little weekend reading.”
“Weekend reading?”
“Something to keep my head busy.”
“A little amateur detective work?”
“Yeah.” He stares at the floor. Swallows as if it’s painful. “I guess that’s what I am now. An amateur detective.” He says these last two words with such venom, she’s surprised he doesn’t finish them off by spitting on the floor. Whatever his reasons for getting rejected by the FBI, he’s not exactly repressing his feelings about them.
“Figure you’re here because Marty and I had some words yesterday,” Luke says.
“About me?”
“About a lot of things, but you came up.”
“And so he guilted you into this?” she asks.
“Into what?”
“Apologizing,” she says. “You are going to apologize, right?”
“Should I?”
“Yes, you should,” she says and takes a sip of Sprite.
“I didn’t expect this to be this hard.”
“Well, maybe it should be.”
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?” he asks.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You sure you don’t want a beer?” he asks.
“Do you?”
“Yes,” he says.
He ducks into the kitchen and reappears with a bottle of Heineken, wiping the evidence of his first sip from his lips with one forearm.
“You’re enjoying this?” he asks.
“What?”
“You’re smiling,” he says.
“I am?”
Luke nods and takes another sip of beer.
“Sorry,” she says. “It’s been a crazy few days.”
“Is that what the name change is about?” he asks.
“The name change is a year old.” And even that’s more than you should say to him right now.
“I’m gonna do this, Charley.”
“Do what? Apologize?”
“Yeah. I’m just . . .”
“You’re just what?” she asks. “Working up the nerve?”
“Marty, he . . .”
“He what?”
“I don’t know; he told me apologies are all bullshit. That they’re just things we say to make ourselves feel better, and so I guess I’m trying for more here.”
“OK. You know what might make this easier? For you, I mean.”
“What?”
“You could ask me what I think you should apologize for,” she says.
Luke stares at her as if she’s an oncoming train. He swallows. “OK.”
But he says nothing, and the silence between them extends.
“Are you going to ask me, Luke?”
“What would you like me to apologize for, Tr—Charley?”
“Can I sit down?”
“Of course,” he says.