“That’s not true,” Paul said. There was no laughter in his voice at all now. “I’ve always wanted to help you, Suze.”
“Is that what you call what you did to me graduation night, when you said you had a present you had to give to me in private, so I followed you outside and you threw me up against the mission wall and shoved your hand up my skirt?” I asked him, acidly. “You consider that helping me?”
“I do,” he said. “I was trying to help teach you not to waste your time on formerly deceased Latino do-gooders who consider it a sin to get nasty without a marriage license.”
“Well,” I said, lowering my feet from my desktop. “I’m hanging up now. It was not at all a pleasure speaking to you again after all these years, Paul. Please die slowly and painfully. Buh-bye.”
“Wait,” Paul said urgently before I could press End. “Don’t go. I wanted to say—”
“What? That you won’t tear down my house if I take lessons from you in how to be a more effective mediator? Sorry, Paul, that might have worked when I was sixteen, but I’m too old to fall for that one again.”
He sounded offended. “The thing with your house is just business. I only told you about it as a courtesy. What I wanted to say is that I’m sorry.”
Paul Slater had never apologized for anything before . . . and meant it. He caught me off guard.
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry for what I said about Jesse just now, and sorry for what happened that night. You’re right, Suze, I’d had way too much to drink. I know that’s no excuse, but it’s the truth. Honestly, I barely remember what happened.”
Was he kidding? “Let me remind you. After you tried to nail me against that wall, I gave you a present. It was with my knee, to your groinal area. Does that refresh your memory?”
“A man doesn’t forget that kind of pain, Simon. But what happened after that is a bit hazy. Is that when Debbie Mancuso came along?”
“It was. She seemed eager to tend to the wound I gave you.”
“Then you should be the one apologizing to me. Debbie’s ministrations were far from tender. She straddled me like she thought I was a damned gigolo—”
“Watch it,” I growled. “Debbie’s married to my stepbrother Brad now. And obviously I didn’t knee you nearly as hard as I should have if you were still able to get it on with Debbie afterward. The last thing you’re ever going to hear from me is an apology.”
“Then accept mine, and let me make it up to you. I have a proposal.”
I barked with laughter. “Oh, right!”
“Simon, I’m serious.”
“That’ll be a first.”
“It could save your home.”
I stopped laughing. “I’m listening. Maybe.”
“Give me another chance.”
“I said I’m listening.”
“No, that’s the proposal. Give me another chance.”
dos
The school office was air-conditioned, but the shiver I felt down my spine had nothing to do with the fact that my supervisors (some of whom dress in religious habit) liked to keep the thermostat at a crisp sixty-five degrees.
“I’m sorry,” I said, glad the shiver didn’t show in my voice. “I’m actually very busy and important and don’t have time for rich jerks from my past who want to make amends. But I wish you luck on your path toward transformative enlightenment. Bye now.”
“Suze, wait. Don’t you want to save your house?”
“It isn’t mine anymore, remember? It’s yours. So I don’t care what happens to it.”
“Come on, Suze. This is the first time in six years you’ve actually called me back when I’ve reached out to you. I know you care—about the house.”
He was right. I’d been upset when Mom told me she and my stepdad, Andy, were selling it—much more upset than Jesse when he heard the news.
“It’s only a house, Susannah,” he’d said. “Your parents haven’t lived there in years, and neither have we. It has nothing to do with us.”
“How can you say that?” I’d cried. “That house has everything to do with us. If it weren’t for that house, we’d never have found one another!”
He’d laughed. “Maybe, querida. Then again, maybe not. I have a feeling I’d have found you, and you me, no matter where we were. That house is only a place, and not our place, not anymore. Our place is together, wherever we happen to be.”
Then he’d pulled me close and kissed me. It had been hard to feel bad about anything after that.
I guess I could understand why the big, rambling Victorian on 99 Pine Crest Road meant nothing to him. To Jesse, it’s the house in which he was killed.