“Verona was back at her desk. I acted like this was my stuff, like I’d dropped it,” he said, holding up Julian’s folder. “How’re you doing?”
I wasn’t sure. I stared over my toes at the built-in shelves, assessing. Strange that I remembered that old nickname given to me by the mean girls in the bathroom. I hadn’t wasted hate or even thought on them for years. I never went back to that school or saw them again. I never had to learn to bear that weight.
Just above my toes, on the third shelf down, I saw my own familiar cream-colored envelope, addressed to Kai’s PO box in Austin. I hadn’t wanted it in my loft, but I hadn’t thrown it out or shredded it. I’d brought it here, the voided check with her note on the back still nestled inside it. The red words on the outside, Return to Sender, matched my pedicure.
The envelope was the only flotsam on shelves that had been meticulously staged by our decorator to reflect what she called “Lawyer Luxe.” I’d left this thing propped against the leather-bound books, a macabre souvenir from a funeral after-party I had never thrown. For the first time, this struck me as weird. No, past weird. Downright crazy. I’d set it there and then grown myself a great big blind spot all around it.
I tried a deeper breath and found my lungs were mostly working. Birdwine took the chair closest to my head, his face set to careful neutral with a twist of wry. My shoes sat side by side on the coffee table in front him, my suit jacket draped beside them. Birdwine shoved them toward the center to make room for Julian Bouchard’s blue folder, restuffed and primly closed.
“Are you, what, conscious?” Birdwine asked.
“I didn’t faint,” I said, testy.
“I know,” Birdwine said.
“I’m not a fainter,” I said.
My chest was tight, but my heart still seemed to be inside it, attached to everything that mattered and doing its job, so I sat up. Mistake. I was instantly dizzy, and Birdwine teleported to the sofa’s edge beside me, easing me back down flat with his hands on my shoulders.
I looked down at his hands, then said, “Did you unhook my bra?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t to help you breathe or anything,” Birdwine said, very serious. “I was copping a feel.”
“Oh. Fine then,” I said. I hadn’t even felt him unhook it as he carried me. Very smooth. His hands stayed on my shoulders, and I was barefoot with my bra hanging open under my white silk shell. After a second, it got weird. He was working with me again, but he was careful to keep a lot of air between our bodies. He let go of me and went back to the chair.
“Did Julian come back?” I asked, hoping that he wouldn’t say, Yep. He’s waiting in the lobby with his mouth stretched open wide like a hungry baby robin.
“I didn’t see him,” Birdwine said.
Good. I needed to lie here quietly, in a room entirely innocent of surprise brothers, and get my head around it.
Eventually, I would have to face him. Give him his folder back. I would have to look into those familiar eyes set in a baby-cheeked face, as smooth and pale as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s, and apologize. That fuzzy-headed boy-child had come to me with his hand out, hoping I could tuck a lovely mother in it, close his fingers soft around her. I didn’t have that. I didn’t even have her ashes in a jug up on my mantel. All I had for him was this envelope.
She’s dead by now, I could tell him. I have this note. You want to bury it or burn it?
“I ran him off,” Birdwine added, rueful.
“You think?” I said, half smiling. Birdwine had stepped in to fight for me when I was down. Then he’d caught me up and carried me. Some of the hard, clear lines he’d kept between us felt bent at crazy angles. I wasn’t sure where it was safe to step. I tried a cautious “Thank you.” It sounded stilted, maybe because I felt so raw it was as if all my skin had been peeled off and put back on inside out. I tried again. “Thanks for having my back.”
He said, “De nada. I feel bad I scared the kid. But in the moment, I was sincerely expressing my true feelings.”
“What all did he bring?” I asked, glancing at the folder.
“I didn’t study his file, Paula,” Birdwine said, and now he sounded stilted. “I wouldn’t go snooping in your personal business.” One line redrawn, but then he quirked his eyebrow and softened it by adding, “Not unless somebody hired me to.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “I wasn’t accusing you. I’m just saying, when an ex-cop, a trained investigator, gathers up a sheaf of papers, he might notice things. You can’t turn your eyes off, Birdwine. You can’t make your brain not think.” I scootched down and got my feet up a little higher on the stack of throw pillows. Pressed together, my feet hid the returned envelope entirely. “Did you see anything, purely in passing, that makes you think the kid’s legit?”
Birdwine shook his head. “Legit your brother? You tell me. Did you notice your mom having a baby a couple decades back?”