“Of course,” he said. “Don’t worry. Catherine and I can get along fine without you.” The tone was proper, but he leveled his eyes at me, making the words into a threat. I looked back, and there was a lot of history between us. I’m not sure what he saw in my face, but his mouth softened and he added, “Go home. I believe your calendar is clear. You have a lot on your plate, sounds like, and you need to make some decisions about what you want.” He meant long term, but it sailed right over the client’s headband, as it was meant to.
She said to Nick, sotto voce, “Do you need to drive her? Or call someone? She shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m taking her home, ma’am. I’ll call her people,” Birdwine said.
My people, that was a nice touch. My people consisted of friends with a brand-new baby, my pissed-off partners, a sudden brother, and an envelope. Still, that Old South phrase conjured up a vision of concerned aunties with casseroles, clucking neighbors bearing Bundt cake. It put Headband at ease to see the details of death being properly handled by a tall person with a Y chromosome and workingman’s boots. She could bustle right on back to her divorce.
Nick led her off, leaving my door pointedly ajar. He needn’t have bothered. Whatever bit of sex had started rumbling around in me was gone, reburying itself in the deep hole it had died in months ago. As for Birdwine, I wasn’t sure he’d even caught the vibe. His gaze on me was thoughtful, nothing more.
I stood up and put my jacket on, stuffing my bra into the pocket, then dropped my heels to the floor and slipped them on, too. I picked up Julian’s blue folder. I needed to return it to him, sooner rather than later, and I didn’t know when I’d come back to my office. After a second’s thought, I got Kai’s envelope off the shelf as well.
As I took it down, I had a sudden, strong urge to tell Birdwine Kai’s story about Ganesha’s little mouse. This happened a long time ago. It’s happening now. I turned the envelope over in my hands, once, twice, and then I understood. I wanted to tell Birdwine because I was living it. I’d been Kai’s mouse, saddled up and bridled, this whole time. When my check came back, I’d felt such relief, to be told that I could finally set her down. So relieved I failed to notice that I hadn’t actually done it. I was still carrying her, and the weight of her was breaking me.
What weight?
Kai and I stopped speaking the day I went away to college. She finished her parole and evacuated Atlanta before I moved back for law school, and yet I’d kept her corpse’s paper effigy sitting on a shelf for five months now. I was neglecting my business and letting my partners down. I was doing endless pro bono hours for young, nonviolent female criminals with bad boyfriends, as if I were the patron saint of dumb-ass girls. I couldn’t remember the last time I got laid, and I had panic attacks over bits of ghost I saw rising in silk skirts and green eyes.
And now Julian existed.
What weight?
I turned to Birdwine. “I don’t know what to do next.”
Those were not words I said a lot. I’m not sure I’d said those words in that order since I was old enough to vote.
“I do,” Birdwine said. He stood up. “Go to Worthy Investigations and beat Julian’s case file out of Tim. Julian’s paid for the information in it a thousand times by now.”
He said it as if assuming I was going to help Julian, and that surprised me. Except for the very few inside my tightest inner circle, most people would put down money that my next move would be to lock my office door and screw Birdwine on the sofa. Or they might wager I’d go ambush Oakleigh Winkley, re-sign her as a client, and take her husband to the cleaners. Either one of those paths fit my reputation. Me helping Julian? It seemed like such a sucker bet that no one, right down to my barista, would be inclined to take it.
I hadn’t known Birdwine saw that far into me. While we shared a bed, or perhaps even before that, in the years when we’d been colleagues, he must have paid attention in his stealthy, watchful way.
I’d seen him as a professional asset, a buddy, and then a convenient bedmate. It was true to say I’d deemed him highly valuable, in all three capacities. After he quit me, I had certainly expended a great deal of irritating effort to get him back into my resource pool. But the whole truth was, I’d also seen him as too damaged to take seriously. A fuckup. Not my equal. And I wouldn’t have been sleeping with him if I saw him any other way.
I couldn’t predict his choices the way he’d just predicted mine; I’d been surprised when he’d stepped up for me in the lobby. It made me feel ashamed, especially since I couldn’t see much difference between us. Not these days. Maybe that was why I moved in closer and talked to him the way I only ever talked to William or my cat.
“In Kai’s old campfire stories, there were twenty-eight hells that roiled around in space south of the Earth. Very south, down at the bottom of the universe. Sometimes one broke loose from the pack, and it always made a beeline for Earth. I think I have at least four of those hells up my ass right now, Birdwine,” I said. My voice was low and shaking. I was scared and tired and I didn’t try to hide it. It felt like a relief, not to hide it. “I want to do right by this kid, but how can I? He’s looking for his mother.”