“I do,” I said, with genuine regret. I’d gone stiff when he hugged me, then bounded backward and away at the first opportunity. I didn’t want our time to end on that note.
“Oh, no! But we didn’t even get to Hana yet.” He kept bringing up Hana, but there was nothing to discuss. Birdwine would find her for me. He had to, and that was all. “I don’t have a shift at work until tomorrow. Can’t I wait here until you’re done?”
I felt an immediate internal balk. I couldn’t give this kid free run of my loft. It seemed more intimate and invasive than the patting. He would make nice with my cat and go through all my closets. Not that I would blame him. If he left me alone at his place, I would surely rifle through his drawers. We were curious about each other.
If he were five years younger, I’d give him forty dollars and drop him off at the mall or the movies until I was done with grown-up business. I wasn’t sure that would fly with someone in his early twenties.
I said, “You could come with me.”
“Really? To a police interview?” he said, his voice rising with excitement.
“Why not?” I said. Now he was practically bouncing on the stool, and what the hell. I hadn’t checked the calendar. It might well be Bring Your Puppy to Work Day. “You’d need to keep your mouth shut, but it won’t take long, and I could take you out to dinner, after.”
“Yeah. Cool,” he said.
I found myself smiling, and I realized I actually wanted him to come. Part of it was injured pride. When we first met, I’d been shaking in the center of a full-blown panic attack. Today I’d started out scared into pure bitchdom, then ended stiff and almost weepy. I wanted him to see me more myself. I took the phone off mute.
“I can clear my afternoon,” I told Oakleigh, walking over to my office area. “But understand me: If I take this on, then I’m your lawyer, period. You ditch the new guy, and my firm handles your divorce.”
“Fine,” she said, so relieved she sounded downright eager.
“I’ll bring a contract over. You need to sign before you tell me any more about what you did or didn’t do.” I swirled the mouse to wake up my computer.
“Okay, wonderful. Hurry, please. The policeman said—”
I overrode her. “And I’ll need a retainer.” I started our standard client contract printing.
There was an awkward pause. “Well, but, my funds are limited. Clark’s being so unreasonable.” I let my own bored silence speak for me; this point wasn’t negotiable. “I could swing maybe twenty-five thousand? Is that enough? Just to start?”
“Fine,” I said, like I was doing her a favor. Money was so relative. In Oakleigh’s mind, a mere twenty-five thousand lying around spare was tantamount to being broke. I wondered what Julian would make of that. I started an intern form printing, too, while I had my work files open. I’d need to hire Julian for today if he was going to sit in on a client meeting. “I’m on my way. And Oakleigh, if they beat me there? Be sweet, offer coffee or tea, but stall the interview. Tell them I’m coming.” If anyone could turn a simple domestic into something serious, it was Oakleigh Winkley, swanning about all privileged and unsupervised with cops.
“Just hurry,” she said, and we hung up.
I got the forms and went to the door, where my jacket and shoes were waiting, glad that I’d gone full-court bitch this morning, after all. I could be ready to walk in three minutes. Julian followed me.
“It should be interesting,” I told him as I got back into uniform. “At the very least, we’ll learn the proper shade of nail polish for a police interview.”
He smiled, a little bit uncertain. Well, he hadn’t spent quality time with Oakleigh Winkley. An hour with her, and he would get the joke.
“I’m glad. I was so interested in the pictures, you know, I got distracted,” he said.
“From?” I said, smoothing down my skirt.
“Hana,” Julian said, like it was obvious.
I shot him an irked look. “I told you. Birdwine—”
“Is finding her, I know,” Julian said. “That’s great, but then, what happens after that?”
I was grabbing my bag, turning toward the door, but his question froze me in my tracks. Everything after find her was a blank, and her present was distorted by the lens of my own past. Thoughts of Hana sent me back in time, back to when I’d been the lost girl.
I found that I could not imagine an after. How could I? Hana was suspended in the now, like Schr?dinger’s cat. She was both alive and dead, safe and scared, hungry and well fed, sleeping easy and crying in the dark. I’d been blind to even the idea of Hana’s future. I’d only seen her teetering in an uncertain present.