“Yeah. I just…right now…”
“You need to take a step back,” she said, filling in the gap.
“Not from you. Just from…”
“Feeling so much?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I just need to see them right now.”
“You go. Drive safely. I love you.”
“I love you,” he said, but he didn’t sound as if he believed it, and the deadness in his tone made her want to cry.
When he hung up, she let the tears fall, even though they felt selfish, even though they felt like weakness. The tears fell for herself, and for him, too. For all he was dealing with. For this new bombshell dropped in his lap. His family couldn’t catch a damn break, and she hated that the tragedy in his past was tearing new fissures in his present.
A little later, after she’d dabbed her cheeks and dried her eyes, she let the reel of the last few weeks play, trying to understand the man. He’d been private and circumspect at first. When pushed, he’d become open and vulnerable. But what if the talking was more of the exception than the norm?
Had he returned to the man he was before?
Three and out. Over and done. Protect your heart. Don’t get close to anybody but your family.
Even then, family could stab you in the back. He’d learned the hard way.
Call her overdramatic. Call her a conclusion-leaper. Or call her a cool analyst of the situation.
That very morning, Ryan had left her a note saying he would come see her tonight. Because I can’t stay away from you, Sophie. I swear, I can’t.
She could live without seeing him tonight. She wasn’t seventeen. But what worried her was the complete 180-degree shift he’d made in ten hours. He’d left his house determined to find his way back to her that night, no matter what. But when everything changed, so did his desire for her. His family story had prevented him from getting close to her in the first place. His family background wasn’t going away. It was only becoming more complicated, with more players, more names, and more threads.
More time.
More space.
More moments to retreat.
Hunting for information, she sank down on a kitchen stool, and called her brother. “I know you can’t give me the details of the case, and I’m not asking for them, but I need to know—is this going to end anytime soon?”
John exhaled loudly. “Sophie, you know I don’t have an answer. Even if this were an open-and-shut case I wouldn’t have the answer. These things can go on forever. Oddly enough, this case was something of a rarity in the first place when his mother was arrested and tried in a matter of months the first time. Most cases go on for a long time, especially when they’re reopened, and involve gangs and crimes committed over the years.”
Years.
That word clung heavily to the air, like thick smog.
What would that be like? Every time there was a new wrinkle, would Ryan retreat? Would she always be the one who had to step closer to him? To offer the shoulder to lean on?
She’d offered it tonight, and he hadn’t taken it.
Would he ever want it or need it? And would she be satisfied if he always turned elsewhere for comfort? Compared to him she’d had an easy life. As he reeled over his mother’s guilt, here she was jetting off to Frankfurt to check out her new car, for Christ’s sake. But that was all the more reason why she wanted to be the supportive one—because she could. She could be here to hold his hand when he needed her. But he didn’t seem to want that.
To keep herself busy, she called Holden and met him for a drink at the Mirage.
“I have news,” he said, his eyes lighting up after he’d ordered his white wine.
“Do tell,” she said, glad to focus on something else.
He leaned in to whisper. “I met someone.”
She clapped twice. “Tell me everything. What’s he like?”
Holden wiggled his eyebrows. “Actually, he’s a she.”
“A she? Like she used to be a he?”
He laughed and shook his head. “No. I meant I’m seeing a woman.”
“You are?” He nodded, but the answer seemed so strange, even though this had always been a possibility. Somehow, it had been easier to think of him with men than with women.
“What’s she like, then?”
“Oh, she’s lovely. Natalie is very sweet and friendly.” As he waxed on about the new woman in his life, Sophie tried to ignore the strange new sting in her heart from this conversation. Seeing Holden through the lens of a preference for men had been far more manageable for her ego, it turned out. Now, her confidence was suffering another blow, unexpectedly, with this realization that she wasn’t the right woman for Holden either.
But there was more to this hollow ache in her heart. A new worry took root—the fear that Holden would slip away from her, too, as he cozied up to Natalie. Because Sophie couldn’t help but wonder how this new lady would feel about him being so friendly with his ex-wife, and if this most predictable relationship in her life was about to become unpredictable, too.
She loathed instability.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Colin arrived first, with two six-packs. Ryan side-eyed the beers. “Corona?”
His younger brother shrugged. “That’s not what you drink?”
Ryan shook his head, grabbed the beers, and shut the door. “Haven’t had a Corona since I was in college.”
Colin shrugged. “What do I know about beer?”
“Nothing. As you fucking should. I’m all out of that near beer shit. Want a soda?”
“Always,” Colin said, and they headed for the kitchen. Ryan handed him a can of Diet Coke, then opened a Corona and took a long swallow. It tasted like spring break.
“Guess you don’t hate it that much,” Colin said pointedly.
“Guess I needed a drink after my day.”
“So what’s the deal? Shan said Mom confessed to you?” Colin made a keep rolling motion with his hand. “What the hell?”
“Yup,” Ryan said, taking another drink then setting the bottle on the counter and telling him everything that went down in the visiting room.
Colin scoffed. “Made her do it. See? Even now, she holds onto the notion that she somehow isn’t to blame.”
Ryan shrugged. “Yeah, well. That’s not what this is really about. That’s not why I feel like I’m pretty much having the second-worst day of my life.”
Colin yanked him in for a hug. “Yeah, I know,” he said softly. “I know, man. You wanted to believe her. You wanted to hold on to a possibility. You wanted that hope that maybe she hadn’t done it.”
“Can you blame me? Wouldn’t you want that too?”
“Sure,” Colin said with a nod as he broke the hug, stopping to pet Ryan’s dog, who’d wandered into the kitchen. “Of course it would be really fucking fantastic if she didn’t do it, Ry. It would be like the greatest thing in the world if our mother didn’t have our father killed, right?”
Though there was a touch of sarcasm in Colin’s remark, there was also the bare truth. It would be the greatest thing.
“But you see, I came to peace long ago with the fact that she did,” Colin continued. “Maybe details are still coming to light. Maybe the detective is looking for accomplices. And maybe he’ll find them, and they can join Jerry fucking Stefano in the big house where they all belong. The fact is, our mother was into some fucked up shit, from associating with the likes of Stefano, to the ass she was cheating with. She was a messed-up, desperate woman who wanted money, and wanted out so badly she killed for it.”
Colin dropped the volume on his voice and draped an arm over Ryan’s shoulder. “This shit happens. Just look at the New York prison escapees and how that woman was going to have one of them kill her husband. It’s awful, and it feels shocking from a distance, but up close, when it happens to you, you can’t believe it. You wish it didn’t happen.” Colin tapped his chest with his free hand. “I wish that, too. But it did. This is our fucked up story. This isn’t the news. This isn’t the papers. This isn’t someone else’s tragedy. It happened to us, and deep down somewhere inside you”—Colin moved his hand to Ryan’s chest, tapping his breastbone, searching for his heart—“you know it’s true.”