“Because that’s how life works,” she said, shrugging it off in a way that made her appear even younger. “The most vital object lessons are the only ones worth striving for.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’ve been talking with Tekla, haven’t you?”
“Just try it,” she said with a shy smile. When I didn’t move, she started. “Oh…right. Uh, let me know how it goes.”
“I will. Thanks.” I waited until she’d gone and then glanced at the cat. It returned my look before lifting a leg to clean itself.
Turning back to my locker, I slapped the pad against my thigh. “Something worthy of trade.”
Well, there was the way I’d broken into the boneyard, but Warren already knew about that, or my run-in with Regan, but I wasn’t about to admit that to anybody just yet. I thought of the jealousy that’d rushed through me when Marlo spoke of Hunter. Hm. That was certainly nothing I’d ever admit; it’d be mortally embarrassing if either of them knew. Was mortal embarrassment enough?
I wrote the admission down, folded the paper, and slipped it between the slats of the locker. Nothing happened. So I wrote another note-Fuck you-and slipped it through as well. A second later it was spit back out.
“Just testing,” I said. I kept thinking. Something I wouldn’t want anyone else to know. Well, that was easy. All my secret thoughts revolved around Ben Traina. How I didn’t want anyone to know how much he still occupied my waking hours. How my body warmed at the thought of him. How I’d broken into Warren’s cabinet in the record room and reviewed the file I knew he’d keep on Ben because of his past association with me.
I smiled bitterly at that last thought. Warren kept tabs on every aspect of his agents’ lives, easy since he watched most grow up in the sanctuary, and assigned them their identities once they began working on the outside. But then there was me. He was still puzzling out my past piece by piece, slow going since he didn’t trust my account not to be influenced by emotion, or some other agenda he didn’t name. And digging into my past meant digging into Ben’s.
After the attack on me, after Ben decided he was at fault for being unable to stop it, he responded by marrying someone safe-someone who wouldn’t sneak across the desert on moonlit nights-then blamed her for not being me. Warren’s notes indicated he’d been repeating his childhood, treating his new wife as his father had treated his mother, though I could’ve told him that.
I remember thinking I’d have argued with Ben as I studied those files. But the six-year-old records Warren had filched from a mortal shrink’s office indicated that this other woman hadn’t. I don’t handle breakable women with care, Ben had told the doctor…and there was a postscript that showed the psychiatrist believed him enough to be worried for the woman’s safety.
So Ben gave his sweet, breakable wife a divorce-even though she said she didn’t want it-and also gave her half of what he owned at the time. Fast forward a few years, and she was remarried-a banker this time, not a cop-and living in southern California with three dogs, two kids, and another on the way.
But this wasn’t about Ben, I reminded myself, tapping my pen against my bottom lip. This was about me, my neuroses. So I slid my back against the cold, unyielding metal, dropped to the floor, and began to write.
Dear Ben,
I have a photo of you, but I can’t seem to bring myself to look at it. I know exactly where it is, of course, tucked between an old picture of my mother when she was my age-looking expectant and smooth-skinned and impossibly fierce-and another of all the Archer women taken before the summer that changed our lives forever. But just because I don’t look at your image doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten you. I don’t need a two-dimensional print to bring back the memory of our skin burning the sheets beneath us, or the scent of rich musk as you slept beside me, or the need that curled inside me every time you looked at me. The real me.
Remember her?
Sure, she was slightly damaged, chipped even, and cynical and tough enough to really resemble her mother there at the end, but you knew her intimately and loved her deeply, and you were nestled deep inside of her only moments before that photo was taken.
That’s the thing about that photo. I know that little half smile is on your face because of the broken, damaged, cynical, tough-and impossibly happy-me. And now that you’re gone-or I guess what I mean to say is now that we’re gone-looking at that photo is beyond me. I can barely look in the mirror anymore.
And it’s the not looking that makes me restless. I wander our sinful city like a ghost of my former self, seeking enough distraction to keep from giving in to the temptation to drive past your house. And if nothing in the gilded and grimy streets can do so, I head over to my sister’s high-rise condo where I climb out on a ledge far above the city, where the air presses against me even on the calmest of nights, and I close my eyes, feel the ribbons of light spinning on the other side of my lids, and wonder…will you ever smile that way again? Have you smiled that way since? And, if you have, who brought that smile to your face? The one reserved for me. The Joanna-smile.
I never try to answer that. I block it off in the same way I tuck away that aging photo. I just let the wind press me against the ledge until I begin to waver, and I open my eyes so the question fades in the glare of the electric river flowing below me. Then I climb back inside, avoiding all mirrors as I cross that palatial loft, and when I let myself out I’m balanced again. I can tuck you away and tell myself I’m ready to move on. But in truth I would give it all up and let him walk free…if only I could return to you.
Usually I kept missives like this in a keepsake box near my bedside. I figured it was as close to sleeping with Ben as I’d ever get again. But this time I stood, tore the page from the pad, and folded it before sliding it through the open slat. A buzzing rose from inside the locker, like a hive of bees growing closer. I took an involuntary step back, but there was only a sudden stillness pressing down on the room, and then the latch clicked softly open.
“Next time,” I said wryly, swinging open the door, “just give me a knife and ask for a vein.”
So what was this thing that’d required so much of me, demanding an admission I hadn’t even allowed myself to study too closely? It was small, for one. In fact, it fit in the palm of my hand; a gilt jewel box with a gold clasp, and velvet the color of the midnight sky cushioning what was inside.
“My precious,” I hissed, unable to help myself as I lifted the ring from its cushion. Holding it, however, all humor drained from me. I’d seen this ring before. It’d been years, and I couldn’t be sure when it had disappeared, but my mother had disappeared along with it.
It was too heavy and wide to be considered feminine, but the sheen off the metal-not gold or silver, and certainly not platinum, though it had that heft-was so muted it was nearly opaque, light catching only in the dual grooves hedging a cloudy gray stone. I tilted it back and forth in the light before slipping it on. It was too large for the ring finger of my right hand, but it nestled nicely against the knuckle of my middle finger and, I was pleased to see, looked like it belonged there. And when it began to glow, a gentle pulse in the dim, cavernous room, I knew it did.
“I hope you don’t think one ancient piece of tin makes up for leaving me.”
I was talking to my mother now, and because I could do that anywhere and garner the same result, I shut the locker and headed back to the elevators, careful not to leave the cat stranded behind me. But I thought about my words. My mother had turned my life upside down by leaving, and even though I now understood why, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder: did she even feel an ounce of the guilt and shame and ineffectiveness that I had after failing Olivia? Because that’s what she’d done by leaving. She’d failed me. No matter the reasons, she’d abandoned me when I’d needed her most.