Sterling said nothing in response. If I didn’t know my mother, I might feel sympathy for her. She’d failed us both though, and I was enough like her that I couldn’t forgive her.
“Five or hang up,” I told her. I could use the money, and somehow it didn’t seem the same as accepting the fund that was in my name. This was a one-time business transaction.
“And you’ll pretend to be the loving, polite daughter.” Sterling’s voice was no longer cajoling or falsely kind. Here was the woman who had raised me. “Dress appropriately, speak politely. Talk to your old friends. Be everything I would expect in a daughter.”
“As long as there are witnesses, I will. If it’s just us, no.”
“What would that cost me?”
“You can’t afford it.”
“The money and ticket will arrive this week,” Sterling said, and then she hung up.
16
Juliana
After the burial of the Creeper’s last victim, after the upheaval of admitting that my life is under scrutiny by both a killer and the police, life somehow resumes a normalcy that seems unnerving in its calmness. It feels more like the quiet before disaster, and I half wonder if I want the disaster. I am better suited for a crisis than a lull.
Henry has already followed up on the letter from Darren, who has subsequently had his mail privileges further limited. I know a letter ought not to upset me as it did. He’s behind bars. Words cannot hurt me in any real way—but I think that we allow so many little attacks by those who can claim power. He is still trying to do so, power over my sister after her death and power over me. Would Sophie want him to worry and pray over me? I don’t know, honestly. My sister was broken by the million little ways he shaped her. By the time of her death, she seemed like a stranger to me.
And I guess I started to look at her life and the lives of the dead women on my table more closely. How many times had some person taken away their control? Their voices? Their freedoms? Sophie and the women whose lives I study as I think about the Creeper have made me look at the places where I am asked to surrender my power.
Andrew walks in the door of the coffee shop a few blocks from the police station with a black eye. My first thought is that it looks oddly attractive with the vaguely-confused librarian look he’s always rocking.
“Ouch.” I motion to his eye.
He drags a chair out and drops into it. “I’m clumsy sometimes.”
The tenderness that had come over me when I saw him vanishes at his lie. “Seriously? Clumsy?”
Andrew looks down awkwardly.
“I’m not trying to . . . I don’t want to fight, but don’t lie to me.”
“It’s a family thing.” He offers me a smile that is anything but happy. “That’s all I can tell you, Jules. We both have limits.”
I’m not sure what to do with that, but he has the knack for making me feel guilty if I get angry, as if he waits for my temper so he can air a grievance he’s held in silence. Last time he accused me of only seeing him for sex. That isn’t true. We go on normal dates. I just don’t want to share a home with him.
“I’ve been patient, haven’t I? When you shut me out, I wait.”
“You have,” I allow. It’s a long-standing issue. I was far from receptive to his initial attempts at inviting me to his place or meeting him at mine. There are things worse than a black eye, and after Sophie, I verge on paranoid. It probably doesn’t help that I see them on photo after photo, M.E. report after report, body after body, and I don’t ever want to be one of the women in such photos.
“So, can’t you be patient with me too?” Andrew reaches out and takes my hand.
I meet his gaze. “Not if you lie to me. I don’t need every answer, Andrew, but I don’t lie to you. You don’t get to lie to me either.”
“Fair enough . . . I was punched.”
“By?”
“A relative. That’s all I’m saying.” He shakes his head. “We both have our secrets, Jules. I can agree not to lie to you, but that doesn’t mean I’ll tell you everything. There are good reasons I don’t introduce you to any of my family members.”
Talking about his family is absolutely forbidden. I know that, but I guess I thought he didn’t see them, that they were far away or something. “Do they live here? I thought--”
“Don’t.”
“You saw a family member, and now you have a black eye. I care about you, you know?”
He nods. “And I love you. That’s why I’m not answering questions about this.”
As usual, I ignore how easily he says he loves me. I can’t say it, not unless I’m sure. “I won’t judge you. A lot of folks have relatives who are embarrassing. A drunk? Argumentative? What? A junkie?”
“Let it go.” An unfamiliar tone creeps into his voice, more aggressive than I have ever heard him when he spoke to me. “Trust me, Juliana. Just let this go.”
For the first time since I fell into his bed, I wonder if I was wrong about him. I wonder what Henry turned up when he investigated Andrew. A brief guilty thought flickers in my mind: I could ask.
My nerves are on edge, and I know that. Logic says I’m being foolish to doubt Andrew. Reliable, patient Andrew.
Being under observation is making me see horrors in every shadow, in the eyes of people I meet and people I know. Everything becomes suspect. Everyone is a potential villain.
Seeing threats in every face, wondering if each person who stares too long is a danger . . . I can’t be that person. I won’t. Secrets are not a thing I can handle right now. I need answers, not more secrets.
“If you want to touch me again, you’ll tell me the truth.” I feel a twinge for drawing a line, but whatever he’s hiding was enough to make him try to lie to me.
Andrew gives me a sad smile. “I suspect you’ll need to use me before that happens . . . and Jules?” He waits until I meet his eyes. “I won’t tell you no when the time comes. I don’t have conditions the way you do. I love you, and I accept you for who you are. I know you can’t say the same, though. I’ve known from the beginning.”
We stay like that, me ignoring the complications he’s just thrown between us and him watching me with a tender expression and a black eye. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do. With the dead, I know. With mourners, I know. With the police, I know. Andrew, however, has pushed me off kilter.
“You know we’re not the only ones desperate to find her,” Andrew says after the quiet grows too heavy to ignore.
I look at him. “Her?”
“Teresa.”
This is what we do when we fight. He says his piece; I say mine. Then we put it aside for whatever distraction we can accept. Andrew doesn’t need to get into an elaborate explanation of how and why he’s bringing up the missing heiress. All he does is offer me the topic so we can move on. I let out the breath I’m holding and accept the distraction.
“I was thinking about him sending you that letter. Maybe he thinks you know more than you do. About her. Or maybe he just knows you’re paying attention—which means he’s watching you.”