Brenna, Brat (Detroit ABCs)

Chapter 6

N icola was waiting, and my sister wasn’t known for her exceptional patience. Pretty soon, she would try to extract everything that she wanted to know, and it was hard to withstand her tactics.

But maybe I could head her off. “No,” I said. “No, and I’m fine.” As I spoke, I knew that answer wasn’t going to satisfy her.

And as expected, Nic shook her head. “Stop lying. I don’t want to have to worry about you, because I already have Juliet on my list, and now there’s Grace. What is she up to?”

“She says she’s fine, too.” She did, when she bothered to answer. “What are you going to do about it? She’s chronologically an adult, although—”

“Brenna, don’t start on her,” she said, although she had been the one to bring up our youngest sister. “I want to know what’s going on.” She leaned forward, blue eyes intent. Nicola was the shortest of all of us, and she was a nurse who was supposed to care for people. Also, now she was a mother and had supposedly mellowed, but still…

I felt threatened.

“Back off,” I snapped. “There’s nothing to tell. I have nothing to say.”

She did give me a little breathing room, but she still looked suspicious. “I think I know what this is about,” she told me.

“No, because there isn’t anything,” I insisted, but she shook her head.

“You’re acting strangely,” she said. “Very strangely. Everyone noticed it last night at Mom and…at Mom’s house.” She’d almost said “at Mom and Dad’s,” just like we always had, except that Dad hadn’t been there. No one had sat in his chair, and then Nicola’s husband Jude had quietly stood and removed it from the table.

“We were all acting strangely at dinner,” I retorted and she hesitated, but then had to agree. The whole pod of us had gone over, with spouses and fiancés included for those who had them. All of us had seen Beckett for the first time in a while, and he looked thin and pale in a way that made me very worried. The house had also made me worried because it looked even emptier; there was definitely more stuff missing, but Mom wouldn’t answer questions about that. She was also unable or unwilling to discuss any plans for the future and our father had previously told Sophie that it was none of our business, so we were totally in the dark. Then, halfway through the meal as we’d been discussing a neighbor on the street who had painted her siding bright yellow (it was a crime against color theory), Mom had put down her fork and started bawling into her napkin. No one thought it was related to that terrible exterior.

Addie had tried to hold it back but had ended up joining in, and the whole thing had gone from bad to worse. Juliet got upset at Sophie for telling Mom to pull it together, Nicola told all of us to knock it off, and then Grace stood up and left the building. She hadn’t been heard from since.

“But that whole time when everyone was losing it, you didn’t. You didn’t even get mad,” Nicola pointed out. “You were looking at your phone instead of telling Mom to grow up and telling everyone else that they were only making things worse.”

“She should, and they were.”

Nic didn’t dispute my statement. “Yes, but usually you’re part of the problem,” she informed me. “I saw the difference right away, the minute you walked in. You didn’t jump all over Grace, even though she was wearing your shirt—”

“I have no idea how she got her hands on that.”

“Then you didn’t tell JuJu to shut up when she talked for ten minutes about how she might want to start coaching and you didn’t rehash how she used to be mean to you around the pool. Sophie went on endlessly about Esme and you didn’t pretend to fall asleep or to vomit, and Patrick told us about his car getting rear-ended—”

“It sounds like it was just a tap,” I pointed out, and she pointed right at me and nodded.

“Yes, but you didn’t say that, and you didn’t talk about the accidents you’ve had that were way worse. Usually you have a lot more to say to everyone, but you were distracted and kind of…dreamy. I’ve never seen you like this, but I think I know what’s happening.” She paused. “I think you’re in love with that guy.”

I couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d announced that she was actually a saber-toothed cat wearing a human suit who had fooled us all our lives but was now going to kill us (like one of the videos in the gallery that played on a loop, which I found very disturbing). My mouth dropped open and I didn’t speak, but Nicola continued and what she had to say was also related to the gallery (but not about her as a cat).

“He’s obviously a big part of your life, because you talk about him all the time. It’s all complaints, but in a way, I think that’s your…love language,” she said, pursing her lips as if the words were sour.

Had I been complaining about him? I didn’t think so, because I’d been actively attempting not to talk about him at all. I didn’t love him, and that was crazy to even suggest. “Just like you were wrong about the tile you’d chosen for your bathroom before I stepped in, you’re also off base now,” I announced, but she rolled on to her big conclusion.

“I think you’re in love with your coworker, Dion,” my sister stated, and there was another pause. “Oh, sugar. Are you going to be sick?”

My stomach had revolted but I held it back. I put my hand over my mouth because the thought of Dion…ugh!

“Are you reacting this way because I’m right, or because I’m really, really wrong?” my big sister asked me.

“Wrong,” I said through clenched teeth. “So very wrong.” Dion? Lots of other people found him attractive, but I definitely wasn’t part of his fan club.

“Good,” she said, and breathed out in relief. “Because I was afraid that I was going to break your heart when I told you that he’s gay.”

“You’re wrong about that, too,” I told her. “Dion is with more women than I can count. He used to take a picture of each of them to avoid duplications, but his phone filled up so he stopped.”

She looked horrified. “Are you serious? He has to take pictures to remember what they all look like?”

“I’m very serious,” I said, nodding. “He comes off as fun and non-threatening, but he’s the biggest player in Detroit. I think he’s going to have to move soon because the pool of available women is smaller every day.”

“ Every day ? Do you mean that he’s busy with a different girl every night?” she asked, and I nodded again. I remembered the angry message written on his back in permanent marker and lately, I thought that one of his hookups had figured out where he worked (despite his lies about being a music producer, a club owner, or sometimes a sports agent). We had started getting a lot of strange phone calls at the gallery from someone who whispered angrily, saying things that sounded threatening but that I couldn’t fully understand. But he told me to ignore it, that it was nothing.

“Wow. Wow,” Nicola said. “I never would have guessed. Has he tried anything with you?”

“No, of course not,” I answered, and she seemed satisfied. It was true that I didn’t want anything to do with Dion, not romantically or sexually, and that the thought of it made me ill. I didn’t even want him as a colleague, but I also found it slightly offensive that he’d moved through so many women and had never even looked my way.

Men just didn’t. It was fine that Dion wasn’t interested, but I wouldn’t have been bothered if others were. But I was a woman who had always gotten excuses, things like, “No, I can’t go out with you because I forgot I have to help my friend move,” or “My job just decided to transfer me to Uzbekistan,” or, “My cousin joined a cult and I have to kidnap him.” Sure, a guy might do something sweet like sending flowers, but it was all just part of being friendly and flirty. He might continue to sporadically text and mention future plans, but nothing would ever come to fruition.

“So, the weird way that you’re acting isn’t about Dion,” my sister clarified, and I nodded but then shook my head.

“There’s nothing about Dion and also, I’m also not acting weird,” I defended myself.

She opened her mouth to begin a real interrogation but then her eyes went to the baby monitor. I’d also heard the little murmur coming from its speaker, signaling that her daughter was waking up.

“Don’t you go anywhere,” Nic told me sternly, but the moment that she went upstairs, I took my opportunity to escape. I had other things to do with a Saturday besides dealing with my big sister’s crazy theories about my behavior. I had plenty of stuff to occupy my valuable time! Like, I was still working on cleaning up my atelier, a process which had been hampered by my discovery of a water leak in the ceiling. The building’s owner was supposed to have fixed it by now, but we’d had a heavy spring rainstorm before the last time I’d been over there, and it had still been dripping. It was very upsetting, and if I was acting weird? Well, that was the reason. I was afraid that I’d made a big mistake by renting that place, since I wasn’t even able to use it yet due to what might have been mold—

I glanced at my purse, because my phone had started to ring. I assumed it was Nicola summoning me back to her house, so I ignored it. But when it stopped, it started right up again, then again, and again…and fine, I would answer.

“Yes?”

“Brenna, if I’m actually calling you, it’s something important and you should pick up immediately,” Sophie told me.

“The last time you called, it was because you wanted me to check my text messages. You had sent a video of Esme walking and I was the only one who hadn’t responded to it.”

“Exactly,” she answered. “Your niece walking for the first time is extremely important. She was wearing the outfit you made for her, too, and she could be a baby model.”

“Sophie…”

“This is not about Esme,” she informed me, and then asked a question about someone totally different. “How close are you and Campbell Bates?”

“What?” Of all the things I might have expected to come out of her mouth, that wasn’t one of them. And as a matter of fact, we weren’t close. I hadn’t actually seen Campbell since I’d been at his house for the dinner we’d cooked. I’d consulted Addie about what to do next and she said I needed to text and tell him thanks and something funny, like a little joke. So I had written, “Thanks for dinner, and it doesn’t look like I have food poisoning.” I’d thought it was amusing, since I didn’t have any type of stomach ailment at all—but Addie, when she’d read it afterwards, hadn’t really laughed.

Campbell had answered that he was glad to hear that I was well and that we’d have to cook again, but there was nothing about when that would happen. I also hadn’t been able to picture him smiling as he’d typed it. Since then, he’d said hello a few times but nothing more, and I wasn’t going to debase myself with more plotting and/or begging. I wasn’t made that way.

Sophie’s news didn’t relate to any of that. “The Ghregg Bates Financial Group is in trouble,” she stated.

“What?”

She huffed impatiently. “Carrington’s company, the one her father runs, is in deep you-know-what.”

And Campbell worked there too, of course. “What?” I asked again, and she told me. The offices had been raided the day before and Ghregg “Extra H, Double G” Bates was under federal indictment.

“Holy…” I drove for a block, stunned, before I pulled over. I was too unfocused to prevent myself from being a danger to others. “Why was he indicted? What did he do?”

“First of all, he was a slum lord. I’ve known that forever,” she answered, and started to crow over how she’d been right about the business. She had dug into it when Carrington had been dating Sophie’s now-husband, Danny. At the time, my sister had been telling all of us that no, she wasn’t interested in Danny at all; meanwhile, she’d been gathering intel on her rival and preparing secret reports about the woman’s life. Those reports had included information on Carrington’s job at Ghregg Bates Financial, so Sophie really might have known things.

“Lots of people are bad landlords,” I pointed out, “but they don’t get arrested!”

“Ghregg Bates didn’t get arrested. He’s under indictment,” she condescended to explain. “It means he’ll get arraigned but they’ll probably let him stay out of jail. When I say that he’s a slumlord, it isn’t only stuff like, ‘Oh, he didn’t fix the handrail when I put in a work order.’ It’s years of abuse of tenants and years of—”

“What else?” I interrupted her, and she explained the gist of the charges. I tried my hardest to understand, but unlike Sophie, I didn’t have a background in accounting, and as she went on, my eyes started to glaze in confusion. “Give me the ten-second summary,” I finally interrupted again.

“Bates has been lying since the beginning. For more than thirty years, he’s been running a con about what he’s doing at his company and he colluded with others to cook the books so that it all looked legal,” she stated. “He’s a cheat. A scam artist, a criminal.”

“Who are the ‘others’ that he was working with?” I asked.

Well, that was what the authorities were working to figure out, and she said that she wouldn’t be surprised if there were more indictments coming down the pike. “I would think that all the corporate officers are feeling their collars tighten,” she said smugly, and I wanted to reach through the phone and smack her.

“If people are really doing illegal things, then yes, they should be punished,” I said. “But just because you’re jealous of Carrington—”

“I am not!”

“You’re mad that she was with your husband, even though you two weren’t dating at the time, even though you weren’t even aware that Danny was back in Detroit when they got together,” I said.

She was silent, a first for Sophie.

“And now you’re gleeful that this company is in trouble, and it’s not a good look,” I told her. “If Guh-hu-reg-guh Bates is a criminal, then he should go to jail and pay back whoever he hurt. But how many other people work there? They’ll all lose their jobs, won’t they? And why are you so sure that Carrington was involved? Maybe she wasn’t, and she’s an innocent victim in this, too.” I didn’t care about her at all—but why paint everyone at the Ghregg Bates Financial Group with the same criminal brush? There were people at the company who were very nice and decent and probably had no idea what their father was up to.

My sister stayed quiet for another moment. “I see your point,” she said finally, “but I’m not actually gleeful.”

She totally was. “Bull,” I told her.

“I didn’t like that Carrington was with Danny because I was jealous, even if I didn’t want to admit it back then. I still don’t like that because I love him so much. I’m sorry for all the time that we weren’t together, and I feel guilty about that, too. We were apart because I pushed him out of my life and then I was miserable without him.”

“What? Are you admitting that you made a mistake? Can you say it again so I can record it?”

“Brenna, you’re such a brat!” Sophie hung up before I could tell her that I didn’t want to hear that word out of her mouth again.

I read through all the news I could find about the collapse of the company—and yes, it appeared that Sophie had been correct. It was in shambles and its basic premise, that Ghregg Bates had been able to work real estate magic, was a fallacy. Somehow, through sophisticated chicanery and personal charm, he’d been able to hide it all this time and make money hand over fist…how was that possible?

But I still didn’t care about that guy, just about the fallout for others. I texted Campbell saying that I’d heard his father had been indicted (not arrested) and asking if he was all right.

It was a lot later in the day that he got back to me, though, and he only wrote, “What’s your address?”

I was at my new atelier trying to deal with the leak problem, so I sent that information and some instructions about the area. A while later, he did show up. I heard his footsteps on the stairs, where visibility was low because there was apparently a problem with the light fixtures—and since I’d visited the building in broad daylight, I’d missed that issue. I hadn’t been looking forward to my descent alone, because by now, it was dark outside and would have been black as pitch in the stairwell. I’d been working here for much too long and now that I paused…well, I saw that it didn’t actually look much better, despite all that effort.

“Hi,” Campbell said as I opened the door. He blinked at the brightness in the room, where I’d carried up and turned on six different floor and table lamps to banish any shadows.

“Where did you park?” I asked back.

“I put my car exactly where you said to,” he answered. “It’s under the street light directly in front of the building.”

I went to the window to check and while I did, he came in and locked the door behind himself.

“I know my car is a target,” he said. “I also know that this neighborhood has plenty of burglaries and break-ins.”

“It should be ok for a little while,” I answered, and hoped that was true. “What happened with your company? Why is your dad going to jail? Did you know about it?”

“Let me see your phone,” he answered, and not understanding, I handed it over. I watched him look at it.

“Do you think I’m recording you or something?” I asked.

“No, but the lawyers said to be careful, so I turned off your location. I don’t know if that’s necessary but I don’t want you to get dragged into this.”

“Into what?”

He looked around for a place to sit but, as of yet, there wasn’t one. The floor was clean, because I’d scrubbed it several times, but it didn’t look that way since a persistent grey grunge was baked into the finish of the old linoleum. Campbell chose to stand, but he leaned against the wall, as if he was tired. He had dark circles under his eyes, too, and his shoulders slumped.

“When I stared working for my dad,” he started, but then stopped. “You have to understand that he’s a flawed person, but we all are.”

“Ok. How did those flaws lead to a criminal indictment?”

Rather than answering directly, he kept trying to explain his father. “It always seemed to me like there were things missing in him. He works hard, inspiringly hard, and he’s a straight-shooter. I mean that he never hesitates to say what he thinks,” he explained. “But I always saw that my dad wasn’t a person to emulate, not in a lot of ways. I never liked how he treated people and I knew that he wasn’t…” Campbell hesitated again. “He wasn’t moral. That word sounds so biblical, but I’m trying to say that he doesn’t think about things like other people do. His behavior doesn’t have the same limits.”

“What does that mean?”

He looked frustrated, but I thought he also looked sad. “I don’t steal stuff in stores because I know, in my heart, that it’s wrong. I’m also afraid of getting punished, but I’m aware that I would deserve it as a consequence. My dad isn’t afraid at all and he doesn’t care about right or wrong like that. I’ve been with him when he walked out of places with merchandise in his pockets that didn’t belong to him.”

“You mean that he shoplifted ?” I asked, totally incredulous. “You guys have plenty of money to buy whatever you want!”

“It wasn’t about money,” Campbell told me. “It wasn’t about affording things. He explains it as taking what you can. He means that if you can get away with something, then you should.”

“And this is someone you chose to work for? A person with no morals and, apparently, no sense?”

“He can be a good person, in other ways. When I was a kid, I helped him catch a stray dog that had been injured on the freeway so we could take it to the vet. I run a big charity hockey game and he’s a generous supporter.” He frowned. “That’s cancelled now, of course.”

“Didn’t Ghregg take money from investors and scam them? Is it generosity if he was charitable with stolen funds?” I asked. “I guess you could argue a Robin Hood thing…”

I stopped as Campbell looked at me.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” I acknowledged, although I believed that my doubts were valid. “You should continue. Please,” I added.

“I was telling you that he’s not all bad, like the face of evil.”

“Do you mean that he didn’t do anything wrong, and the charges are false? Do you think that he’ll be proven innocent?” I asked.

“I…” He stopped again, but now I thought that he just didn’t want to say what he thought. The answer to my question was that Campbell believed that his father could be guilty, and his opinion was written all over his face.

“How much do they think he stole over the years?” I asked.

“From what the attorneys have said, it’s upwards of a hundred sixty million.”

“Dollars? One hundred sixty million dollars? That’s…” Unbelievable? Yes, except that he was nodding at me.

“If it happened, I didn’t know about it,” he said. “As far as I’m aware, my department is and always has been completely legitimate. I’ve never seen anything that looks strange or untoward.”

“Good. But?” I asked, because I’d heard a lot of doubt in his words.

“But that might be a reason that he put me in charge. He could have been playing me.”

“Your own dad was playing you?” It sounded far-fetched, but Campbell had started to nod.

“Maybe it gave him an advantage to have me there, because he knew that I wasn’t sharp enough to catch on to what was happening. He knew that I didn’t have the experience to recognize signs that other people would have seen flashing loud and clear. Maybe I just didn’t notice what was going on right in front of my face.”

“Maybe it wasn’t happening in front of your face,” I suggested. “Maybe your stuff was legitimate, like a cover for the rot underneath. What about Carrington?”

“It’s worse for her. She happened to go to the Bahamas on vacation yesterday, which made them claim that she was trying to flee the country. She’s on her way back home with a guarantee that they’re not going to swarm her at the airport, but I don’t know how much I believe. Stuff from the sealed indictment was already leaked to the press,” he said. “It seems as if they’re sure that my sister is in on it with my dad.”

“Is she? You said that Carrington and your dad are a lot alike,” I reminded him. “You also told me that she would do whatever it took to win, that she tripped other girls in her cross-country races.”

He looked at me and I saw more doubt in his eyes. He didn’t want to think so, but he didn’t know.

“I feel responsible for all the employees,” he started to say, and yes, that was an issue. But other problems were occupying my thoughts.

“Are you going to be indicted, too? Do you have a lawyer?”

“I don’t know if I will be, but I hope not. I don’t have an attorney of my own, but I’ve been talking to my dad’s team and—”

“No, no,” I said. “That can’t be good.” It definitely wasn’t, not if his father was the kind of person who shoplifted while with his child, and the kind of person who would set up his son in a position of power in order to use him. “Those lawyers are working for him, not for you. They could blame you for everything to try to get him off the hook.”

“Except this has been going on for years,” he pointed out. “Everything has been a lie, down to the foundations of the company. How would that have been my fault?”

“Then they could say that you happily joined in on the deception. I don’t put anything past anybody, and you need your own attorney.” Luckily, I knew one and he was smart. I pulled out my phone again, noticing that my hands shook as I did.

Campbell talked to my sister Juliet’s fiancé for a while. Beckett didn’t practice this kind of law, but he knew people and he seemed to know what to do. After a while, they got on with someone else, one of Beckett’s colleagues, to discuss things with her. I put in earbuds and continued to work on the atelier issues. I’d watched enough crime shows to know that people could be compelled to testify. I didn’t want to have to repeat anything I’d overheard and anything I’d already been told, I would go ahead and forget. Like the thing about his dad shoplifting? Yes, that had been shocking in the extreme, but I already didn’t remember it.

Due to my earbuds, I didn’t know that the conferencing was over. I nearly jumped out of my skin, like one of the scary prehistoric animals in a video in the gallery, when something touched my shoulder. “Holy Mary!” I yelled, but it was only Campbell.

“Sorry,” he said, “sorry. You didn’t hear me calling your name.” He looked at the wall, which I was spraying with bleach. “What’s the problem here?”

“A leak in the roof and the landlord’s repair guy hasn’t fixed it yet.”

He looked around. “Seems like there are a few issues. The floor over there is spongy.” He also tested the area below where I was trying to get rid of what looked like mold. “Do you want me to go up on the roof and look around?” He glanced at the ceiling. “If there’s this much damage to the wall, I would be a little concerned about how much weight it could take up there.”

“No, I don’t want you to fall through and land in here or in any other of the units, either. This is the only one occupied and we might not be able to get you out.” I also looked above our heads, where a dark stain had been spreading. When I had seen this place, everything had been bright white and freshly painted.

“Painting over it won’t help,” he said, reading my mind. “Neither will using the hair dryer like you have been.” He looked at the appliance on the floor. I’d stopped trying to dry things, though, because the outlet nearest to the wet area kept shooting sparks. “It looks like this section of plaster’s going to have to come out once the leak is repaired.”

Before he started poking the wall and noticing that it was also spongy, I suggested that we leave. “I’m starving,” I said. “We could go out to eat, my treat.” I had no idea what his money situation looked like anymore. If it all came from ill-begotten gains, could he keep it?

“No, I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to run into anyone I know or deal with people who have seen the news,” he told me. “Carrington and my mother aren’t going to leave their houses for the rest of their lives.”

“You don’t need to be embarrassed, because you’re innocent,” I said, which I firmly believed to be true about him.

“I’m not embarrassed—much,” he qualified. “But I also don’t want to get questions that I’m not prepared to answer.”

“You don’t have to answer. All you do is look at them. You stare straight into their eyes like they’re a pile of dog poo on the sidewalk. Like this,” I said, and demonstrated.

“You stare straight at dog crap? Most of us look away.”

“And then, depending on what they say, you could be rude right back to them. Like, if they pretend to be concerned, you could answer, ‘I’m sure that’s so deeply felt. I’m touched by all your truly genuine emotion,’” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm, and then nodded. “See what I mean?”

“What if they really were concerned, and it wasn’t only pretend?” he asked.

“Then they would have already texted to say, ‘Hey, Campbell, I’m on your side.’ They wouldn’t wait to talk in a public place where they could call attention to the situation and you could be humiliated. Have a lot of people been in contact with you?”

“Enough,” he said briefly, and lost whatever hint of a smile he’d had while I’d talked about poo. “Let’s go.”

I was glad that we were going down the dark stairs together, and I was also glad that his car was totally intact when we got to street level. “We could eat at my apartment,” I suggested.

“That sounds good,” he answered, and he followed me to our next destination. Now he seemed even more tired than before, but there were a few more stairs ahead of us. We went slowly up to my room, where I offered him the couch. I’d spent a lot of time choosing furniture that was comfortable and built to last, and my sister Juliet had spent a few weeks sleeping there not that long ago with no complaints…except for the size. In order to fit into my apartment, it had to be short and of petite proportions, so with Campbell on it? He looked huge and the couch looked ridiculously tiny. The whole room did but it didn’t seem to bother him, even though he must have been mentally comparing it to his own beautiful house.

I thought about that as I started taking things out of the refrigerator. It wasn’t full-sized either and there were only two cabinets in my kitchen, so I didn’t have a ton of food to cook. I did have a burner and a toaster oven, but again, it was nothing compared to his gleaming kitchen. “How is all this going to affect you personally? Like, in the near-term,” I said. “Are your bank accounts frozen? Are you going to be able to keep your house?”

“Right now, I’m solvent. The deed is in my name but I have no idea what will happen in the future,” he said. “I have no idea at all. As of today, I have zero income. I have investments and savings, but I don’t know what the government will try to claw back. My mother is probably burying her jewelry in the yard.”

“They probably have ground-penetrating radar,” I pointed out. Well, at least he’d always have a place to go. If the couch had been short for my sister, it was definitely going to suck for Campbell—but maybe I could take that, and he could use the bed. Although, that would be small for him, too.

“There’s press in front of my house, news vans on the street,” he mentioned. “I hate the idea of going back there.”

“For now, you don’t have to,” I said. He was fine where he was. “Since there’s no table, you can eat on the couch. I have a tray.”

He was hungry and scarfed down everything I’d prepared. I gave him more, saying that no, I wasn’t too hungry myself, and he also ate my share. Afterwards, he did look better.

“Thanks, Brenna. I better head out of here,” he said. “I can sneak into my house under the cover of darkness, like a thief.”

He was no thief. “You should stay here.”

“Here?” He looked at the petite sofa.

“I’ll take that and you’ll have the bed, because you’ll fit better,” I directed. “There’s no reason to drive home and tangle with reporters if they’re still hanging around.”

“I can’t stay,” he said, but it didn’t take much to convince him. He was already yawning a ton, and I bet that the thought of an empty house with predatory press panting on the sidewalk didn’t appeal in the least.

“Just for tonight,” he finally agreed, and I found an extra toothbrush.

It was funny to have him there with his feet hanging off the end of my bed, but I didn’t mind it. I found it nicer to be with people, real ones and not just Cleo. “Thank you,” Campbell told me. “Thanks, Brenna.” Then he took a deep breath and sighed, and I tried to think of how to help him even more. There had to be other things I could do.

This was how someone became indispensable, after all. A person could come to depend upon you, to need you, and then suddenly? They couldn’t let you go.