Chapter Ten
Hill’s mother took her long peacock-blue coat off as she stepped into the apartment.
Melt dripped from the ends of it as she looked around for somewhere to hang it.
With the sigh of a person who was going to give Hill a coat rack for Christmas, she hung it over the back of a chair already half-covered with dumped outerwear.
“What am I doing here?” she parroted. “Lovely way to greet your mother, and if you’d answered your phone then you’d know.”
“But since I didn’t, you’re going to have to tell me,” Davy said.
She looked taken aback at his tone. He supposed he could understand that. Hill seemed to have a much better relationship with his mom than Davy had with his. The guilt-trip routine probably didn’t put Hill’s back up quite that much.
“Sorry,” he said. “I…ah…think I’ve lost my phone.”
That actually wasn’t a lie, he realized as he glanced around the apartment. The only phone he’d seen was the burner that Fraser had…
Davy’s brain skipped the track mid-thought as his eyes fell on the money, guns, and ID still laid out on the coffee table.
Fuck.
It was hidden by the back of the couch for now, but as fig leaves went, it was precarious. Davy mentally scrambled for a solution as Hill’s mom sighed.
“Again?”
“I might have left it at work,” Davy lied on autopilot as he assessed his options. “I dropped by there this morning to pick something up before the party.”
Hill’s mom raised her eyebrows at him.
“You’re coming to the party?” she said suspiciously. “That’s new.”
“You invited me.”
“I invite you every year,” she pointed out. “And every year you say no. What’s changed? And where was the last place you saw your phone?”
She started across the room toward him, with the clear intent of helping him look. Davy cursed to himself and quickly met her halfway to intercept. He put a hand on her waist and dropped a kiss on her cold, damp cheek as he turned to keep his body between her and a good view of the coffee table.
“It’s somewhere,” he dismissed the phone. “Do you want to go and get breakfast with me?”
She looked surprised, and then, in quick succession, delighted. Her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes and made her look…if Davy was being a dick, “her age,” and if he wasn’t, “more approachable.”
“Of course,” she said as she reached to touch his cheek affectionately. Her neatly arched eyebrows pinched slightly together as she then turned her hand to check her watch. “Although we might have to make it brunch?”
Davy shrugged. “As long as I get something to eat.”
She continued to look bewildered. Davy had a feeling he was not knocking his Hill impersonation out of the park. Since she didn’t want to look the gift horse in the mouth, though, it worked in his favor.
“Then that’s why I’m here, I guess,” she said with airy good humor. Then she stepped back from him and lifted a “just a minute” finger as she said, “Just let me use your bathroom first.”
She headed in that direction, a cloud of soft floral scent left in her wake.
Davy put his hands behind his back and stayed where he was until he heard the door click shut.
Then he let his breath hiss out between his teeth as he turned on his heel and headed over toward the table.
He swept the money and IDs off the table and into the duffel bag they’d come from.
Then he reached for the gun, but hesitated with his fingers on the cool metal.
If he wanted to destabilize Fraser, that would work.
Whatever his little brother could feel these days, he’d be on edge that anyone could get that close to him. It would put him on the back foot even before the rest of the dominoes that Davy had set up started to topple.
It was a solid move…and he’d done worse.
So why not? He picked up the gun and hefted it briefly. His body wasn’t familiar with the weight of it, but he was.
Hill wouldn’t be happy, but by the time he found out he wouldn’t be Davy’s problem anymore.
That thought made something big and ungainly move behind the paywall in Davy’s brain.
The toilet flushed. Davy tightened his grip on the gun and then dropped it in on top of the money. He shoved the bag under the couch…along with any emotions attached to it.
Davy straightened up just as Hill’s mom came back into the main room.
“So?” she said with a bright smile. “Where do you want to go? Oh, what about that cafe down by Riverside? They had some good vegan options, didn’t they?”
Huh. Davy forced a smile and nod that slipped from his face as he helped Hill’s mom put her coat back on.
Shit. He grabbed a hoodie from the chair to shrug it on.
He’d forgotten about the vegan thing.
Trudy.
That was Hill’s mom’s name, courtesy of her calling ahead to book a table. Trudy Jones, Davy supposed. His sister-in-law.
That was still a weird idea to wrap his head around. Fraser had never liked people much. Although being a family man did convey a certain respectability in some circles. Politicians and criminals alike preferred their contractors to have something to lose.
“How are your eggs?” Trudy asked as she came back to the table from greeting her third random acquaintance of the meal. She pulled the chair back from the table to sit back down.
There was a beat as Davy poked at a lump of egg substitute on the plate with the tines of his fork. It resisted being pierced.
“They’re better if you don’t think of them as eggs,” he said.
Trudy shook her head. The legs of the chair scraped against the tiled floor as she scooted back in and picked up her abandoned knife and fork.
“You used to love eggs,” she said. “Then…I swear, you turned vegan just to avoid them.”
Davy watched with mild envy as she tucked into her Eggs Benedict. It was probably cold by now, but still better than his plate of beetroot, negs (not-eggs, it wasn’t as cute as the menu thought), and fried potato.
The potato was OK, but Davy wasn’t going to give much credit for that. It was hard to fuck up a potato.
“So,” Trudy said. She took a bite of a dripping bit of muffin and looked at Davy curiously. “You’re going to show your face at your stepdad’s Christmas party?”
One of Davy’s tentacles responded to his envy and snuck up over the edge of the table. It squirmed between her glass and plate and dipped itself into the hollandaise sauce. Technically, it wasn’t touching it, but it still made Davy’s mouth twitch.
He’d grown up hungry enough, often enough, that he didn’t like to fuck with people’s food.
“I just…I’ve been thinking about Dad a lot recently,” Davy said.
He gave the tentacle a kick to knock it off the table and ignored the offended slither of it to back around his feet.
His heel caught the leg of the table as he pulled it back, and he couldn’t tell if Trudy’s frown was a reaction to that or to what he’d said. “When he was my age…”
He trailed off to give himself a chance to do some quick math in his head.
Numbers had never been his strong suit, and after a while, he’d lost track of the years in the Beyond.
But he was fairly sure that when Albie Rosen had been around Hill’s age, he’d already buried a man in the foundations of a starter house and had a son.
Trudy mistook his attempt at adding up for some sort of feeling. She put her fork down neatly on the side of her plate and reached over to cover her hand with his. Davy’s elbow twitched at the contact as he resisted the urge to pull away.
“What is it?” she nudged him. “You know you can always talk to me.”
The rest of Davy’s body—Hill’s body—felt like it had gone numb as all sensation crowded down past his wrist to focus on the sweaty weight of her hand on his. His eyelid twitched as he tried to focus on where he wanted the conversation to go.
The food wasn’t good, and he’d decided not to kill Trudy, so if he wanted to get anything out of the last hour, he needed it to be making Fraser’s domestic environment uncomfortable.
“He didn’t know it, but he’d lived most of his life,” he said. “And when he died, what was left behind?”
Trudy looked confused, but after a breath she squeezed Davy’s hand and said gently, “You?”
“And what will I leave behind?” Davy asked and waited for Trudy’s expression to soften with pity before he jabbed. “I don’t even have a best friend to marry my widow and take over my life.”
That caught Trudy by surprise. Her eyes widened and she drew back.
Something in Davy’s gut—the muscle memory of filial duty, he supposed—felt queasy at hurting her. Mostly, though, he was glad to have his hand back.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he lied. “I know that you—”
Trudy shook it off. “I know. It’s OK,” she said. That was a lie too. “You aren’t like your dad, Davy. Your life isn’t half over, and you aren’t going to kill yourself.”
Wait. What?
Davy had to hesitate as his brain record scratched off track to take in that information. Albie had what-the-fucked himself? Before he could pry for more details, there was an insistent bzzt from Trudy’s coat pocket.
“Oh, for…” she muttered in annoyance as she twisted in her chair to hunt through her pockets.
She finally produced the phone from an inner breast pocket and sighed at the screen.
“It’s Fraser. Give me a second, sweetheart, it’s probably something to do with the party.
Every year it’s like he’s forgotten we’ve ever thrown one before.
If he suggests we save money on catering and make the sandwiches, I…
I’m not going to be responsible for what I say. ”
She swiped her thumb over the phone and lifted it to her ear.