Chapter 33
BELL
Lilith is an absolute menace in the studio.
I watch the kitten from the improvised desk I’ve made with two sawhorses and a wide plank and debate whether I should intervene—at least while Birdie is trying to work on the finer lines and curves of the impenitent criminal’s feet.
Lilith is standing on the makeshift plinth underneath, pipe-cleaner tail swishing and her tiny form quivering with anticipation, until she rears up on her hind legs and gives a full-bodied pounce.
Sometimes she succeeds in wrapping her front paws around the handle of the chisel, sometimes she only bats at Birdie’s wrist, but every time, Birdie has to stop her work and patiently dissuade the creature from murder.
On one hand, Birdie is clearly consumed with making these carvings, and since I think it’s the first time she’s been able to properly create in years, the idea of anything pulling her away makes me itchy, especially on a Friday, when she’ll have to stop early to go visit her sister and then drive out to the gas station anyway.
On the other, it’s really fucking cute. And seeing Birdie smile—and, once, laugh softly as Lilith attached herself to Birdie’s trousers—is a drug I won’t ever deny myself.
I settle for dragging my makeshift desk closer and the cat bed underneath it. “Just say the word and I’ll take her,” I tell Birdie.
Birdie smiles at me, the apples of her cheeks pink with the effort of carving and kitten wrangling, a few reddish locks coming loose around her heart-shaped face.
It’s her usual smile, the one where her lips stay pressed together and you have to gauge its happiness by how high her cheeks lift, by how many smile lines bracket the edges of her lips.
There are a lot of lines right now, and her eyes are sparkling.
“She’s fine.” Birdie turns that smile on Lilith, who has captured an abandoned gouge and is industriously gnawing on the wooden handle with her little needle teeth. “It’s nice to have a coworker.”
That exact smile is why I made the decision to keep the feline in the first place.
We walked into the studio and found Lilith wailing from the head of the criminal, and Birdie’s entire face went aglow.
She scampered up a stepladder to rescue Lilith, turned to me with the cat held against her chest, and then she smiled that sweet, bashful smile at me, apples of her cheeks lifted so high.
“We have a visitor,” she informed me, bending her chin enough that the kitten could nuzzle against it. And looking at the two of them, framed by the fading evening light, at the complete joy and gratitude Birdie felt at something as ordinary as holding a kitten…
I’m selfish—you already know this. So obviously I’m not above bribing Birdie’s love with mouse-shaped toys and a prepaid vaccine schedule.
Plus I sensed a kindred spirit in Lilith. She’s clearly not of sound mind and she wants to lick Birdie every chance she gets. We have so much in common.
“Speaking of coworkers, are you sure you don’t want my help bringing a desk in here?” she asks. “Or I could make you one?”
“I’d love to have an original Birdie Cooper desk, but not at the expense of what the studio is actually for,” I say, tilting my head at the blocks of basswood earmarked for the other two carvings in the Golgotha set.
“I’ll arrange to have a desk brought in here, don’t worry. As long as you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. I like having you near me. I want you here.” The honesty in her voice makes me want to climb a fucking cliff and yell from the top. Jesus. “I just feel bad that you have such a nice office and now you’re working on raw lumber.”
“Nowhere is as nice to work as where you are, darling.” I stand up and stroll over to her, coming up behind her so I can take her hips and pull her back into my chest. I nuzzle behind her ear, breathing in apples and that faint hint of fresh wood, and enjoy the instinctive press of her rear against me.
I let go of her hips and slide my hands down her arms, pausing when I get to her wrists.
She’s still got one hand wrapped around the chisel, and even though I’ve now seen her hold a chisel plenty of times, this is the first time I’ve gotten to see her hold one up close, the first time her hand hasn’t been in motion.
With her palm up like this, I can see the way her little finger doesn’t curl all the way around the handle.
I wouldn’t have thought much of it if she hadn’t tensed a little as I traced over her pinkie with my thumb. I trace over it again, resting my chin on her shoulder.
“An injury?”
She nods without speaking.
“Does it still hurt?”
She shakes her head.
I wait, trusting my silence will indicate what I want, and at last, she speaks. Softly. “An ex of Busy’s. She took his car. He thought I knew where she was and was angry that I wouldn’t tell him.”
I’m wrapped all around her, and I don’t want her to feel my rage, but it’s a lost cause.
She tenses even more, probably feeling the fury rippling through me, making me rigid, making my heart pound.
I don’t want to scare her, I don’t want her to think I’m angry with her, and I press my face into her hair, inhaling her and reminding myself that she’s here now, she’s under my care, and I’m never going to let anyone hurt her ever again.
I tell her that, a low murmur in her ear, promises that she’s safe now, that I’ll keep her that way, that only I’m allowed to be her worst thing. She slowly relaxes back against me.
“I don’t know his name,” she says after a minute or two. “And it’s been years, so I don’t think I could give you enough detail to go by to try to find him.”
Ah. So she knows what I’m thinking about. “Perceptive girl,” I say, still with my face in her hair.
“Lucky guess.”
I don’t push it now. Later, when we’ve been together longer, when she trusts me more, I’ll see what she does remember. And Busy—she should know who it was. Though knowing my Birdie, she probably never told her sister what had happened. Birdie the martyr.
“Can I ask what you’re working on?” she asks.
It’s definitely an attempt to deflect from this, and I almost don’t want to let her.
I want to spend the next week nuzzling her and stroking her hand, crushing her to me until I’m sure she’s okay.
I want to dedicate my life to finding the person who did this and breaking three bones for every bone of hers he broke—but I hear the tremulousness in her voice, and I can’t make myself do anything that will make it worse.
I take in a breath, box in the rage, shelve it away for later.
I kiss her and step back, and she turns to face me, looking shy as she nervously handles the chisel. She looks like she’s worried I’m going to tell her no. Like I’m going to punish her for something someone else did.
I reach for one of my easy smiles, wanting to reassure her.
I almost tease her about feeling timid about asking this but not about snooping through my office…
but then I’d have to confess to the cameras in the house, and I’m not ready to admit to that just yet.
Not when I need her anxiety to melt away.
Not when I’m getting big smiles and softly spoken I like having you near mes like I was before I saw her pinkie finger.
“I’m in a bit of a lull with this skyscraper redevelopment my firm is contracted for,” I say, “so I’m working on a side project.”
She sets the chisel down and scoops up Lilith, who starts gnawing on Birdie’s knuckle right away. “Can I see?” she asks.
One thing about me is that I’m always happy to show off, and I happily gesture over to my improvised desk in invitation. I walk over and take a seat, waking up my laptop, and she comes to stand next to my chair. A purring Lilith is swiping at a free strand of her hair the entire time.
“It’s a proposal for turning an unused fulfillment warehouse into a citywide shelter, run by the city itself, with temporary beds, temporary family units, a hygiene center, and a hub for city and county services.
The shelter’s phase two would include transitional housing and a permanent clinic.
” I’ve got the deck pulled up—a deck made by me, since neither Sean nor Aiden can do any graphic design worth a damn, and I’m forever cursed by my own gifts.
I tap through the pages, showing her the mock-ups, floor plans, and then the proposed services that could be officed there.
“This is incredible,” she says, giving me a surprised smile. “Ry, this could help so many people.”
Lilith gives up attacking Birdie’s hair, jumps down to the desk plank, and starts attacking my Apple Pencil.
“You know this because of everything your sister has been through, but getting help in this city is a patchworked mess, and most of that patchwork is made up of faith-based organizations. Some of them require guests to pray or go to chapel in exchange for a meal or a bed. Some of them are staffed by volunteers who evangelize or discriminate. I think that’s stupid.
I think the whole system is stupid and the stupidest thing is that it’s a choice—we’re choosing this.
We wake up every day, and we choose to make help difficult to find and dehumanizing to receive.
But the corollary to that choice is that we can wake up and choose differently. ”
Birdie’s looking at me while I’m looking at the screen, and I turn to her. Her nose has a little crinkle in it, and there’s a curious lilt to her mouth. “I didn’t expect this to be the kind of thing you cared about.”
“Because I’m the devil?”
She touches my face. Her fingertips are warm, a little rough from the years of working with wood. I think of that barely curled pinkie, the two fingers next to it. I want to burn down the entire world for the sake of those fingers. I want to rain down stars of fire and boil the seas.
“Yes,” Birdie says. “Because you’re my devil.”