Chapter 22
22
KATE
M ickey stops calling. It’s for the best. I had to ignore the calls anyway. He texts if it’s business. There’s no room in my life for personal, not with him. I start doing yoga in the mornings. First, I open one eye, eat a saltine cracker and wait for my stomach to settle. If it goes okay, I get up and do yoga. If not, I get up and puke, then do yoga. I’m not sure where the rumor of a pregnancy glow came from but I look like the Corpse Bride no matter how much bronzer and blush I apply.
The second CPA exam date rolls around and even though I devote a ton of time to preparing, I get into the test and feel completely lost. Half the questions seem foreign to me, impossible to figure out. As I try to concentrate, I get more and more anxious and sweaty and shaky. Around the two hour mark I throw up.
I’m not sure if I panicked or if I really didn’t know the answers. I beat myself up over it that night and then make myself go on with work and exercise and eating as healthy as I can make myself in the evenings when I’m mostly sad and nauseous.
Weeks of seeing Mickey at work hasn’t made it easier. When he speaks to me directly, when he says my name, his voice still has that warmth that I remember and that I loved so much. It makes me want to cry every damn time. And what am I going to do? Say, hey, boss, could you stop saying my name because it makes me wanna bawl like a baby? And speaking of baby, I’m having yours and haven’t told you.
When I get the failing score on my second test, I expect it but it still upsets me. I’m taking tiny nibbles of toast with peanut butter on it when Rory comes in unexpectedly and takes one look at me.
“Whoa, what’s wrong?” he asks.
I open my mouth to tell him I’m fine but it doesn’t work out that way. I start to speak and the tears I’ve been trying to hold at bay just pour out of me.
“I failed the test and I’m in love with Mickey, but I can’t be with him,” I blurt out.
Rory freezes, stunned as if I’d announced that I shot everyone in the diner this morning because my eggs were cold.
“Mickey?” He says in what has to be disbelief. I’m sort of shocked he’s not screaming at me and breaking stuff at the news.
“We were together for a little while,” I manage through my sniffles.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“Do you tell me everything?” I snap. “Besides, you’ve barely spent more than ten minutes in a room with me in the three months I’ve been home!”
“He’s fifteen years older than you for fuck’s sake, Katie!” He thunders.
“Rory, calm down. We’re both adults and it’s past tense anyway. There’s nothing for you to be mad about.”
“Nothin’ for me to be mad about my ass. My best friend messed around with my little sister,”
“Sit down and talk to me like a reasonable person, Rory. Please. I’m not a kid. I wanted to be with him.”
“He swore to me when he gave you a job that he was gonna keep you out of the Pearl, out of the line of fire. So he’s a fuckin’ liar. The only thing in this city more dangerous than being Mickey O’Halloran’s enemy is being the man himself. Some asshole tried to shoot him outside the Pearl a few weeks ago.”
“I know. I was there,” I say and immediately regret it.
“You were there? I’m gonna kill him,” he says in disbelief.
“Please just sit down and don’t go chase Mickey down and start shit.”
Pleading with him doesn’t do any good. He’s gone and out of the driveway before I even finish my sentence. It doesn’t matter to him what I want or that I was happy with Mickey. It only matters that it offends him, that he doesn’t like it. I have to accept that we’re not going to have a super close sibling relationship. Maybe it’s the age thing or maybe it’s just the way we’re built.
Instead of studying I fall asleep on the couch watching a true crime show. I wake up in the middle of the night, sweating, my heart racing from a vivid dream. I rub my eyes, sit up and try not to think about it. That works about as well as you’d expect it to. For hours after I’m seized by the icy, doomed feeling from my nightmare, the horror of it, the crushing sadness.
I can’t get the image out of my mind. In my dream I’d been so happy. I was in a hurry to meet Mickey for dinner. I waited for him at the bar, sent him a teasing text that I was going to eat all the cheese dip if he kept me waiting. When he didn’t show up and didn’t answer his phone I started calling people to see if they knew where he was. I went to the Pearl but no one had seen him for hours. Frightened, impatient I could barely stand the slowness of the elevator as it climbed. I was shaking as I tried to scan in to the crow’s nest in hope he’d left a note or some clue. It took me three tries before I got the door unlocked.
I turned the lights on to illuminate the dim room and the rusty tang of blood hit my nose before the lights flickered on completely. I saw Mickey or what was left of him slumped forward in his chair, part of his face and head gone, a horrifying, wrong shape that was bright with blood. I was screaming his name. I rushed to him, reached for his hand. It was limp and didn’t respond to my touch. The table and the front of his clothes were soaked in blood, too much of it. His hand was still warm, but I knew he was gone. I screamed and cried with terrible force as if I’d never quit.
For hours after I wake up, it’s a thought that won’t leave me alone. It’s all I can do to keep from messaging Mickey to check that he’s okay. I don’t actually believe it was a premonition or anything, but I want so much to hear his voice and be reassured that he’s alive, unhurt, and not bleeding out at this very moment. I realize this is what my life would’ve been like if I tried to stay with him despite the danger I’ve seen with my own eyes. Constant terror, clutching my phone, always waiting for the call that he’s been killed in cold blood. It would be a vicious cycle and no way to live.
That’s ultimately why I don’t call him. In spite of how much I crave the warmth of his voice when he says my name, the certainty of his well-being and safety that I’d get from calling, is not a solution. There’s no way to stay safe in his line of work, and it would only be the most temporary of reassurances to call him now.
Instead, I turn on an audiobook and read about my baby’s development as I near my second trimester. I rest my palm on my belly and take slow breaths, trying to think of happy things for the baby’s sake. I know that my body is where this baby is growing and I don’t want them to grow in an environment of nothing but sadness and fear. When I finally fall asleep again, I don’t dream at all thankfully.
When I wake up, I grab my tablet and open a file. I scan it repeatedly and then double check my numbers. Somehow in my sleep, I unraveled it. I take a deep breath and message Mickey three words that will take down the drug ring.
It’s the nephew.
I email him a quick paragraph explaining how I know Ragucci’s nephew and, unfortunately, Jeremiah—are behind the drugs. I’ll leave it to him to tell his chief forensic accountant that his heir apparent, the nephew Mickey never trusted, is the guilty party and no amount of loyalty to the uncle can save the man now.
Something about solving this puzzle and being able to give Mickey a confident answer with proof helps free me a little from the gloom I’m under. At least I’ve accomplished something on this job besides a broken heart.