Chapter 42
Marin
Malone’s has candles on the tables and paper napkins in the dispenser, like it can’t decide what it wants to be. We walk in with glass in our hair and blood drying on my forehead and the hostess doesn’t bat an eye. Either she’s seen worse or she’s very professional.
Corner booth. Luke orders bourbon. I order wine. The waitress brings bread and I eat three pieces before I realize I’m starving and can’t remember the last meal I had that wasn’t standing over a sink or sitting on a staircase or hunched over a makeshift desk.
“So,” I say. “Explain.”
He does. Not everything—I can tell he’s editing. But enough.
“So…” he says.
I know what he’s about to ask and I’m delaying. “So what?”
“Your turn. How long are you planning to keep this going?”
I set my wine down. “Keep what going?”
“All of it. The house. The basement. The cover story. Him.”
“As long as it takes.”
“As long as what takes?”
“The reset. The plan. Charles coming around.”
Luke looks at me over his bourbon. Patient. Unhurried. The way he looks at everything—like he’s already measured it twice and is waiting for me to catch up.
“And if he doesn’t come around?”
“He will.”
“But if he doesn’t?”
I tear a piece of bread. Don’t eat it. Just hold it. “He will. He’s already different. He asked if we could do a movie night. He used to never want to do movie nights. The conversations we’re having…it’s like we’re finally getting somewhere. He’s starting to understand—I can see it. He’s—”
“He pissed the bed four times, Marin.”
“That’s a setback.”
“That’s a man who’s not coming around.”
The bread goes back on the plate. I pick up my wine. Put it down. Pick it up again. “What’s your point?”
“My point is you don’t have an endgame. You have a beginning and a middle and a whole lot of hope, but you don’t have an ending.
What does this look like when it works? He falls in love with you in a basement?
You untie him and he says thank you? You walk into the sunset with a man you transported across state lines in the trunk of your car? ”
“It wasn’t the trunk. It was a trailer.”
“Marin.”
“I know.” The words come out I quieter than I mean them to. “I know I don’t have an endgame. I know this isn’t sustainable. I know that every day I keep him there is a day closer to something going wrong.” I take a sip of wine. “But letting him go isn’t an option.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll go to the police. Because he’ll tell everyone what I did. Because I’ll lose everything.”
“You’ve already lost everything.”
That lands. I don’t show it but it lands.
“I haven’t lost everything,” I say. “I have the house. I have a meeting in New York on Tuesday. I have—”
“A meeting in New York?”
“With a former client. He wants to hear a pitch. It could be the start of getting my career back.”
Luke turns his glass on the table. Slowly.
“How long would you be gone?”
“Two days. Maybe three.”
The question sits there. Between the bread basket and the candle. Between two people who both know what comes next but neither wants to say it first.
I say it first. Because that’s what I do.
“I need someone at the house while I’m gone.”
Luke looks at me. Takes a sip of bourbon. Sets it down.
“You need a babysitter.”
“That’s not—”
“You need someone to feed him, water him, give him his pills, and make sure he doesn’t scream loud enough for Mrs. Mather to call the police. That’s babysitting, Marin.”
“I was going to say house-sitting.”
“You were going to say whatever made it sound like you weren’t asking me to keep your hostage alive while you fly to New York in heels and pitch yourself back into your old life.”
I open my mouth. Close it. He’s right and we both know it and the worst part is he looks like he’s been waiting for me to ask and the only surprise is that it took this long.
“Will you do it?”
“Yeah.”
“Just like that?”
“Someone has to be there. Can’t let him go two days without water.” He finishes his bourbon. Doesn’t order another. “And God forbid Mrs. Mather shows up and no one’s home to sell her the dying husband story.”
He’s right. He’s right and he’s offering and I should feel relieved. Instead I feel something else—the vertigo of handing someone a key to the thing you’ve been holding together alone.
“There are rules,” I say.
His jaw twitches. “I’d expect nothing less.”
“He eats twice a day. Water every four hours. Ibuprofen morning and night. Don’t engage with his arguments. Don’t let him convince you of anything. And whatever you do, don’t feel sorry for him.”
“I don’t feel sorry for him.”
“Good. Because he’s very good at making people feel sorry for him. It’s his primary skill set.”
“A match made in heaven, then.”
I stare at him. He stares back. And then I laugh—not the kind I use with clients, not the Mrs. Mather laugh. A real one that comes out sideways and surprises both of us.
Luke does not laugh.
The waitress comes back. We order food. We eat. We talk about the basement, the house, things that need fixing—things that always need fixing. We don’t talk about what this is. We don’t talk about the way his hand rests on the table or the way I keep not moving mine away.
We don’t talk about any of it.
He drives me home. The truck with no back window, glass on the seats, a bullet hole in the tailgate. The night air comes through the empty frame and blows my hair across my face and I don’t fix it.
He walks me to the porch. Stands there with his hands in his pockets. The porch he fixed. The door he hung.
“Tuesday,” he says.
“What about the anchor plate? You said you’d come back and—”
“My hands are full, Marin.” He looks at me. Steady. Not unkind but not soft either. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
He turns. Walks to the truck.
I watch him go. The taillights disappear down the driveway. The house is quiet. The basement is quiet. Mrs. Mather’s kitchen light is off for once.
I go inside. Lock the door. Press my back against it.
He said I’d figure it out. Like it was a fact. Like he’s known me long enough to know that I always do.
That shouldn’t feel like the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in weeks.
But it does.