Chapter 14
Letting everyone sleep was a total fantasy. Even if I didn’t have the baby with me, there’s no way I could lie back down. My heart doesn’t love waiting around to see what will happen to Jameson. I’d much rather be dressed in black and checking out a creepy farmhouse than here without him.
Although—I could do without the part where the rogue and maybe fake cops beat him up and took him to jail. I do not want a repeat of that situation ever.
“It’s a trade-off,” I murmur to Robin, who keeps sleeping. “If it’s a thing where my presence will make him get arrested, then obviously I’ll stay here. But what if I could help? What if I was born for a life of crime?”
Robin says nothing.
“I don’t think I was born for a life of crime,” I admit. “I don’t think the law is necessarily on the side of justice, but anarchy seems like a lot of work.”
The baby sleeps on.
“Why am I talking to you about anarchy?” I ask. “Why is my brain like this?”
No answer.
I stop telling Robin my thoughts about anarchy and justice and pace with him for another minute or so of quiet. Then Charlotte pads into the living room, pulling her hair into a bun on the top of her head. Her face lights up when she sees Robin sleeping peacefully in my arms.
“I can take him,” she says in a low voice. “But holding a sleeping baby is the best. He’s happy with you, if you don’t mind.”
“I really don’t.”
“Should we make some tea? I’m going to make some tea. It feels like the thing to do.”
I follow her into the kitchen, where she pulls a mason jar of fancy tea bags out of a cupboard, fills the kettle with water, and turns on the front stove burner. I’m too keyed up to sit at the kitchen table, and from what I’ve seen, Robin prefers to be held standing or slowly pacing. Charlotte’s kitchen is large enough to do a decent-sized circle. She’s taking down mugs and I’m still circling at a stately pace when Elise comes in a couple of minutes later with Nate and Lydia, who are pretty bright-eyed for the middle of the night.
“You guys seem very…awake.” I don’t have a leg to stand on. If it weren’t for Robin, I’d be all jitters. As it stands, I’m jittery on the inside, but I’m not letting it reach my limbs. I’m not going to let this bother a sweet little baby, who is always surrounded by so much love. “Do you always stay up all night?”
“Me?” Nate points to his chest. “I was sleeping like an angel. Then I heard Gabriel went to be a superhero again. I didn’t want to miss that.”
Lydia looks like she’s trying not to smile. “Yeah. I was asleep too.”
“Sure you were,” Elise says. She gives me a hug, mindful of the baby, then goes to give Charlotte a hug, too. “We’re here for you, Lily. We’re here to wait with you until the guys get back. I know they’ll be back before we know it. Well, not, like, before we know it, but sooner than we think. I hope.”
My stomach does a swoop and a roll. Holding Robin is having the most calming influence, but my heart rate does go up. I have to concentrate harder to keep the jitters on the inside. It doesn’t help that I can picture our Cobble Hill street so vividly. I know exactly what Jameson would look like approaching my grandfather’s house to?—
To—
“Um.” My voice wobbles. “Oh, that’s—I’m okay, I should say, first—I’m—I’m pretty worried that Jameson went to kill my grandfather.”
Charlotte turns around from the kettle. “Mason and Gabriel won’t let him do that.”
“What if they’re too late?”
“They won’t be.” Charlotte’s firm, as if she can make this true by saying it definitively. “Life is going to be hard for your grandfather anyway, but Mason will not let Jameson become a murderer.”
“Why?” I breathe as deep as I can with my throat all pinched and panicky. “Because of the wedding? Or the charges? Or—or all of it?”
Charlotte squares her shoulders.
“Jameson’s been spending a lot of time at Phoenix doing research. And collecting documents.” She still sounds so sunshiny, even as she tells me this news in the middle of the night, in pajama pants and a T-shirt, with her husband rushing to Cobble Hill to stop his brother from killing my grandfather. “Jameson’s assistant noticed the work he was doing and happened to see some printed emails—something like that—and brought them to Mason in case it was something he needed to know about. So Mason started looking into things.
“Wow,” I whisper. “I didn’t see that coming.”
A smile flashes onto Charlotte’s face, then dims. “He kept it to himself. Mason didn’t want to upset Jameson, or make him think he was snooping. He was snooping, technically, but
“He asked his friends to help him with sorting through all the documents. Tracking everything down.” Charlotte runs a hand over her hair. “Mason hadn’t wanted to comb through all those records back when my parents were?—”
She looks away and takes a deep breath.
“I understand.” I don’t understand all of how she feels, but when Jameson was recovering from the rogue cops incident, there was a lot of downtime that we spent talking. The consortium started crumbling when Charlotte’s dad died, and afterward, Mason wanted to move on. I don’t blame either of them for that. I wish it had been possible to leave it behind for real. Charlotte faces me again. She’s not quite smiling, but she doesn’t look upset. “For…all the reasons, now’s the time.”
“Yes. Between them, they’ve found quite a bit of evidence that…” Charlotte hesitates. This part isn’t sunshiny.
“That my grandfather is the worst? We already knew that.”
Charlotte grimaces. “That he’s…very, very corrupt. He used his position on the bench wildly inappropriately. From what I understand, he violated the code of ethics on, like, a lot of occasions and broke several laws.”
“Damn,” says Nate.
“I’m sorry about the timing, truly.” Charlotte’s blue eyes are wide and sincere, and I’m glad it’s her telling me this while I still have a chance to collect myself. “Mason wanted us all to sit down and talk about it, but we ran out of time.”
“That’s my fault.” My voice is wobbly again. “I should have known it wasn’t a dream.”
“It’s not your fault,” Elise says from her spot at the table. “And what’s done is done. We’re going to figure out the rest together, as a team.”
“Go team!” Nate shouts, thrusting his fist in the air. “I love this team!”
Lydia bites her lip and pulls Nate’s hand down. Robin sleeps through it. Maybe he’s already used to random outbursts from family members.
Elise pats his forearm. “This might not be the best time for jokes, Nate.”
“I wasn’t joking. I do love this team. I’m being so fucking serious. Lily should know that.”
“Nate! There are delicate ears in this room!” says Elise.
“Free pass,” Charlotte announces. “Robin is asleep, and he’s too young to know what swear words are, anyway, so we’re all good.”
In his cage on the countertop, Snowball rustles.
“Maybe not all of us,” Charlotte amends.
Snowball stretches his wings, then hops up and down in his bedding, then lets out a questioning tweet?
“Mason and Gabriel are bringing him back,” I answer, moving across the room with Robin. “He left to…run an errand.”
Snowball lets out a series of tweets that sound like what do you mean, Mason and Gabriel are bringing him back? Why did you let him leave? You should be with him!
“I get it.” My eyes burn. I’m exhausted, but there’s no way I could fall asleep right now. I might also be a little out of my mind. Pregnancy hormones? Post-wedding dress? The wait? It’s probably all three. “I didn’t know he was leaving, or I’d have gone with him.”
You need to be there with him, admonishes Snowball. He is suffering.
“Yeah, I know.” I blink away more tears. “I won’t let it happen again.”
Snowball’s tweets turn mournful. I should have been with him, too.
“You couldn’t help it. You were sleeping. We’ll just have to do our best from now on. If you see him leaving in the night, you can sound the alarm, and I’ll go after him. Okay?”
Snowball’s next tweet sounds like agreement. He lowers himself down to his bedding, fluffing his wings as he goes.
When I turn around, everyone in the room is staring at me.
“Okay.” Nate smiles, his voice meticulously gentle. “Was there anything else you wanted to talk about, Lily? If there’s anything Snowball has to say, you can let us know that, too.”
I let my head fall back, my cheeks hot as an undergrad message board on the last day of finals.
“I know he can’t talk,” I admit, picking my head up. “Jameson talks to him, so I—I also talk to him. He just has a big personality. It’s easy to get into the habit.”
“We all talk to him,” Elise says. “It’s not weird at all.”
Lydia stares at her sister. “We do?”
Elise gives her a look.
“We do!” Lydia chirps. “Of course we do. We all talk to our cute little guy, Snowball.”
“We could get a doctor to stop by,” Nate offers. “Or a psychiatrist. If you feel like you’re under too much stress.”
He’s teasing. I think.
“I’m holding Robin. I will be fine.”
We stop talking about the bird. Charlotte pours tea for everyone, and we sit around the table and drink it like we’re not anxiously waiting for what’s sure to be bad news. Elise steers the conversation toward baked goods, which is a topic that lends itself to more conversation than you might think.
It seems like a long time, and no time, before the sound of the elevator opening reaches us.
Then there are voices.
We leave the kitchen en masse. Mason, Gabriel, and Jameson are stepping out of the foyer when we get to them. I’m in front with Robin.
“You have blood on you!” Emotion wells up in me. Or explodes up in me. Oh—I’m angry. I was scared, and I was worried, and I was in love, and now I’m also angry. “Jameson, you’re all bloody! What were you thinking? Did you kill my grandfather?”
“No,” Jameson answers.
“You can’t keep doing this.” It’s unstoppable, like pregnancy hormones or falling in love. “You’re my husband. We’re supposed to be part of a team.”
“Go team,” Nate says softly.
Jameson doesn’t laugh. “We are.”
“But you left in the middle of the night to do a murder, and—what am I supposed to do with that? You can’t do this again! This has to be the last time!”
“I know.”
“We have to be a team.” My voice is Vesuvius now, giving a shaky warning. “You can’t just—just leave. Do you understand? I can’t wait for you to come back like this. I have to have another way to—to live. I have to go to law school.”
Jameson blinks. “You can go to law school, if that’s what you?—”
“I have to have a safety net. My mother didn’t have one, and we don’t know what happened to her. I can’t be on my own like that. If I can’t count on you?—”
His face shutters. “No. Really, Lily, I think you should go. Wherever you want. Law school is a great idea. It’s a reliable pathway to employment.”
“Are you going to start killing people? Because?—”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Jameson says flatly.
“He didn’t,” Mason confirms. “There was a small house fire.”
Gabriel looks at Elise, his expression absolutely innocent. “Just a little one,” he sings.
“Was anyone hurt?” I don’t know if I’m horrified that my grandfather might have been hurt, or horrified that he wasn’t hurt, or just plain horrified. “You didn’t hurt anyone, did you?”
“Your grandfather was escorted away by the police for questioning.” Mason glances at Jameson, then back at me. “But he wasn’t hurt. He had a superficial wound, but he’s going to be fine. I mean to say—he won’t have lasting damage from any wounds. He won’t be a judge, either, which might be worse for him.”
I thought my life wouldn’t rearrange again until the baby was born, but it’s happening in front of my eyes.
This isn’t just the future. It’s the past. There’s solid evidence that my grandfather was not who he pretended to be. He might never have been the man he pretended to be.
I have to rethink everything.
But first?—
I take a longer look at Jameson.
And now that my emotions are less Vesuvius-like, I can see that he’s not okay. The blood on his face is from a cut on his finger, I think, but that’s not the worst of it. He has deep bruises under his eyes, and his expression reminds me of shattering glass.
“Jameson,” I say quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry with you. I’m frustrated because I was scared, and I thought you might—I thought you might do something really bad, or get badly hurt again, and I didn’t want that for you. Don’t listen to me about law school. It’s the middle of the night. It’s not time to talk about stuff like that.”
“You can leave.” Jameson’s eyes make my heart sink. “If that’s what you want. I won’t stop you.”
“I don’t want that. I want to be married to you. Of course I do. I was just scared.”
He stares at me for several beats.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” My voice will not stop shaking. I wish I could get it together enough to sound cool and self-possessed while also sounding warm and empathetic. I don’t know if that’s possible. “Do you want to get cleaned up? Take a shower, maybe? And then we can look at your hand? I think you have a cut there. We can talk while I clean up. I can help you with whatever you need. I’m really okay now. You don’t have to worry about me.”
Silence.
“Would that be okay?” I ask. This is what Pompeii must have felt like. Lots of people escaped before the eruption destroyed the city, but lots of people didn’t. Maybe they were hoping the worst wouldn’t happen. Maybe they hoped until it was too late.
Please, let it not be too late.
“Sure.” Jameson sounds dead. I’ve never heard him like this before. From the look Mason gives Gabriel, he hasn’t, either, or he hasn’t heard it in a long time. “That’s fine. I just have to do one thing first.”