Keith sat at his desk. He was wearing a trim gray suit and a blue striped tie, his cane hooked over the edge of the desk. A second desk stood adjacent to his. It was neat and orderly, with a small chrome lamp at one corner, a cup of pens and an in-tray bristling with paperwork to one side.
“You’re late,” Keith said, a mild, deadpan expression on his face. “Last I heard, the American workday starts at nine.”
A small, grateful smile spread across her face. She glanced at Mac again, who smirked and turned back to her computer. Then Veronica walked into the office and sat down in her new chair.
“I thought you had physical therapy this morning,” she said.
“Assembling furniture is more or less the same thing as physical therapy,” he answered. Their eyes met, and his expression said more than words could.
A moment later, Veronica heard the front door open again. She looked up to see Hunter and Lianne standing in reception, just inside the door.
Lianne’s eyes were dark with exhaustion. She wore the same gray sweater and jeans she’d worn the day before, rumpled, a fresh coffee stain speckling her thigh. Hunter, somber as ever, stared around the office. For once he didn’t have an instrument in hand. Veronica and Keith both stood up and went into the outer office to meet them.
“Lianne.” Keith paused a few feet away from his ex-wife. He looked uncertain for a moment, his hands awkward at his sides. Then he held out his arms, and she moved in to hug him, resting her chin on his shoulder for a moment. When they broke apart, Keith held her by the shoulders and looked down at her. “How’re you holding up?”
She glanced at Hunter, then back at Keith. “We’re … we’re all right. Thanks.”
Hunter looked around the room, a small skeptical frown on his face. Veronica knelt down to his height. “How are you, Hunter?”
“We were just at jail.” There was a mixture of pride and something else in his voice. Resignation, maybe? Sadness? “The police officers gave me a badge. See?”
“That’s pretty cool,” Veronica said, admiring the pin on the boy’s shirt.
“It’s plastic,” Hunter answered, offhand.
Lianne twisted her wedding ring around and around on her finger, her mouth turned downward. “Do you mind if we talk in your office?” The look on her face was pointed; she didn’t want Hunter to overhear.
“Of course. Veronica, can you keep an eye on the little pitcher?” Keith asked.
“Sure.” She watched as Keith ushered Lianne into the office, shutting the door firmly behind him. For a moment the only sound in the room was the soft gurgling of the fish tank. She looked at Mac, who shrugged helplessly.
“The sheriff might arrest my mom,” Hunter suddenly said. His chin jutted pugnaciously. He scuffed one sneaker back and forth across the floor. “That’s why she’s talking to your dad.”
Veronica sat down on the sofa, where she was more or less at face height with the little boy. “Is that what she told you?”
“No,” he said, scornful. “But I heard it.”
She stared at him—at this tiny stranger. Her brother. Lianne may have been sober for his lifetime, but he still had the cagey look of an addict’s child—stoic, hidden, careful. Maybe that was an effect of growing up with so many secrets, so many lies … with a dad who could stop drinking but couldn’t seem to stop scamming. With a sister who’d been born and bred a criminal. With a mom who kept her past locked up in her heart, secret and shameful.
“He said she was an … accessorary?”
“An accessory?”
“Yup.” He nodded. “So she might have to go to jail. And I’ll be alone.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Across the room, the little electronic treasure chest in the fish tank opened and closed, rhythmically releasing its bubbles. Beyond the door to the inner office, she could hear her father’s low, gentle voice, but she couldn’t make out the words he was saying. She didn’t know what, exactly, they were talking about—didn’t know how Keith could help Lianne this time. But she turned back to Hunter. Quickly, impulsive, she pulled him into a hug. His little shoulders tensed. She leaned close and whispered into his ear.
“Listen, Hunter. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can promise you one thing. You’re not going to be alone. If something happens to Mom, if she does have to go to jail, I’ll take care of you, okay? You’ll have me. And I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
She felt a single sob move up his spine. Then, suddenly, he relaxed. He wrapped his arms around her neck and hugged.
A few minutes later, Keith opened the door, and Lianne stepped out ahead of him. Her face was red and damp, but she looked calm, resolved. She smiled when she saw Hunter, sitting close to Veronica on the couch and looking at the pictures in a National Geographic.
“Well, come on, Hunter. We should go. I’m sure Keith and Veronica have work to do.”
“I’ll walk you down to the street.” Veronica got up from the sofa. She wasn’t sure why, but she wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye.
Downstairs, just inside the door, she paused. She was reminded of the afternoon nearly a week ago now, when her mom had walked her to the door of the condo after seeing her for the first time in more than a decade. A loaded moment—one or the other of them anxious to hurry through another door, to put some distance between them, as if the collapse of eleven long years of silence was too much too soon too fast.
For the past week Veronica had been careful with her mother. She’d wrapped her own boundaries in chain link and razor wire, doing her best to stay professional and aloof. That meant she didn’t let anything out—didn’t show any of her hurt, her grief, any of the old scars Lianne had left. And it meant she didn’t have to feel sorry for her mother. She didn’t have to feel anything for her mother.
But now it was hard not to. Maybe it was just her exhaustion—two weeks of sleep deprivation, bad dreams, waking nightmares. Or maybe it was just Lianne, standing raw and unguarded in the entryway, unsure what to do with her hands. Her mother’s life—the life she’d rebuilt from the ashes of a thousand burned bridges—had just been ripped apart. The family she’d thought she had was a lie. She’d been betrayed and abandoned.
It was enough punishment for all of them.
Veronica turned to Lianne, and before she could change her mind, she put her arms around her and pulled her into a hug.
Lianne’s back was warm and bony, her vertebrae rigid under Veronica’s hand. She trembled a little in her daughter’s arms, her breath jerky. Veronica closed her eyes for a moment and exhaled.
It wasn’t in her nature to forgive. But she was tired of fighting the war.
“Bye, Mom,” she whispered. And then she opened the door.