Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(92)



He picked it up.





59

Ten years before, J. H. Hennessy had shot herself.

One shot, .45 caliber. The gun belonged to a friend of the family, reports said. It was registered, everything north of proper except for the part where it killed someone, and maybe even that, because isn’t that every guy’s fitful dream? There was music playing when it happened. An old jazz recording, some woman’s voice pitching and lilting along as the sound fuzzed and popped. Jay was in a large closet. The lights were out. The only illumination came from a small, high window, and everything it touched was gray. She was dressed in a bra and underwear and a robe. Mascara was drawn down her face. She was holding a gun to her own head, and she was listening for the door to open.

This was not in the reports, but Hennessy knew it because she was the one who opened the door.

“Mum?” Hennessy said.

“You won’t miss me,” Hennessy’s mother said.

“Wait,” Hennessy said.

The gun barrel flashed.

It was also not in the reports that Jay had died disappointed. It was not supposed to be Jordan Hennessy, her daughter, who opened the closet door. It was supposed to be Bill Dower. All week long she had been courting his attention through a series of checks and balances, emotional outbursts and reticent withdrawals, and she had concluded the week’s emotional roller coaster by putting herself in that closet with the gun. Hennessy understood now that Bill Dower was meant to feel sorry for her and find her; Bill Dower was meant to take the gun out of her hand. Hennessy understood now that she had not been important in the equation, which had always only ever had two variables: Jay, and Bill Dower. Hennessy was one of those inert bits in between, only important when she had to interact with a variable.

She was not supposed to open the closet door.

It was supposed to be Bill Dower.

It was supposed to be Bill Dower.

It was supposed to be Bill Dower.

But Hennessy ruined the setup, both by spoiling the surprise of her mother with the gun and also by proving that Bill Dower wasn’t coming, the games were over.

And all she could say was—

Wait.

Later, therapists said she was taking it better than they had hoped.

Of course she was, Hennessy thought. She’d been expecting her mother to kill either herself or Hennessy for years.

She was a mess, Bill Dower said. What a beautiful mess.

Like mother, like daughter.

But Jordan wasn’t a mess, Hennessy thought. Any mess in Jordan was from living with Hennessy. Hennessy, who’d said the worst possible thing to her in Senko’s parking lot the night before. Where had that foulness even come from? Who was this person who would sneer that she was the dreamer, and Jordan only the dream, as if Jordan were not more competent at living in every single way?

A Hennessy, that was who.

She knew all the girls were disappointed with her. She saw it in their faces when she returned that night. Jordan was right. Something about Ronan Lynch, about another dreamer, had hopped them up on hope more than anything else she’d ever seen. They’d seen what he could do and they thought Hennessy, with a little help, could do the same. They didn’t understand.

“Where’s Jordan?” June asked.

“We had a row,” Hennessy said. “She’ll get over it.”

And she could see in their faces that they were proud of Jordan.

She slunk off to the studio to chain-smoke. She hated that they were hopeful, but more than that, she hated that they were hopeful about her. She was going to let them down again. She always let them down. Her poor girls. What a mess.

Early that morning, her timer went off, and instead of resetting it, she called Ronan Lynch.

He met her at a place called the Shenandoah Café, near Gainesville, west of DC, a restaurant located the opposite direction of rush hour traffic and open at the absurdly early hour that she’d called him. It was not as empty as one would expect given the hour; the clientele had a vaguely truck-stop vibe although the café itself was far quainter than the typical interstate stop. Buckled wood floors, primitive shop shelves from floor to ceiling, booths huddled around glass-topped casement display tables, every cranny filled with hundreds—maybe thousands—of knickknacks. According to a sign by the register, these knickknacks had been donated by customers from all over the world. Some appeared valuable, like parchment-thin china cups, and others appeared worthless, like Dracula rubber ducks. It was an installation where noise, rather than worth, was the relevant measure of success.

The hostess had left them at a table that contained metal roses, golden bells, and etched ocarinas. The shelf beside it held hollow books and ships in bottles and Excalibur letter openers.

Ronan said, “My family used to come here.”

“You and the big D. Declan.” She tried out the word again as she picked up the laminated menu card. Everything you could want as long as what you wanted was breakfast food. “I don’t know how you don’t just say his name all the time. It’s like chocolate in your mouth, isn’t it?”

He regarded her with unimpressed silence. He had a judgmental silence that said far more than words. This particular silence conveyed that he thought it was stupid that she was blustering when he was being earnest, don’t fucking waste his time.

Hennessy raised an eyebrow and shot back her own silence, which was less nuanced. It said something along the lines of Sorry, man, bluster’s all I got because I’m scared shitless and dying.

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