Hellbent (Orphan X #3)(71)

Evan kept his voice low. “How do you talk to a teenage girl?”

“Very carefully,” Mia said.

“That much I’ve figured out.”

“She seems like a great kid. But she’s had it tough.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m a DA.” Mia set her hands on her thighs, tilted her head to the ceiling, took a breath. “Don’t push. Just be there. Be steady.”

He thought of Jack’s even pace through the woods, not too fast, not too slow, his boots stamping the mud, showing Evan where to step.

Mia pointed at Evan. “When it comes to kids, honesty matters. And consistency. That’s why I thought, you know, you coming for dinner once a week. It’s important to Peter. Stuff like that’s a clock they set their hearts to.”

He nodded.

“At the end of the day, all they really want to hear?” Mia ticked the points off on her fingers. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be fine. You’re worth it.”

He nodded again.

She studied him. “What?”

“Are they worth it?”

“Yes.” She rose to see him out. “But if you’re ever gonna say it, you better believe it first.” She shot him a loaded look. “Because she’ll know if you’re lying.”

*

Evan paused halfway up the spiral stairs to the loft. A clacking sound carried down to him, and it took a moment for him to place it: Joey working a Rubik’s Cube. Lifted halfway between floor and ceiling, he had a glorious view of downtown. The shimmering blocks, a confusion of lights shivering in the night air. Overhead, the cube clacked and clacked. He heard Joey cough.

It felt so odd to have another moving body in the penthouse.

He continued up to the reading loft. Joey sat in a nest of sheets on the plush couch. Her head stayed down, that rich chocolate hair framing her face, which was furrowed with concentration. The cube, smaller than the previous one he’d seen, was a neon blur in her hands.

She’d turned off the overheads and pulled the floor lamp close. It was on the lowest setting, casting her in a dim light. The cube alone was bright, glow-in-the-dark colors radiating in the semidark. Chewing-gum green and fluorescent yellow. Safety-cone orange and recycling-can blue.

At the second-to-top step, he halted.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“It’s your place.”

“But it’s not my room.”

Her deft fingers flicked at the cube, transforming it by the second. “Yeah it is.”

He noticed that she wasn’t trying to solve the cube; she was alternating patterns on it, the colors morphing from stripes into checkers and back to stripes.

He said, “Not right now.”

Her eyes ticked up. But her hands still flew, the cube obeying her will. It changed into four walls of solid color, and she let it dribble from her hands into her lap.

“Yeah,” she said. “You can come in.”

He stepped up into the loft and sat on the floor across from her, his back to one of the bookshelves. By her knee was the worn shoe box from her rucksack. The lid was off and one of the greeting cards pulled out. She’d been reading it. He remembered what Mia had told him and said nothing.

Joey picked up the cube. Put it down again.

“It’s such a big world,” she said. “And I don’t want it to just be this.”

“What?”

“My life. My whole life. Kept here, kept there, always hiding. There’s so much out there. So much I’m missing out on.”

Evan thought of the burnt-red chenille throw draping the arm of Mia’s couch.

“Yeah,” he said. “There is.”

Joey put the card into its envelope, slipped it into her shoe box, and set the lid back in place.

“Sorry I’m such an asshole sometimes,” she said. “My maunt used to say, ‘Tiene dos trabajos. Enojarse y contentarse.’ It doesn’t really translate right.”

Evan said, “‘You have two jobs. Getting angry. And getting not angry again.’”

“Something like that, yeah.”

He said, “You were close to her.”

Joey finally looked up and met his stare. “She was everything.”

It was, Evan realized, the longest they had ever held eye contact.

Joey finally slid off the couch. “I have to brush my teeth,” she said.

She lifted the shoe box from the sheets. As she passed, she let it drop to the floor beside him.

A show of trust.

She entered the bathroom, closed the door. He heard water running.

He waited a moment and then lifted the lid. A row of greeting cards filled the shoe box from end to end. He ran his thumb across the tops of the cards. The front two-thirds had been opened. The rear third had not.

And then he understood.

He felt his chest swell, slight pressure beneath his cheeks, emotion coming to roost in his body.

He used his knuckles to push back the stack so he could lift out the first card. Flocked gold lettering read: It’s your ninth birthday

A most happy day

A time to sing

And a time to play …

He opened the card, ignoring the rest of the printed greeting. An iris was pressed inside, already gone to pieces. Familiar feminine handwriting filled the blank page.