Like a Sister(92)

I waited. After a second, I heard the buzz.

She didn’t have time to alert the office Slack. I got double takes as I walked by, glances as quick as they were furtive. The group that’d previously set up shop across from Tam’s desk had taken their road show to a random desk a few feet from the door. I turned as I walked by, smiled at them since I knew they saw me. “Afternoon,” I said.

Tam was at her desk, playing her position in the defensive line. She had her ever-present mug of coffee, which she damn near spit-taked when she saw me. “Lena, did we know you were stopping by?”

I still didn’t stop. “Nope.”

Mel’s double doors were closed, but not locked. I walked in, not having to glance back to know the shocked expression on Tam’s face.

“I’m not meeting with him unless he gives us a guarantee.” He was there at his desk, both his feet propped on it as he spoke on his landline. His sunglasses were off so I could see his eyes—my eyes. They looked in my direction and stayed there. His expression didn’t change one bit. “Melina’s here.” He hung up before the person could respond. “Here to make a citizen’s arrest?”

And that’s what finally stopped me. Of course he knew.

I turned to close the door. Neither of us spoke until I took the seat across from him. And then he went first. “Yeah, I know. My child thinks I would kill my own children. Free told me.”

“Free? Not one of the men you have following me?” I barely recognized my own voice, hadn’t heard the sadness in it since I was a kid. “Yeah, I know too.”

But he was shaking his head before I could put the period at the end of the sentence. “Those men are there to protect you.”

“I’m twenty-eight years old. I don’t need you to protect me, Mel.” I left off the “anymore.”

He finally took his feet off the desk. “Mel.” He said his own name. “I’m Mel. You’re Lena. Lena Scott.”

It was the first time he’d acknowledged it. I’d wanted a reaction for ten years. It was nowhere near as satisfying as eighteen-year-old me had thought—had hoped—it would be. He grabbed his sunglasses from the desk, started to put them back on but stopped himself. Didn’t say anything for a while.

“That hurt like hell,” he said. “You changing your name like that.”

It was as vulnerable as I’d ever seen him. “Yeah? Well, you missing my graduation hurt.” An understatement but it was all I could get out.

“Your mother told me not to come.”

That was news. Not surprising news, having lived with my mother, but news nonetheless.

“Since when did Mel Pier—” I stopped myself. “When did you ever listen when someone told you not to do something?”

“I sent a gift.”

Tiffany solitaire diamond earrings in platinum. They were still in the box. “No one said you had to sit next to her, hold her hand, sing ‘Isn’t She Lovely.’ You should’ve come. Instead, you went to brunch. I know because I fucking read about it in Page Six the next day.”

The tears came then, and now that the dam had been broken, they threatened to fill the entire room. Drown us both. I didn’t wipe them away. I’d cried about this man for hours. Days. A lifetime. And I finally wanted him to know. To his credit, he didn’t look away. After a moment, he opened his mouth, and I waited for the next excuse.

“I’m sorry.” It had come as fast as a pitch, but I didn’t even try to catch it. Instead, I stared at the desk, as if I could see where his words had landed in front of me. He spoke again, softer, gentler, slower. “Thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t want you to see your parents arguing all the time, hating each other.”

“So you decided it was better I didn’t see you at all?”

But he kept going, as if it was the first time he was admitting it to himself as much as to me. “It got easier to stay away, to convince myself it was okay because I was paying for the house, the school, some magic trick your mother told my mother you wanted.”

The Houdini box. I could still remember going down the stairs the Christmas I was ten and seeing it for the first time. And even though I’d abandoned the dream pretty quick, I’d kept the box. It was currently in my basement. Though I knew Santa hadn’t really dropped it off, I never knew Mel was the one who’d bought it.

“Melina—Lena—I’d die for my kids. I’d kill for my kids. I just want you to be safe. It sounds melodramatic as hell, but it’s the truth. Just like not coming to your graduation was one of the two biggest regrets of my life.”

My first inclination was to make a joke about how the other was not signing some big-name rapper. “What was the second?” I said instead.

“Letting your sister drive off the night of her accident.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I thought you were at Morgan.”

“Told Veronika I was having a boys’ night with my frat brothers. Took a plane back.”

Him having to fly back to New York wouldn’t have been a big deal to Veronika. She might have come with him, but she wouldn’t have thought it was weird. There was only one reason not to want her to come—or to know.

“What was her name?” I said. Unlike Free, Mel hadn’t had a cheating scandal since my mom.