Never Have I Ever(71)

Then I’d feed her to it.

It wasn’t a bad plan, considering, but I hadn’t been home from the walk more than fifteen minutes when she came to wreck it. I opened the door expecting her son, and there she was, a shiny bad penny in her yellow dress, turned up on my porch again.

“Where is Luca?” I said, so snappy that Oliver, draped near sleep across my shoulder, reared up his head to look at me with wide, solemn eyes. I patted his back, bouncing him, and he tucked his face back into my shoulder.

“He doesn’t get up until after ten unless I set a bomb off, and I couldn’t leave you here alone. Not after your little dawn raid on Mobile,” she said, unperturbed by my tone. She stepped forward, muscling her way in past me. “You’ve janked me around so hard already I’m surprised I haven’t pulled the plug on this, and I get the feeling you’re not done. So here I am. I want this to work out for you, Amy.”

I shut the door behind her with more force than necessary, making Oliver stir. I shushed and patted, kept my voice close to a whisper, even though I couldn’t help how fierce it came out.

“You want this to work out for me?”

“Yeah,” she said, like this was only common sense.

She walked down the hall to my kitchen, as easy in my home as Char. I trailed behind her, then stood swaying my almost-asleep baby, my mind churning. Did she mean to stick by me all day, every day, until the money came? I shook my head in a tired, angry no.

“I can’t have you living up my nose. It will look weird to my friends. My husband.”

“So we look weird for a few days. It’s better than looking like a sociopath who stalks her victim’s children, isn’t it?” She asked this with an odd sincerity, not like a barb.

I felt a dull heat rising in my face.

“What do you think I’m going to do?” I asked. “Go see Tig again? Get him to tell me what he knows one more time?”

She ignored my theatrics and answered the question, calm and almost kind. “I don’t know. I wish I did. As it stands, I’m going to sit on you and hatch you like an egg.”

“A money egg,” I said, bitter, and she smiled, wry and almost apologetic.

“I have to stop you playing,” she said. “If you piss me off enough, I’ll hit back and blow this for both of us. I want my money, sure. That’s the main thing. But I like you, Amy. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

It was an insane claim, since she was the one who’d be doing the hurting, but she said it in a way that sounded simple and sincere. I thought this was the real Roux again. All her Char-ish mannerisms from the walk had fallen away, and there was no sign of the exotic newcomer who had fascinated my whole book club. With me she’d alternated between predator and provocateur, keeping me scared and off balance, but even that was gone. This was the woman I had glimpsed before, when she’d dropped the games and talked to me about what I owed the universe. She was being downright human, a woman I would have liked, a lot, if we’d met in California.

In this quiet, before Luca came, I decided to try a different plan. A kinder one. For a moment I would try to be human back.

“That money isn’t mine.” Opening my cabinet, I got out a cup and poured her the last of the coffee I’d made for Maddy and Davis, one-handed. “You’re not really taking it from me. It’s Charlotte’s. You understand?” I passed her the cup, and she took it, but she didn’t answer the question. “It was always meant for Paul and Char. That money is a wall between them and any bad thing that life throws. If one of them gets sick or loses a job, I have to be able to help.” Every word landed like gospel, because every word was true. This was why I’d never touched the remaining funds, or even siphoned more to Tig. It was for Char and everybody she held dear. I could see that my words had an effect on Roux. She was listening, both hands wrapped around the mug, as if for warmth. “You say you’re acting for the universe, restoring balance, but you’re robbing some kids who lost their mother.”

After a moment she shook her head. “That’s too easy.”

“Nothing about this is easy!” I said, and I had to work to keep my voice down. Oliver was truly out now, a heavy weight on my chest and shoulder. Lord help us if I woke him.

She shook her head again, calm and certain. “That money is. It came from your family. You didn’t earn it. If Char got cancer, what would it cost you, personally, to step in and throw cash at the problem? Nothing. After you pay me off, shit gets real. Her chemo or your family vacation? Her meds or your new car? If you cover her ass when it costs you, it will actually mean something.”

This was her, the real Roux. The one who had her kid believing she was helping people make amends, balance-checking karma, acting as a twisted version of a confessional. I hadn’t realized how deeply she believed it until now. She hadn’t been BS’ing me. She really saw herself as some kind of antihero, which meant that deep down she must want to be a good person. It also meant that she was right: We were more alike than I wanted to admit.

I tried again to reach her. “Don’t kid yourself. You’re not doing something noble, Roux. You stumbled across my life and immediately stuck your hand out.”

She looked at me with genuine surprise and then straightened, setting the mug down.

“Stumbled? You think I’m here by accident?” She leaned in, fierce and serious. “Nothing is by accident. I was looking for you, Amy. I sought you like a grail, and that was before I ever heard your name. I knew that your name would come to me. A name always does. I worked to find you, striking up conversations in bars and parks, book clubs and gyms and churches. I know how to get strangers talking. It’s not even hard. People are so hungry to be listened to, and most of ’em walking this shithole planet have a story about injustice, the taker or the ruiner who wrecked them on the way through. At the same time, every person alive is starved to confess their own dark moments, because what they really want, deep down, is to pay.” She stepped closer, fixing me with the bright eyes of a true believer. “I’m the weapon, not the wielder. I follow the stories, and the road they take me down is the road that was always meant to be. That has to be. I was following a different story, heading for Baton Rouge, until I stopped by that garage in Mobile Bay. When Tig Simms started talking, I knew that the road was turning me. I go where I’m sent.”