The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(71)

“Maybe wash your hands, and—”

“Right.”

I saw, when she returned, that she’d also made some effort to wash out the bottom half of her dress. “I think it’s unsalvageable,” she said, standing awkwardly by the bed. “I feel badly. I took this from the house where I was staying.”

“Where were you staying?” I asked, because I didn’t know what else to say.

“Ah,” she said, gathering back up the sheets and pillows in her arms. She dumped them unceremoniously on top of me. “I don’t—that is—do you remember Detective Inspector Green?”

It was hard to forget her. She’d been the one to arrest Holmes for killing August Moriarty. “I do,” I said, neutrally.

“We’ve known each other for so long—no. I mean, yes, she was the Jameson emeralds, but I—her sister—”

“You’re staying in her sister’s place,” I said, sitting up.

“Yes.”

“By yourself?”

“I’ve been going it alone now for some time,” she said, with an airiness that was obviously false. “But Leander’s with me now—I didn’t know if you knew that.”

“I didn’t. But it makes sense, since you showed up together tonight.”

“Of course.”

“I’m not stupid, Holmes,” I said, and she recoiled. Why did I lob that one at her? Why was all this suddenly so hard? We could put down our worst nightmare in a restaurant bathroom and then escape across New York bloody City in the dark, but I couldn’t talk to her alone in a quiet room.

“I never thought you were stupid,” she said. “Not ever. Which you know.”

I’d been trying so hard to stay in the moment, to meet her where we were now. But her defensiveness—which you know—dragged it out of me. “I wasn’t worth it,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “You decided that I wasn’t worth telling the truth to. You couldn’t even tell me where you were going. The police took you away, and you walked off without saying a word. You were gone. A year went by, Holmes. A year! For all I knew, you were—you were dead.”

“You’re my friend,” she said, crossing her arms. “My only friend. If I would’ve told anyone what I was doing, I would have told you. But I thought that you would trust me.”

“You don’t get to pull that one,” I told her. “We chased Hadrian and Phillipa across Europe because you lied to me. I should have trusted you after that? Leander was in your basement. You knew about it. You didn’t tell me. I should have trusted you after that?”

“Yes,” she said, automatically. Then she winced. “No. No, of course not. But can you blame me for not thinking clearly after what happened to—?”

“To August,” I said. “Well, you were thinking clearly enough to give me orders.”

She gave me a despairing look. “Not good ones.”

“Clearly not.”

Holmes shifted her weight. “Anything else?”

“Well.” I pulled my knees up to my chest. “I— That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“I had— There’s been so much I’ve wanted to tell you. I’ve made so many mistakes. I feel . . . I feel almost like you’ve ruined me.”

“Watson—”

“Or maybe I was like this all along. I didn’t know why you put up with me, for so long, and at first I thought, I’m not as smart as her, I’m just her sidekick, that you wanted me around because I—I admired you. I couldn’t hide it, I felt it so much. I just didn’t know what you wanted from me. What you got from the two of us together. And then you left, and I—I think I got lost, somewhere. I don’t like myself anymore. I used to. Like myself. At least a little. And I’ve just been behaving like a monster.”

“You think I’ve done that to you?” It was an honest question.

“Maybe,” I said, and swallowed, and said the thing I’d been thinking ever since Lucien Moriarty dragged me out of that bathroom stall. “Holmes, I don’t know if we’re going to get out of this one alive.”

Her eyes were shining. “I know.”

I forced a laugh. “Any final words?”

She shrugged a shoulder.

“Holmes—” I pulled it off, the comforter, the sheets, all those mountains of white, clearing a space beside me. “Come here,” I said, then winced. “I mean. If you want to.”

She sat down gingerly at the edge of the bed. “Jamie—”

The word hovered in the air.

“I’m sorry,” she said, all at once.

“For what?”

“I’m—I’m sorry, Jamie.”

I waited. Sometimes I could read her as clearly as though her thoughts were scrolling across the sky, and sometimes she was the most unknowable creature in the world.

“When I met you, I was still . . . I hate this.”

Words are imprecise, I remembered her saying once. Too many shades of meaning. And people use them to lie.

Holmes had this look on her face like she was trying to drag something up from the basement of her heart.

“Try,” I said.