The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(8)

My train left in eight hours. I would be in New York by noon.





Three


Jamie


MY FATHER PLAYED MADONNA ALL THE WAY TO NEW YORK City.

Not the hits, the stuff you’d generally hear on the radio, but deep cuts. Weird stuff. My father was more of a Bob Dylan guy, so I’d already raised an eyebrow at his choices, but this was weirdness squared. Especially since he apparently knew all the words to “This Used To Be My Playground.”

I didn’t usually give much thought to my father’s weirdnesses (there weren’t enough hours in the day), but it was either wonder about that or why Leander had been so distant when I’d gotten into the car. He hadn’t said a real hello, just nodded, miles away from the front seat of my father’s Camry.

Leander never greeted me, or anyone, like that. He was my honorary uncle, Holmes’s actual one, and from what I’d seen, by far and away the most humane member of her extended family. He called his friends on Christmas, smiled at you when you came into a room, threw parties for my father’s birthday. You know. Human things.

But it was more than that. Last year, in the weeks after my father had fetched us home from Britain, when Leander was still wasted from sickness and I was so battered and heartbroken that no one, especially not my family, wanted me to be alone . . . well. After days hovering over us, my father had finally left to make a trip to the grocery store. My stepmother was at work, my half brothers at school.

Which left me in the guest room, staring up at the ceiling fan, as I had been whenever I wasn’t sleeping. I was sleeping most of the time—mornings, the hours before dinner or just after the sun went down. Anytime but at night, when I lay still and quiet, counting my breaths, watching the hours shed themselves until, finally, I got up to wander the halls, unable to shake the thought of August sprawled out in the snow.

We hadn’t been good friends, August and I, but he was decent, thoroughly decent, and he’d paid a price for that decency. Once I’d thought that I could live in this world of Holmes’s. That I could grab knives by their blades, punch my hands through glass, could survive the violence that followed her around like a shadow. But I knew now that I couldn’t, that there was nothing there for someone like me.

That day my father finally left us alone, I realized I hadn’t spoken in what felt like forever. My broken nose had healed, but it still hurt when I opened my mouth, and anyway I wasn’t sure what I could say. I’ve just realized that I’m a coward. I fold under pressure. I make house fires into conflagrations. It didn’t matter. I’d go back to sleep. There was still another week until classes began; I didn’t have to be a human just yet.

Leander had other plans. From downstairs, he called me down into the kitchen—to persuade me to eat, I imagined, though I’d forced down some broth that morning. I took the stairs slowly and stood there in front of him, light-headed from lying down so long.

He stared at me. For a long time. Then he leaned across the table, cleared his throat, and said, hoarsely, “Jamie, did you know your new haircut makes you look like Donkey Kong?”

I’d laughed. I’d laughed until I couldn’t breathe, until I had to sit down, until I was crying, Leander’s hand on my shoulder, until I finally, stammeringly, began to talk about what had happened.

All of that was to say that Leander didn’t usually indulge in the same black moods his family did. But now he seemed like he was going through something, and though my instinct was to try to help, I reminded myself that was the old Jamie’s tactics. The one who fought other people’s battles for them, who made things worse. I was trying to be normal, now. Normal meant letting adults deal with their own problems. (Besides, I was too busy checking my phone. So far, no more texts from Weird Threatening Number.)

My father, the adult, was dealing with his adult best friend’s melancholy by singing “Material Girl” at the top of his lungs. He had, at least, switched to the singles.

“Dad,” I said. “Dad.” We were still forty minutes from Manhattan.

He had one hand on the steering wheel and the other in the cup holder, rooting around for change. “We’re liv-ing in a material world, and I am a material—”

“Please stop.” I watched as a muscle in Leander’s jaw began to jump. “Dad.”

“I need quart-ers for the very next toll—”

“Dad—”

“James,” Leander said, without turning to look. “Do you mind turning that down?”

“We used to play this back in Edinburgh,” my father said. “When we threw our summer solstice parties. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes. Please turn it down.”

My father didn’t touch the radio. “We don’t need to talk about this, you know.”

“You’ve taken your son out of school,” he said. The music played tinnily under his words. “We’re driving into the city. I imagine we have to talk about it.”

We approached the toll plaza. My father rolled down the window, and with a viciousness I didn’t expect, hurled the coins into the basket.

If I’d learned anything over the last few years with Charlotte, it was to let a scene like this play out without interruption. One wrong word, and your Holmes would change the subject, leave it behind you in the road.