The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(83)
I had always been good at reading people, and Watson was a bit of an open book. I don’t know how to describe the expression that washed over him. Not then. There was something wary about him, and something devastated too. Something too like a boy left out in the cold.
“We aren’t good for each other,” he said. He took my hand. “There’s actual evidence for it, Holmes. We’re not. Not as we are.”
“Does that matter?” I asked, quietly.
Watson nodded. “It does. It does when it ends with you like this.”
“Me? Your sister were almost shot—”
“By you,” he said. “That isn’t even my point. Do you understand how messed up all this is, if the worst part isn’t you getting shot or pumped full of drugs? We’re like some kind of wildfire. We make terrible decisions. We make each other make terrible decisions. We’re not—we’re not good together, and I can’t keep doing this to you.”
All of this. All of this, and to hear him say it.
“I’m going back to London. It could be as soon as tomorrow,” I told him. I hadn’t meant to. It wouldn’t change anything.
He nodded. Once. Twice. Three times, very quickly. “I guess—good-bye then.”
A memory: the two of us on his father’s couch, Watson the one recovering, me running his scarf through my hands. It wouldn’t be London without you.
“Come see me there,” I said now, imagining that younger Jamie. “Come see me. I’ll be living with Leander.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you really want me to?”
“Is this about you doing penance? You don’t have to do penance,” I told him.
He sighed. “Neither do you.”
The machines hooked up to my arm continued their steady beeping. Watson traced one long IV line down to my arm.
“Have I told you that I’m sorry?”
“We need new words for sorry,” I said.
Fits and starts. Always as though we were warming up a car that had been left in the cold.
“I’d like that.” He was still staring at my arm. There were newer needle marks there, I supposed. At least they were from blood work. “I apologize. I am ashamed. Shamefaced. I feel guilty—”
“Stop,” I said, because he was too far away, and soon he would be farther. “Do you see my bag? There, on the chair. There’s a folder in there for you.”
It was an account of the last few years. I had been working on it at night, in my hospital bed, when I couldn’t sleep. It was ugly, and at times deeply pathetic, and full of the occasional Watson-style simile, and truth be told, I had no idea how to spell the word “necessary,” and he would think far less of me after he had read it. Still I could feel the pages staring at me at night, almost as though the act of writing it down had given it flesh.
He knew it for what it was in moments, the pages flashing in his hands as he flipped through them. “Are you sure?” he asked, finally.
“It’s our story,” I said to him.
“No,” he said, and he was smiling. “No, it’s not. It’s yours.”
Epilogue
JANUARY
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Leander
I thought you should know that I’ve been discharged from the rehabilitation center, and that I’ve been back in London a week now. Uncle Leander does not currently have an occupation, save for parenting me. The results have been varied. And awful. When he is not making me pancakes in the shape of mice or rabbits, he is dragging me to pubs to eavesdrop on perfectly innocent people. For fun, he says. Never mind the fact that I am still in three separate plaster casts and about as inconspicuous as an elephant. Neither is Leander, who spends these expeditions noisily eating crisps and grinning at me.
I told him he had to find a new hobby. This morning I awoke to a poster of Harry Styles he had affixed to my ceiling. In said poster, he is wearing very tight leather trousers, and glitter. So much glitter.
He badly needs a case. Leander, that is.
Please go murder someone or rob a nearby bank. Please. I beg you.
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Perhaps
Is it in poor taste for me to be joking about murder?
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: Perhaps
I assume that’s why you haven’t yet responded. Though it’s unlike you to be offended. Or rather, it’s like you to be offended while also enjoying feeling offended.
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: Perhaps
Watson. I can’t make any deductions from across the pond. Not good ones, anyway. If you’re upset with me you’re going to have to spell it out. Is this part of your needing “distance”? I assumed two thousand miles would do the trick.
FROM: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] > TO: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: re: Perhaps
C,