The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(29)

“Where’s Marlene going to be?”

“My sister picked her up yesterday, and they’re spending the weekend at the beach with the kids for the Fourth.”

That’s actually a little hard to imagine. Marlene is so active and healthy, but she always wears slacks and sweater sets with a single strand of pearls and her hair perfectly done. It just doesn’t seem to fit with the beach.

“Now, all three of you, go home.”

“We still haven’t figured out lunch,” Sterling notes as Vic walks away.

His voice floats back over his shoulder. “That’s because you’re all going home separately.”

It’s a weirdly normal afternoon. I go home and change out of my suit, clean the fridge of anything that’s spoiled in the week and a half since I was last home to do it, hit the grocery store, pick up a box of cute cupcakes for Jason as thanks for the yard work because he loves the damn things but can’t bring himself to order them on his own, and still have more day ahead of me than I’m used to. So I do laundry, and dust, and clean the bathroom, and when I put the second load of laundry in, I seriously consider following Sterling’s example of sorting through my closet to pull things that don’t fit or that I don’t wear anymore.

I end up on the couch with a beer and a book of logic puzzles instead. I mostly enjoy shopping for clothes, but I loathe purposefully looking for things that don’t fit.

It’s evening, though still light outside, when my stomach reminds me that I never bothered to eat lunch. I head to the kitchen to poke around my groceries. I got eight million kinds of fresh vegetables because even I know our eating habits are atrocious (one of the many reasons Marlene and Jenny are so eager to feed us, I think), and cooking them up with teriyaki and chicken sounds downright delightful. Squash, zucchini, mushrooms, onion, broccoli, three colors of pepper, throw it all together with a little bit of oil, sesame, salt, and pepper on the small hibachi grill Eddison teased me for installing in the counter.

He teases still, but he will also eat anything and everything we make on it, so I think I win.

The chicken is more or less cubed and soaking in a bowl of marinade, and I’m just about through chopping the veggies, when there’s a knock on the door. Before I fully register the sound, the knife spins in my hand to a position better suited for fights than food. It’s an uncomfortable reflex to have in my own home. One by one, I force my fingers to open so I can put the knife down on the board. “One second,” I call, reaching for the sink.

It’s full daylight still; no one is going to drop off anything nefarious in broad daylight.

Drying my hands on the sides of my jeans, I head to the door and peer through the peephole, which is mostly obscured by vibrant red curls. “Siobhan?” I quickly unlock the door and open it. “You have keys.”

She gives me a hesitant smile. “You throw the chain when you’re home. And I wasn’t sure . . .”

“Come in.”

She looks uncertain in my home, in a way she hasn’t done in a while. Not since the rocky bit last year, after I didn’t want to move in together. “You’re in the middle of something.”

“Just making dinner. Have you eaten? I was planning on leftovers for the weekend, so I’m making a ton.” I head back to the kitchen and the cutting board, letting her decide how comfortable she wants to get. She looks around like maybe it’s changed since she was last inside (it hasn’t) or maybe like she’s looking for some visible sign that I’ve changed (I haven’t).

The mothers told me a while ago that I needed to stop pretending. I’m starting to regret that I didn’t listen to them sooner.

“The peppers are big, so you’ll be able to pick them out,” I tell her, ignoring the fact that she didn’t actually answer me.

“Thanks.” She puts her purse on the spindly table by the door and dithers a minute or two before perching on a padded stool on the other side of the counter. “No new children at your door?”

“Pretty sure Heather would have been wiggling with excitement at your desk if there had been.”

“Probably, but you would have told me, right?”

“No. I told you first contact would be yours.” I check the temperature of the grill and throw everything on, savoring the hiss and billow of rising steam.

“And you wouldn’t break that to tell me that another child had been delivered to you.”

“Well, the deliveries don’t require signature confirmation, you see.”

She sighs and folds her arms on the counter, a safe distance from the grill and anything that might spit out. “Are there any leads?”

“No.”

“So they could just keep showing up.”

“Yes.”

“Mercedes.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” I shrug, poking at the veggies with the metal spatula. “There aren’t any leads, they could keep showing up, what else do you want me to say?”

“Can’t they, I don’t know, stake out your house or something?”

“It has to cross a threshold before the department can justify the expense.”

“Since when has Vic been unwilling—”

“It’s not an FBI case,” I remind her.

“The police, then.”