The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(87)

“Cara Ehret thought I was an angel.”

“There have been other cases since then. It isn’t one and done, all crises averted. There will be other cases that hit you every bit as hard, and the reasons why may not be the same.” She pops the candies in her mouth, chewing and swallowing quickly. “Don’t feel bad for taking this time, Mercedes. You are better for it, and the Bureau is better for it.”

I nod, brain already spinning on her words.

“How is Eddison?”

“He’ll be okay. Weather ache, maybe, and he certainly won’t be doing stadiums anytime soon.”

Agent Dern shudders delicately. “Even at my best I didn’t understand those who do stairs on purpose. Especially at stadiums! Then again, I’m nearly seventy and I still have my original knees, so maybe I was right.”

I leave her office laughing, which is probably not the normal reaction for an agent who’s just been placed on administrative leave. I get a few baffled looks for it.

For the first time in weeks, I get behind the wheel of my own car and pull out of the garage. Home is waiting, even if I’m not entirely sure it’s home anymore, my cozy little cottage stained with the past month and change. I do stop and pick up a box of cupcakes for Jason, and we share them on his front porch as he weeds his flower beds and I sew the buttons back on his shirts and mend some rips, because if there’s a sharp edge, he’ll catch his shirt on it.

“So it’s all done?” he asks.

“All done.”

“I’m glad it worked out okay.”

I spend the rest of the afternoon puttering around the house, turning on my personal cell for the first time in almost a week and hooking it up to my laptop to move over photos I want to keep. After that, there’s a certain satisfaction in taking out the SIM card and beating the shit out of the phone with a baseball bat. I’ll get around to replacing it eventually, and this time, I’m not giving the number to Esperanza.

I’m aware, mostly, that I could have just gotten the number changed without killing the phone. It’s more fulfilling this way.

Late in the afternoon, I head out to Walmart and come back with a stack of large plastic tubs. The black-velvet bear goes back on my nightstand, safe and sound, but all the rest get layered into the tubs with some mothballs to protect the fabric. The laundry room has a storage closet that’s still in range of the AC, protected from the humidity and anything that can happen out in the garage, and when the door closes on the tower of tubs, it feels a little like cutting off a finger.

My bedroom walls look empty, naked even, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. I change the sheets and sprawl across the bed, warm with sunlight, and let my mind drift across everything that’s happened. I have to make a decision, but Agent Dern says I’ve got time. Don’t rush, because there’s time.

That evening, I head back up to Bethesda. According to the nurse at the station, they gave Eddison another full of dose of Dilaudid less than half an hour ago, so it’s not surprising that he’s out cold when I walk in. Jenny’s gone, but Priya is sprawled on the tiny couch with a stack of photos and an alarming amount of scrapbooking supplies.

“So, Eddison and Sterling, huh?” she asks.

“He tell you that?” I settle into the chair between her and the bed, on Eddison’s right side.

“Sort of? He asked if it would be weird to keep calling someone by their last name after they’ve kissed you.”

“And you said?”

“It isn’t any weirder than calling one of your sisters by her last name all the time.” She grins at me. “I’m glad you’re okay-ish.”

“Okay-ish,” I repeat, tasting the word. “Yes.”

Priya knows okay-ish. She spent five years living with it, and even now, with the healing she’s had these last three years, she still has days where okay-ish is the best it gets.

I pull out a book of logic puzzles so I’m not tempted to peek over her shoulder. She’ll let us see the pictures when she’s ready.

“Ravenna finally made contact,” she announces, frowning down thoughtfully at a photo. “She’s been staying with a friend in the Outer Banks. They have to go to a different island for Internet access, and she hasn’t bothered. She only turned her phone back on today.”

“How is she doing?”

“Okay-ish.” The grin returns, fleeting but sincere. “She’s going to join us in Maryland for the final pictures. After that, she’s going to renew her passport and get everything else in order so she can come with me when I go back to Paris. With an ocean between her and her mother, I think she might start doing better.”

“I’m a little worried what she may learn from you and your mother.”

“There’s a ballet studio down the street from the house. I do a lot of their formal pictures, they let me snap rehearsals and classes, and a few staged projects. I think I’m going to take her down there and introduce her.”

Because Patrice Kingsley grew up loving dance, and Ravenna danced through the Garden to keep herself going, and ever since getting out, she hasn’t known if it was Patrice or Ravenna dancing anymore, dancing for love or for sanity.

“It’s a good idea,” I murmur, and Priya nods, glues down a strip of paper, and reaches for a sheet of rhinestone stickers.