The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(76)

“As it happens, yes. So when Goose passed out, you tried to heal him, but I guess you couldn’t.”

“He’s all right though? When you said someone cut the—”

“He’s fine. I don’t know what the fuck happened up there, but none of us seems to be able to do what we can do anymore.”

“None of us?”

“None,” he says, shaking his head. But he stops midshake. “Well. One assumes.”

“One should never assume,” I say, mostly to myself. “Anyway, I’m sure it’s likely temporary.”

“Sure, why not,” Jamie says, head down, hands in his pockets. I notice he’s been avoiding the main streets. “Anyway, I realised I couldn’t do what I usually do, and the cops stopped us. Sophie started talking to them while we were still on the bridge. Offered to explain everything. She doesn’t seem to do well under pressure.”

“Christ.”

“So that’s where she, Leo, and Daniel are. If they haven’t destroyed each other yet.”

“And I insisted we get to the hospital,” I say. “To help Stella.”

“Actually, you had the presence of mind to say to the cops that you needed to go because of Goose. Being English and all, him not having family here, blah blah. It worked, they brought him to Mount Sinai too. I got to tag along because I said I was sick too. Felt pretty shitty, TBH.”

“He’s not still at the hospital, is he?”

Jamie shakes his head. “No, checked himself out.”

“Where’s he, then?”

“On his way to a hotel, I believe.”

“And Mara?” She’d been there until Stella dove. After that . . .

Jamie pauses before saying, “Not . . . entirely sure.”

“How’s that?”

“Because she didn’t say.”

“But you saw her leave?” I have no memory of it.

Jamie appears to though. “Yes, but I didn’t ask where she was headed. We have a sort of a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy with each other.” He looks up for a second. “I recommend it.”

Instead of his face I see Goose, unconscious, a drop of blood running from his nose to his cheek to the pavement.

I think of Stella’s last words:

Your move.

I withdraw my mobile. No texts from Mara, no calls from her. About a thousand others I still haven’t returned, though. “What’s the play, here, then?” I ask Jamie, feeling adrift.

“Well, you probably have an army waiting for you at the apartment. I’m going to my aunt’s place.”

“You don’t live there.”

“It’s probably better if I do right now. Speaking of,” he says, looking up at the clock tower.

“Right,” I say slowly. “Catch up later?”

“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Definitely.”

I don’t need my ability to know that he’s lying.





Part III


“And ever,” says Malory, “Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.”

—T. H. White, The Once and Future King





46


TO LIVE DELIBERATELY

I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M expecting to find when I walk into the building, but it isn’t nothing. Which is exactly what I find. Nothing.

No doorman. No detectives. No one.

My stomach drops as the lift rises, and as the doors open, I hesitate. I force myself forward, key the lock.

I feel her in the space even though I can’t see her. My feet carry me toward the room that holds her.

She’s standing in the study, not sitting amongst the trunks and the boxes. Standing at the window.

“I missed you,” she says without turning around.

I mean to say it back, but the words that come out are different. “You vanished, on the bridge.”

“I wanted to get here first.”

“Why?”

She turns around. Her eyes are glassy; she’s been crying. “Because.”

“Because? What did you do?”

She looks startled by the question. “What?”

I’m thinking the words Don’t ask, don’t tell, even as I say, “What. Did. You. Do.”

She swallows. “When?”

“When?”

Her expression hardens. “Yes, when? What did I do today? Five months ago? Before we met?”

“Start with today,” I say, growing more aggravated by the second. I’m the one in the dark, here. She has the advantage, and she knows it.

“Why don’t you just ask me, Noah.” She steps forward. “Ask me.”

“What did you say to Stella, on the bridge?”

“What do you think I said?”

“You told her to let go. That she was giving up,” I say, searching Mara’s face for anything to hold on to, any hint that I’m wrong.

But she says, “Yes.”

Part of me expected her to deny it, and splits off from the half that always knew. I let that one take over. “She’s in a hospital. Her neck is broken and she’s on life support.”

“I know,” Mara says, calm as anything.