Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(72)

“He’l be asking you to serve as best man,” Erainya said. “Just so you’re warned.”

The sun suddenly felt a lot warmer. “Me?”

“I’d ask you to be a bridesmaid, honey, but the dress would look terrible on you.” Then she shouted, “Come on, Laura! Good!”

The bal made another futile loop around the field. It sailed toward Jem. It bounced off Maria.

Erainya turned to me. “Honey, look, J.P.’s only got his daughter. No male friends he’s real y close to. He knows how Jem and I feel about you. He wants you there. Think about it.”

I felt a weight on my chest, the unresolved need to say something I couldn’t quite say.

Jem crouched at the goalie net, his hands down, knees bent—the exact position I’d told him to keep. He wore the same crazy grin he always got whenever he was on the soccer field. Saint Mark’s had only scored one goal off him so far. Then again, we’d scored zip.

“Guess you’re closing the agency?” I asked Erainya.

She shrugged. “I can’t run it anymore.”

“Oh. Right.”

She looked completely unconcerned. “You’l get along.”

I had expected this. I should not feel bitter. Maia Lee would be delighted.

“Besides,” Erainya said, “I’l be around if you need advice. I ain’t going to turn it over to you just to let you run it into the ground.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t look at me like that, you big idiot. I’m giving you the Erainya Manos Agency. My clients. My files. My fabulous resources. My unpaid bil s. With both me and Sam retiring, we’ve got to have one decent PI in town. And if you’re smart, you’l keep the name. It’s lucky.”

Paul was taking the bal in the right direction. Somehow, he managed to kick it to Jack.

“Wel ?” Erainya asked me. “You’re not gonna disappoint me, are you?”

Wil Stirman was gone. Erainya was happy.

I could say nothing.

But the weight was there stil , smooth and hard as a river rock.

“Laura!” I yel ed. “To the middle! Help him out!”

Only because it was her love interest Jack, Laura fol owed directions.

Jack passed. Laura kicked. The bal sailed into the net.

Our team erupted into cheers, dog barks, taunts about Saint Mark’s being poop-butts.

The ref blew the whistle.

The kids swarmed us—sixteen hot sweaty little bodies, dying for water and a chance to play forward.

The last quarter: 1–1. Jem wanted to keep the vest.

I hated the idea. Saint Mark’s only needed one goal. I didn’t want Jem responsible for losing the game.

Stil , nobody else wanted the job. We ended with seven forwards and Jem as keeper.

“You doing okay, champ?” I asked him.

“Yeah.” He looked up a moment longer, squinting into the sun, like he understood he needed to prove to me that he real y was okay. Something silver glinted around his neck—a Saint Anthony medal ion I’d never seen before. He said, “I’m good. Watch.”

They went out on the field again.

Erainya stood next to me, cupping the sun out of her eyes. I thought about how many times she’d whacked me with that hand, or cut the air at some stupid comment I’d made.

“Stirman talked to Jem,” I said, “the night at the museum.”

She kept her eyes on the field. “Yeah?”

“They had maybe a minute alone together, out on the roof.”

“Miracle Jem wasn’t hurt.”

“No miracle. Stirman never wanted to hurt him. I wouldn’t have brought Jem along otherwise. Stirman wanted to take him.”

The ref’s whistle blew. Saint Mark’s kicked off. The bal was lost in a forest of little cleats and shin guards.

Erainya looked at me the way she normal y looked at Sam Barrera—as if I was about to snatch away her last bread-and-butter contract.

“So,” she said, her tone careful y neutral. “What do you figure he told Jem, in that one minute?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he told Jem the truth.”

Saint Mark’s drove the bal toward our goal. Their coach yel ed for their best kicker to stand ready at the penalty line.

Erainya was silent, watching me.

“Jem’s birth date was the same day Stirman was arrested,” I said. “Other than that, the adoption papers were a pretty good forgery. You never went to Greece that year, did you?”

She hesitated a couple of heartbeats. Then the shield she’d been trying to put up melted. “Fred didn’t want me to keep the baby.”

“That’s what your last argument was about—why you shot him,” I guessed. “He wasn’t just threatening you.

He was threatening the baby, too.”

She flexed her hand, as if remembering the trigger of the gun. “That night in Stirman’s apartment, the baby had stopped breathing. I guess the shock of the gunfire . . . I don’t know. I did CPR. I brought him back to life. Fred . . . wel , I wasn’t going to lose the child after al that. After I shot Fred, I sent Jem to stay with a friend of mine, lady named Helen Malski, until the trial was over.”

“I found a letter she wrote you. Jem was the package she was keeping safe.”