Down to the Liar(8)

She’s asking it with a genuine tone rather than a challenging one. Her expression is pleading for understanding. And I do understand. I can tell you from personal experience that fame is not all it’s cracked up to be.

“I will try.” I reach for her hand and squeeze it. She smiles for the first time.

—

At half past boring o’clock, I lean back in my desk chair in the Ballou office, rubbing my eyes and fighting a yawn. This paper on the importance of textiles in the English industrial revolution is trying to choke the life out of me. The evening started so promising with sending out invoices and logging received checks from past clients. But then I remembered this awful paper is due next week. Just wrap me up in tweed and smother me already.

I decide to take a walk, since I don’t have to check back into Casa de Ramirez for another hour. I don’t have a particular destination in mind, so it shouldn’t surprise me when the “L” and my feet transport me to my old stomping grounds. I wave at Fred, my former homeless neighbor, as I pass the apartment building I lived in with my dad and continue on, retracing worn routes to favorite haunts.

Chicago’s wet nights smell like a mixture of oil, rain, and newsprint. I get a strange feeling when I smell it. I imagine it’s similar to the feeling kids get when they smell their mom’s perfume.

I take a left into the alley where I confronted Mike for following me. I stop for coffee at the diner I took him to afterward to hear his story. I pass my dad’s favorite Italian restaurant and almost go in to say hi to Mr. Vacini, the proprietor. In the end, I decide against it. He’d have too many questions I don’t have the answers for right now.

I close the loop of memory lane back at the front door of our moldering apartment building. Across the street, the Chevelle cools its tires in the exact same spot it sat in six months ago when I’d gotten my first glimpse of Dani. She’s there as well, leaning against the car and watching me.

She comes over to me, her expression unreadable. “It is raining,” she says.

“Is it?”

She leads me back to the Chevelle, and I follow without argument. When we get in, she doesn’t start the ignition.

“Would you like to talk about it?” she says.

I must be bad off if Dani is offering to talk. “It looks worse than it is,” I say, feeling the familiar anger stirring again.

She fiddles with the steering wheel. She’d probably rather be facing Petrov again than having this conversation.

“I know how it is to lose everything,” she says.

“I didn’t lose everything,” I say, fidgeting with my sweater cuffs. It’s a technicality I’m trying to hide behind, but it doesn’t fool her any more than it does me. I can tell by her expression when she turns to really look at me.

“You con yourself into believing you are fine, but it is okay if you are not.”

I frown at her. “You’d never let yourself admit weakness, but you’re encouraging me to?”

“It is not a weakness to ask for help.”

The anger wants me to snap at her—to throw the double standard in her face, to tell her to mind her own damn business. But then I think of the tattoos hidden beneath her coat and wonder which ones represent which losses she had no help processing. She had no one. I at least have her. That’s what she’s saying, and I can’t pretend I don’t hear it.

The anger recedes. She is the only person who’s managed that particular miracle. And as much as I crave the anger, I’m relieved that I can let it go—at least when I’m with her.

“You’re right. I’m not fine,” I say, swallowing against the boulder in my throat that’s making my eyes water. I drop my gaze to my lap. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I have a job to do.”

She nods. “What can I do?”

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Letting people help me comes with a cost. It’s why I’m not okay in the first place. Tyler’s death is on me. Sam’s exile is my fault as well. Both of them just wanted to help. But before I recover my voice enough to point that out, Murphy calls.

I clear my throat and press Answer. “Did you find anything?” I ask without preamble.

“No. Nobody we hacked has logged in to those Facebook accounts.”

Damn. I was hoping we could have this wrapped up in a day or two.

“But I did find something interesting. I was looking back through the date-time stamps of the hate posts to see if I could pick up a pattern.”