“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” she quipped. “Amy may be all Goth-chick on the outside, but she’s super responsible, and besides, she hasn’t forgotten that I saved her ass a month ago.”
“We saved her ass a month ago.”
“Well, yeah. You helped.”
He laughed and meant it. It had been a while since that had happened. “Why only one twin with the dog-sitting? Is your other niece a cat person?”
“My sister and Jim took Christy with them for a two-week Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. She got the time off school but had to take her assignments along and promise to bring them back finished.”
“And Misty didn’t go?”
“Misty had the flu. Or at least she convinced my gullible sister that’s what it was. Frankly, I think it was more a case of not wanting to leave her latest boyfriend behind. The priorities of love-struck teens never fail to make me gag.” She did the finger-down-the-throat thing to make her point.
“I’ve missed the hell outta you,” he said, smiling at her gross gesture as if she were a supermodel posing in front of a wind machine. Then he added, “And your little dog, too.”
“She’s missed you, too.”
But he noticed that she didn’t say she had.
“Corner Deli?” she asked.
She’d stopped walking, and it took him a beat to realize she was suggesting that they should eat at the establishment whose wreath-and-bell-bedecked door they were currently blocking. He opened it. It jingled, and she preceded him in. They joined the line to the counter, ordered, and then she picked out a table to wait for their food. She headed for the quietest table in the crowded, noisy place. “Ahh, New York,” she said. “The only place where you can order a twenty-five-dollar sandwich that will arrive with a pound of meat and two square inches of bread.”
“And it’ll be worth every nickel.”
“Hell, yes, it will.” She was sparkling. Her eyes, her smile, told him she was as glad to see him again as he was to see her, whether she was willing to say it out loud or not. “So how are the nephews? I’ll bet this is a hard time for them.”
“It’s rough. Their first Christmas without their dad. It’s hard on all of us.”
She nodded slowly. “It’s my first holiday without my brother, too. I think that’s probably why Sandra wanted to get away. It’s too hard.”
“It’s rough. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if they knew the truth about Eric.” He looked at her as he said that. It was one of about a million things he’d been dying to talk to her about.
“No, Mason,” she whispered. “No one would be better off knowing their father, husband or son was a serial killer. No one. Trust me on this.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s been eating at me. Keeping that secret.”
“You did the right thing.”
God, he’d needed to hear her say that again. He didn’t know why, didn’t need to know why. It was a relief, that was all.
“They must have that new baby sister by now, though, right? Marie was out to here last time I—”
“Stillborn,” he said softly.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, Mason. I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
“You should’ve called.”
“What good would that have done?”
She blinked real tears from her eyes. “Poor Marie. First her husband and then her baby. I’d ask how she’s doing, but...” She just shook her head.
“Yeah, she’s having a hard time of it. Keeps saying she’s being punished.”
“For what, for heaven’s sake?”
He shook his head. “She’s grieving. We can’t expect her to make sense.”
“And the boys?”
“Josh is good. He’s eleven, you know? It’s Christmas. They bounce back at that age. They spend a lot of weekends at my place, including this one when I get back. I pick them up after school and take ’em to the gym to shoot hoops every Wednesday when they don’t have any other commitments.”
“Josh is good,” she said, homing in on what he’d left out.
She was good at that. Good at reading between the lines, good at sensing the things people didn’t say. He’d never seen anything like the way she could tell when someone was lying and read the emotions behind their words.
“But Jeremy, not so much?” she asked.
“He’s seventeen.” He said it as if that said it all, but then reminded himself that Rachel had nieces, not nephews, and it might not be quite the same. “He’s not bouncing back like Josh. He’s morose. Brooding. Quiet. Withdrawn. Didn’t even go out for basketball this year. Would’ve been his first year playing varsity, too.”
“Sounds like he’s depressed.”
“Marie thinks he’s been drinking. Said she smelled it on his breath when he came in late one night.”
“Shit. I’m so sorry, Mason.”
“It is what it is. They’ll come back around. It just takes time.”
Then he lifted his head and tried to do the same to his mood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. I should be focusing on the positive, right? That’s what your books would tell me to do.”
“It’s hard when there’s so little positive to find,” she said. Then she stabbed him with those insightful eyes of hers. “What about you? How are you doing, Mason?”
He had to think about his answer. “Work’s been busy as hell. We just had a local vet murdered, his office torched with him in it.”
“I read about that. You have any suspects?”
He shrugged. “He and his wife were both having affairs, heading for divorce. The drug cabinet was demolished, no way to tell if anything was missing. Who the hell knows?”
She nodded. “But that’s work. I didn’t ask how work is, I asked how you are.”
He lowered his head. “I don’t know, Rache. I feel like I’m in some kind of limbo. Waiting for something really big and really bad.” He met her eyes again. “Like it’s not finished yet.” He knew that she knew what he was talking about.
“It’s got to be finished,” she said, and she said it really softly. Like she was afraid to press their luck by saying it out loud.
A waitress brought their sandwiches, each accompanied by homemade chips and a six-inch pickle spear. They dug in, ate for a while. She started with the chips. He remembered a line from one of her books. Eat dessert first in case you’re going to choke to death on your broccoli. It made him smile to see her living by those words.
When he was half finished, he rinsed his mouth with coffee and said, “So...about this case. It’s a missing person. The name was familiar, and I realized it was one of Eric’s organ recipients.”
She went still, but only for an instant. Then she just shrugged and kept on eating. “Coincidence.”
“There’s no such thing as coincidence. You wrote that yourself.”
“Every self-help author spews that line. No one even knows who came up with it first. It’s universal. Doesn’t make it true.”
“I kind of think it does.” But he took another bite as he contemplated,