“Oh?” Tess said, and her usual calm was restored. “What does your intruder look like?”
Sara couldn’t stand the man’s I-told-you-so look, so she lied. “He’s short, skinny, half bald, hasn’t shaved in a week, and he has a voice like a toad with a bad attitude.”
“Then I take it he has his clothes on,” Tess said.
That confusing statement made Sara’s fear return. Tess had always been vague about exactly what her brother did for a living. “What do you mean, that he has his clothes on? Tess, I don’t think—”
The man took the phone from her. “Baby sister, whatever you said, you’re scaring her.” He paused. “Why didn’t you tell me someone else had moved in here while you were away?” He smiled, again showing that dimple. “I see. You’re so busy with your honeymoon duties that you forgot all about me. Yeah, yeah, I understand.” He glanced back at Sara. “So what do I do with her?”
Sara glared at him.
He laughed at whatever Tess said. “I’m more than willing, but, somehow, I don’t think she would like that. By the way, who is she?” As he looked at Sara, his eyes widened. “Sara Shaw? The one who makes that apple bread you send me? The one who repaired my leather jacket? The girl you said was the best friend you’d ever had in your life? That Sara Shaw?”
Sara was flattered by his words, but at the same time, she didn’t believe him. She got out of the chair, put on a blue silk robe she’d just repaired, and went to the kitchen. She filled the electric kettle with water and got the box of loose black tea out of the cabinet. Someone had given the tea to Tess for Christmas and now, months later, it hadn’t been opened. She could hear the man in the bedroom quietly talking on the phone.
What was his name? she wondered as she tried to remember. Something ordinary. William or James. No. It was Mike. Mostly, Tess called him “my brother.” As in: “My brother can run up mountains and lasso the moon whenever he wants to.” Or thereabouts. Sara and Joce used to tease her when she’d run to the telephone if she heard Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out for a Hero, which was the song she’d set for her brother.
One time when they had a girls’ night out, Tess’s phone rang and it was Ramsey, her fiancé, but she ignored it. A few minutes later when it was her brother, she took the call. She mostly murmured “yes,” then hung up. When Sara and Joce burst out laughing, Tess didn’t get the joke.
“What is it about your brother that makes you drop everything when he calls?” Joce asked.
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”
“You mean he sent you to Edilean?” Sara asked.
“No, I mean I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for my brother.”
Sara and Joce didn’t move so much as an eyelash. Tess never talked about her childhood. They held their breaths as they waited for her to tell more, and when she didn’t readily share, they kept up a determined stare.
Finally, Tess shrugged. “What can I say? He’s a good man, through and through, inside and out. He helps people.”
“Doing what?” Sara asked.
Tess seemed about to speak, but then she buried her face in a menu. “So who wants a pizza?”
Another time, they asked her why he never came to visit. She told them that Mike saved all his vacation time to go places and study, and that when she was in college, she went with him. Joce and Sara thought that “study” referred to a university, but that’s not what Tess meant. In her freshman year, they went to Japan so Mike could study kendo. Sophomore year it was China for kung fu, then the next year to Thailand for Muay Thai. For her senior graduation, they went to Brazil where they both did a course in jujitsu. “Of course Mike was a bit better than I was,” Tess said, her eyes laughing.
So her brother was a jock. That still didn’t explain what Tess’s mysterious brother did for a living. They tried to get information out of Rams, but he was as closemouthed as the woman he loved. “If she wants you to know about her brother, she’ll tell you.”
But no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t find out. All they knew was that he was a police detective in Fort Lauderdale and he “traveled a lot.”
So, now, Sara was in an apartment alone with Tess’s elusive brother.
“I think apologies are due,” Mike said from the doorway.
“If you think I’m going to—”
“No, me,” Mike said quickly. “I need to apologize to you. My only excuse is that I was driving for ten hours, I’m tired, and all I wanted to do was sleep. I didn’t expect anyone to be in Tess’s apartment. Here, let me do that.” He took the electric kettle from her, poured water into the pretty ceramic teapot—another Christmas gift—sloshed it around to warm the china, then poured it out. He put three heaping scoops of loose black tea in the pot and filled it with boiling water.
Sara watched as he opened cabinet doors until he found the cups and saucers. Since he didn’t know where things were, she guessed he’d never been in the apartment before. She knew no one in town had ever met him, but he could have come through the tunnel and secretly visited and—
“Milk?” he asked as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton. Her eyes widened when he poured the milk into a little pitcher that matched the other china, and set it all on the oak table Ramsey had recently bought. Mike put cookies on a plate. When he finished, the table looked ready to entertain a duchess.
He pulled out a chair for her, and when Sara was seated, he sat down across from her and held out the plate of cookies. “I’m sure they’re not as good as your apple bread.”
Sara knew he meant it as a compliment, but she wasn’t appeased. “What are you doing here? And why didn’t Tess warn me about you? And how did you know about that … Is it a tunnel?”
“Are you saying that you live here but don’t know about that tunnel?”