Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

Yeah, right. That’s crazier than crazy. Cuckoo.

My sister has the door already open, waiting for me when I reach the third landing, out of breath and brooding.

Me. Not her. She only looks… ready to go out?

“Come on, let’s grab a coffee,” she says and grabs my hand, leading me to the elevator.

“You could have said we were going out. I came up all these stairs.”

“There’s an elevator.” She waves her hand up and down the steel doors to demonstrate. “Why did you take the stairs?”

Yeah. Long story, though I’m not sure I can share it yet, not without asking Merc first if it’s okay, and not before hearing from the police.

Whatever the outcome.

Besides, my sister seems to be lost in her own thoughts.

“So what’s up?” I ask as she steers me across the street and down the sidewalk to a small coffee shop with Christmas lights hung inside the windows and small round tables and uncomfortable metal chairs.

She still won’t tell me what this is about as she goes to order us some strong sweet coffee and muffins, while I fret about why Merc isn’t answering his phone, and then scold myself for it. He may still be asleep, or in the bathroom. Maybe his battery died.

Why did he lie?

My sister returns with the food and drinks and I bite into my blueberry muffin and sip at my coffee even though I’m not hungry or thirsty. I can’t taste anything. It’s like eating air and pretending it’s food.

After a few minutes of this, I have to stop and ask again. “Soph. What happened?”

Because sorry, sis, I want to hurry back home to my man who’s in the middle of something—in the middle of excavating his dreams and finding more blood, so much blood it’s spilling to the floor, and he may be onto something and not telling us, and why isn’t he answering his phone?

Jesus.

“It’s Mom.” Sophie’s mouth does a sort of weird twisty thing, like a smile that doesn’t form completely before it crumbles.

“What did she do? Soph, what the hell did she say to you?”

“Nothing. I mean…”

“You mean what?”

“She… sent me money.”

I stare at her. “She did? Is this an alternate universe? An episode from Fringe?”

My sister laughs, relaxing. “Right?”

I mean, I asked her for that. Tried to shame her into being a mother. Our mother. I never in a thousand years thought it might work.

“Did she send a lot?”

My sister does a shrug-shake thing. Even her body is unsure of how she feels about it all. “Let me put it like this: It’ll cover a big part of Griff’s expenses. It’s a huge relief, I won’t deny it.”

“Good.” I nod. “Good.”

“You did this, didn’t you?” she says, hushed. “You convinced her to do this. She’d never have helped me.”

“No, she did this. I told her how wonderful you are, and how wrong she was, and she realized it was true. That’s what happened.”

She takes my hand across the table, like she often does, and squeezes. “Thank you, sis. You’ve been my only real family for as long as I can remember.”