He grips my hand in fingers of steel and barely winces as he finds his feet. “Groovy.”
It makes me snort.
“You’re not a bad sort, Jones,” he says.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Never thought you were.” He gives a sad roll of his shoulders. “I go with the flow. But I knew your dad. He was a demon, that one.”
“Knew him, how?”
He seems uncomfortable. “Well... we used to drink and gamble together, in the old days.”
His pre- or after-murder days? I think, but don’t say a word. Awesome, one of Dad’s buddies.
“What I’m saying is,” he goes on, “you need to prove it to them, boy.”
“Prove what?”
“That you’re the good sort. Not your dad’s clone.”
This time my laugh is short and empty, catching in my throat. “I don’t need to prove anything to these assholes. Besides, what if I am Dad’s clone?”
“You’re not. Believe it. Show them who you really are, like you did just now. Minds can be changed, you know, when repeatedly faced with the truth.”
“You could keep bashing their heads into the truth like it’s a wall every day and it still wouldn’t make a lick of a difference.”
He chuckles and turns to go. “I’m serious, boy.”
“Yeah. So am I.”
Show them who I am. As if it’s that fucking simple... Then again, once hope takes hold, it’s hard to shake it off, dammit.
***
Hope or not, I find it strange that nobody bothers me on my way home. The absence of my own personal real-life demons i
s bewildering. I walk down Main street, fists cocked, ready for a fight, but I see not one of them.
Yeah, definitely strange. Vowing to find out what is going on, I head on home—to the house, dammit, the house, not home—because I’m on a mission.
I’ve started cleaning up the place, scrubbing floors, stripping beds, wiping down counters, taking out old trash. I wanna prove myself to her. Prove that I’ve changed, I’ve understood, I can be good for a girl like her. Good enough.
And pigs can fly. But hell, I’ll do my best.
Anyway, that’s not the mission. Well, not the one on my mind right now.
The mission is to turn that shed inside out, see what else I find about my mysterious absent half-brother and his dead mother. The thought strikes me to call John Elba, ask him what the police have found about this—he did tell me to call him if needed, right? Tell him about the earrings and the papers.
I should. But first I want to check what there is.
Thoughtlessly I reach deep inside my pocket for the swan pendant, and can’t find it. I stop and dig into all my pockets.
It’s not there.
Opening up my stride, I hurry to the house. I must’ve left it in my other pair of jeans, or else it fell. I can’t lose it. I can’t fucking lose this pendant, it’s all I have left.
Somewhere in my mind, a little rational voice is trying to point out to me that the pendant shouldn’t be important. it’s just a piece of metal, and it’s not all I have from my mother. I have photos, I have memories, I have letters and the echo of her laughter.