In a Fix (Torus Intercession 2)

I squinted at him.

“What?”

“That was kind of deep, don’t you think?”

He flipped me off, which returned us to normal before he got in the TSA Pre-Check line, which Jared paid for since we all traveled so much. He waved once he was through security, and when he got home, he called. It was weird and amazing at the same time.

A month later, when my new birth certificate was delivered by FedEx, I called Owen. He had agreed to fly with the tea service to Boston, to the Museum of Fine Arts, and speak to Dr. Calliope Edmonds, who was the curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture. I had spoken with her on several occasions, shared the provenance of the set, shipped the documents to her beforehand so they could be authenticated, and so when Owen arrived, she and I had a video chat where she formally accepted the set and would place it on permanent exhibition at the museum. Normally, an acquisition had to be listed in the annual report before it was put on display, but this was a full Revere tea service, quite rare, and in exquisite—her words—condition. She had the perfect place for such an extraordinary treasure. It would be listed as being on permanent loan from the Esca family, Geneva and her son Croy, bequeathed to them by Caroline Humboldt, née Esca. With that, I was done ever giving the Graves clan another thought, and it felt finished; I felt lighter.

Dallas hung the picture of my grandmother and my aunt in the living room. “Your people have good faces,” he told me as he stared at the picture.

He was right. They did.

We were back at his mother’s house on Ashworth Circle, celebrating the wonderful news that Gina was pregnant. Callum looked a bit like a deer in the headlights, which, right before dinner, came close to a full-blown panic attack, resulting in me taking him by the arm and leading him outside to sit by the pool.

“Thanks, Croy,” he said when I had him lean over and put his head between his knees before he started to hyperventilate.

Dallas and I had been on more than a couple double dates with him and Gina at this point, and I found I liked him quite a bit. Not as much as his wife, who was snarky and sweet in equal measure, which catapulted her beyond him in my esteem, but I could say, without adding a caveat, that we were friends.

“You want a drink?” I asked him.

He nodded his head.

“I’ll go get you some water.”

As I was about to get up, Cate was suddenly there. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” she chanted, making a face parked somewhere between horror and excitement.

“Is that ice water?” I asked, pointing at her glass.

“Oh, yeah, Dallas sent this out for Callum.”

“Smart man,” I said, taking it from her and putting it on the table close to Callum before I rubbed his back. “Can you breathe yet?”

Another shake of his head.

I looked up at Cate, who had started to pace. “Tell me what’s going on.”

She stopped moving to face me. “Lawrence just called Evan out, because apparently Evan was in the kitchen with Dallas and started yelling at him.”

“Why?” Callum asked the ground.

“Yes, why?” I said to Cate.

“Well, apparently Evan found out the other day that one of his friends had slept with Dallas right after they broke up, and he’s been really upset about it since he found out.”

“Why?” Callum asked, irritably this time, lifting his head, the change of topic from his wife being with child to Evan being jealous helping to calm his splintering nerves.

“Apparently Evan’s been carrying a torch—that’s what Law just accused him of—and he’s sick of it. And then Evan said that he’s sick of running into people he knows Dallas has fucked—yeah, he used the word fucked in my mother’s kitchen.”

Callum turned to me. “Does that bother you?”

“Oh, you mean from that night?”

He nodded.

“What night?” Cate wanted to know.

“About what, two weeks ago?” Callum asked me, and I nodded. “Me and Gina, and Dal and Croy, were waiting to be seated for dinner, and this guy comes walking over from the bar to talk to Dallas, and it’s pretty clear that A, they’ve slept together, and B, he really wants to do it again and would Dallas please call him.”

She turned to me, mouth gaping and her eyebrows at risk of disappearing into her hairline.

“What?”

“Were you pissed?”

“Whyever would I be upset by that? It was before he even knew me.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Wait,” Callum said quickly, smiling slowly. “So when Dal gets up to go to the bathroom, another guy stops him on the way back, who was there having dinner with some other people, and in the middle of the restaurant, he’s holding on to Dallas’s arm, like he’s trying to keep him there to talk to him, and once Dal finally pries this guy off him, when he reaches our table, he says the guy’s just an acquaintance.”