Rend (Riven 2)

Then he cleared his throat and added, “Right?”

And I could hear the anxiety there, the fear that he’d always carried around: that he would have to choose between his career and having a marriage.

“Yeah, of course,” I reassured him. “We’ll figure it out. And I can’t wait to see you in two weeks.”

Couldn’t wait to feel Rhys’s arms around me. To relax into the feeling of just being that I had when I was with him. To let him make the world sparkle for me the way only he could. The way only he ever had.

“I love you so much, Matty.” I could picture the slight wrinkle he’d have in his brow—the one that made him look so sincere and stern sometimes.

“I love you too. It’s . . . I’m . . . I miss you a lot,” I choked out. “But I’ll see you in two weeks. It’ll be okay. God, sorry. I think I’m drunk. Sorry.”

“Okay,” he chuckled. “Go eat something, babe.”

I mmhmmed, and he added, “Not pie.”

I smiled and pulled the pie toward me as we said goodbye, the sound of I love you lingering like the flavor of the summer peaches.

Chapter 5

Every day at work, I watched the ghosts of pain, injustice, and shit luck follow my clients in and out of my office. The ways the system had failed them, disadvantaged them, betrayed them. It was easier to be angry, disgusted, righteous, than it was to feel the full weight of grief.

I’d had days when I felt it. Days in St. Jerome’s, or a few in the families I’d been placed with before that. It had crept in like fog, the sense of violent injustice—that there were people who got to be loved, who got to be wanted, kept, cherished. And that I hadn’t been. But it was a poisonous fog that settled into your bones, if you let it, pocking them until the strongest stuff inside you began to crumble at the lightest blow.

So I’d pushed the grief away, painted over it with distraction and reckless daring. I’d closed the door on it and locked it deep inside.

When I’d begun working at Mariposa, though, it had come tapping at the windows, forcing me to face over and over the ravages of what I’d left behind. But every time I was able to help—every time I could give someone a chance that wouldn’t have been available to them otherwise—it felt like balm on a wound that never quite healed.

Noé Caldera dropped a mustard-dabbed résumé on my desk and slumped dejectedly on the seat.

“Hot dog?” I asked, picking it up by the corner.

“May as well have wiped my ass with it,” he said.

I scanned the scant words on the page and snuck a glance at Noé. His mouth was slack, eyes empty. Today he needed a soft touch, not banter.

“We need to go for a skills-based approach. Here.” I pointed to Chester’s Photo, Feb 2015–August 2016. Tell me what you did during a shift.”

Noé listed his duties, and I scrawled them in the margin.

“See, that’s great. Those are specialized skills that prepare you to work in another photo shop, if you want.” I thought I saw a glimmer in Noé’s eye, but he shrugged. “Why’d you leave the job?”

“Got fired.”

“Why?”

“My fault,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

He sighed. “My buddy came to pick me up one day as Chester was leaving with the bank drop. He, uh, wanted to roll Chester for the cash.” Noé squirmed in his seat. “Chester was a cool dude, you know. A nice guy and he gave me a job, never gave me any shit. And he was old, man. He coulda got hurt. But my buddy’s not real good with no, so I just told him, nah, there’s never that much cash, but you come in the store when I’m working, you could take a camera and get a lot for it.” Noé looked down at his hands. “He came in but I didn’t know Chester had a new security cam. He could see me look the other way.”

I nodded. It was a familiar story.

“Guess I shouldn’t put ole Chester as a reference, huh?” he tried to joke.

I glanced at the next entry in his résumé. “If you get asked why you left that job, just say you loved the work, but unfortunately you needed something that paid better.”

“The restaurant didn’t pay better.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah, I know, Noé. I hate to break it to you, but the world of job seeking isn’t any more honest than the rest of the world.”

Noé shook his head in mock rebuke. “Mr. Argento, I’m really shocked. Shocked and disappointed.” Then he dropped the pretense, and a look of genuine disappointment crossed his face. “Sucks we gotta lie to get the next in a string of shitty jobs, huh? It’s all I do. Lie to maybe get what I need, or tell the truth and get zero.”