Mean Streak
“All right.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t bullshit me! You don’t sound right. Are you sick?”
“Healthy as a horse.”
“Then what’s going on?”
Rebecca had always been able to detect an evasion. A lie she could spot from a mile off. He should quit while he was ahead. “Look, I’d better go. Thanks for the heads-up about Connell.”
“I had to warn you. He’s still on your trail.”
“If he was hot on it, he wouldn’t be pestering you. One thing, though. You’re sure it was your friend who put him on to you? He might have been lying about that.”
“He wasn’t. I checked. After he left, I called Eleanor.”
Rebecca was scrupulous about covering her tracks, and thereby his tracks. It took him aback that she had reconnected with her friend in New York.
“She verified that Connell had come to see her and only after she had called him.” Sounding defensive, she added, “I enjoyed talking to her. She’s married now. Pregnant with her first child. It was good to hear her sounding so happy.”
He bowed his head low, tucking his chin into the collar of his coat, pained that his sister felt it necessary to make an excuse for enjoying a chat with an old friend. Her loyalty to him had cost her dearly. He probably knew of only a fraction of the sacrifices she had made, and was still making, in order to protect him.
“I’m glad you called,” he said thickly. “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”
“Don’t you dare hang up!”
“I’ve talked too long already.”
“You asked about Sarah.”
His heart hitched. “She okay? Jesus, Connell didn’t—”
“No. I threatened him with emasculation if he went near her.”
“And then I’d have to kill him.”
“Unnecessary for the time being. In answer to your question, Sarah is doing great.”
“Still playing the cello?”
“There’s a recital in a few weeks. I wish you could be here for it.”
“I wish I could be too.” A silence followed, and it stretched out until it took on more significance than merely a lapse in conversation. “What aren’t you telling me, Becs?”
When she was twelve and he was fourteen, she’d smacked him every time he’d taunted her with the pet name. Over time, however, she’d come to like it, even though his using it usually signaled a shift in the tenor of their conversation. It was the verbal equivalent of getting to the heart of the matter, of the kid gloves coming off.
“Sarah and I like it here,” she said. “She loves her school. She has tons of friends. The shop is doing well. Outperforming my projections. We’ve made a home here. If I were to uproot us again—”
“I didn’t ask you to uproot the first time.”
“No, it was my decision alone to leave New York. But as long as Jack Connell had me on his radar, he was going to be a pest, and I hated having my life monitored.