I wasn't adding that I had the definite sense that Lauren knew something was up, or that she promised to keep my brothers out of my hair this weekend.
"So let's go, lovely," Nick said, grabbing me around the waist and sweeping me off my feet as he moved toward the door. "You're coming home with me.Now."
Chapter Twenty-Five
Erin
To: Erin Walsh
From: Shannon Walsh
Date: January 25
Subject: Hello
Erin,
I trust that this message finds you well. Lauren shared your email address with me. I hope that you don't mind.
Will and I are getting married this weekend, and though we aren't announcing this to anyone, I wanted to tell you. It's not a formal event, just the courthouse and a weekend in Montauk.
I know you're very busy with your research and fieldwork, and I'd never want to interrupt that. I'm not asking you to come home. You were just here, so I certainly wouldn't expect you to return. I just needed you to know.
I hope you're okay, and I want you know I'm always here if you need anything.
Shannon
* * *
I staredat that message for days.Days.
If one of Iceland's elves had appeared in my Reykjavík apartment and personally invited me to go tobogganing under the Aurora Borealis, I'd have been less surprised than to find a message from Shannon in my inbox this week.
"What do I even say?" I asked Nick. My video chat app was open on one side of my screen, and the email on the other. I reread Shannon's note. Again.
He was in his kitchen, a small space dominated by exposed brick and stainless steel appliances, and it was late. I'd long since abandoned my practice of starting my day in the lab before dawn in favor of midnight talks with Nick. At first it seemed decadent, sleeping in and then arriving after the team of research fellows I worked with, but I'd learned to use my time more efficiently. Less falling down every random hypothesis hole that I encountered, more checklists and skipped lunches. It worked out well, as we managed to eat dinner together—astogetheras any two people separated by an ocean could get with the help of modern technology—most nights.
Peeling the lid from a glass container, he shrugged. "Start with 'congratulations,'" he suggested.
"Andthenwhat?"
Nick closed the microwave and punched in a few numbers before turning to face me. "You're capable of writing an email, Erin. You've written me hundreds. Maybe thousands."
"Yeah, that's easy," I said, raking my fingers through my hair. "This…this is more complicated than that. This isShannon, and for some indecipherable reason, she felt it necessary to tell me—"
"How do you not see this, Skip?" he asked, throwing his hands up. "She's reaching out. She's opening the door and all you have to do is step through and fucking end this."
I reread the email. Again. The words stopped meaning anything somewhere around the thirtieth read, and now they were landmines, each one blowing up with different memories. In my head, it sounded like a montage of Shannon the lawyer, Shannon in her bathrobe with the Navy SEAL brother of Lauren's, Shannon holding me tight when the nightmares were too much, Shannon pleading with me to see a counselor. It was moments, strung together with a fine thread of anger that didn't make sense but I couldn't release.
"Darlin', I'm not saying these things to be hard on you," he said, pointing at me through the screen with a spoon. "But that pouty little girl face, the one you're doing right now? Doesn't work on me. You're gonna respond to her, and you're doing it before the weekend."
I picked up the book I'd been reading earlier, one focused on the impact of flooding and the role of aqueducts in ancient Roman civilizations, and thumbed through the pages. My eyes moved over a page, but I didn't see any of the words. "Please don't imply that there's anything manipulative or sexually charged aboutbeinga little girl," I said, still staring at the page.
I heard metal clanging against glass, but I was engrossed in the page I hadn't read. I didn't look at the screen.
"Erin," Nick said, that one word a resolute request for my attention. "Erin, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, and youknowI didn't mean it."
I nodded, my head jerking and my eyes unfocused as I turned another page. Perhaps it was all this talk of Shannon that had my triggers turned up to ultra-sensitive. But that same old petty part of my mind was still cackling away, suggesting that Shannon had stilettos-and-spin-class'd away all the ugliness she'd endured at Angus's hand.
