“Your mind is searching for clarity,” he tells me.
“I’m not paying you two hundred bucks an hour for you to tell me the same thing as the mortician.”
“No,” he says. “You’re paying me two hundred bucks an hour for me to help you. I can lead the horse to water, but I can’t make it drink the water.”
“Your analogies aren’t helping.”
“I can’t help you if you’re not willing to help yourself. How many units of alcohol have you consumed in the past twenty-four hours?”
“You seriously think I’m keeping count?”
“How many beers, then?”
It’s a brilliant question. But it’s one I can’t answer.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“This isn’t gonna make you feel better in the long run, Carter.”
“I don’t know about that. Beer is cheap and immediate.”
“You can bury the pain, but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna go away.”
“Isn’t time supposed to be the biggest healer?”
Theodore sits back in his chair. I see the defeat loud and clear on his face, but he refuses to give in. “You want me to agree with you. You want me to think that your mother was murdered. Why do you want this to be true? What difference does it make if she was murdered, or if she had a heart attack? She still died, Carter. It doesn’t matter how. She’s dead. Neither belief is going to bring her back.”
“Thanks for a waste of time,” I say, hopping out of the chair.
I still pay Theodore the two hundred bucks despite cutting our meeting short by forty minutes, but that’s only because I won’t be visiting again, not over my mother’s dead body, and most certainly not over mine.
When I get back to my apartment, the silence rings so loud that it starts to sting.
To dull the pain, I crack open the mini fridge and help myself to a can of beer.
I still sit at my desk by default, hoping that the numbers are going to start to mean something again, but two weeks have passed and the figures still look like meaningless projections.
I’d trade Milton’s Milkshakes for my mother’s life.
But since I can’t do that, the next best thing is revenge.
When I take my next sip of beer, it glides down my throat like silk, my senses suddenly heightened.
Because everything has finally become crystal clear.
If I can’t bring back my mother, I’m going to make the world pay.
“You look like death,” Vex says, joining me at the table.
“I know,” Skipper adds. “Anyone would think that she’s dead.”
“Don’t speak too fucking soon,” I snap.
“It was only supposed to be one night,” Vex reminds me.
“Yes,” I say absentmindedly. “It was.”
But I’m not thinking about the auction. I’m thinking about mine and Carmen’s first night together in Vegas. The first time around, she ruined sex for me—no other woman was gonna do it better than her.
