* * *
“I’m sorry to hear how it turned out,” Ciro Castellani sighed, after I’d given him my succinct report and an apology. “But I can’t say I’m surprised, Jacopo. Were you?”
Surprised that I’d failed? Or surprised that the woman had turned up dead? “Seemed like she was mixed up in something bigger than she knew.”
He gave me that white, sharky smile. “This is why I wantedyoufor the job, Jacopo. You have a nose for this sort of thing, don’t you? Very well. Keep digging.”
“Sir?”
“I want to knowmoreabout that girl. I’m sure her father will want to know, too. I’ll give you a few more days. Report back again on Monday.”
Monday? It seemed generous, since today was only Thursday. Well, I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially not one with so many damn teeth. “Sure thing, Boss,” I said, and he gave me a nod of dismissal.
I got out fast so Julian wouldn’t have another chance to corner me, and drove away marveling at howwellthat meeting had gone. I’d expected another tirade about my shitty judgment, another six months added onto my sentence with Legs Liggari, but I’d gotten a grace period and even a few words of encouragement.
Maybe a promotion—a re-promotion?—wason the table. It was what I’d been working toward, after all.
A week ago I would’ve been ecstatic. So why didn’t I feel happier about the prospect?
CHAPTER33
MILLER
I must have gotten usedto Jack’s shitty, springless bed, or maybe I just missed cuddling him, because I couldn’t sleep in my own bed that night. I’d spent the afternoon in my art room switching between pot and alcohol as I splashed paint around on a few canvasses, trying half-heartedly to honor my sister with a portrait, but it just wouldn’t work. The red was too red, too unlike the sherbet color of her hair, and there was too much of it.
Too much red spilling all over the canvas, dripping off the sides…
I left it and stayed up late sketching study after study of JJ’s face instead: of his hands, the curve of his neck, the shadow of his hat over those startling eyes.
Staying up so late didn’t help my morning-after much. When dawn broke, I vomited up something sour and checked my phone messages out of sheer habit, just in case I’d sent anything stupid to anyone last night.
I got a flood of forwarded texts as soon as I turned on the burner phone, but there was only one notification I was interested in—a voice message from Jack, coming in late last night.
“Glad you’re keeping your phone off, Trouble,” the message began, his voice fading in and out. It sounded like he was moving around, and then I heard a familiar noise—his microwave. Fondness washed over me as I pictured the ramen noodles, and I hoped he hadn’t found another packet under the couch. “Picked up your car earlier, and I saw Nate. He wants you to call him. But you do that when you want to. Hope things went okay with your dad. Call me if you need me.”
I need you, I thought.God, do I need you. I almost called him then and there and begged him to come to the funeral. But my father had been adamant—no one there except the two of us.
At ten sharp I was downstairs, outside, waiting. My father opened his arms when he came out and pulled me into a stiff embrace. But he was only doing it for the benefit of the staff. For the benefit of Mrs. Kaczmarek, whose lips were pursed skeptically even as she, too, patted me on the back and gave her condolences again.
How the hell was I going to get through this morning?
* * *
Weirdly enough, it was Annie herself who helped me through.
When we’d been kids, the day after our mother blew up her marriage, then flew off to Paris with excitement in her eyes and irritation at my tears, we had to go right back to work.
We didn’t have a mother anymore, but we still had to work. Except I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Every scene I was on the brink of tears, instead of being the funny kid playing against Annie’s smarter-than-thou Queen Bee.
The adults on set, sympathetic for the first few days, started to get angry. I was wasting people’s time and money, and my father—one of the executive producers—visited the set personally to tell me so, three days after my mother had walked out of my life.
Annie came in after he left. “Just imagine yourself somewhere else entirely. Remember when we lived in the sea?”
For years, during the worst of our parents’ fights, we had lived in a world of our own making, an underwater paradise where the shouting was muffled by the sheer mass of the ocean we pretended to live under. We breathed water instead of air, and we swam with dolphins, and we threw squid ink at our enemies until they left us alone.
That was how we’d both started acting at a young age.
So I took Annie’s sage advice again. At her funeral I pretended that my soul was somewhere else while my body stood there on the cold marble floor of the most expensive funeral home in LA.
