Her eyes blue, like Wrenleigh's, but duller, flick over me. She’s a woman sizing up her replacement.
I see her take in the scrubs, the badge, the fact that I'm walking into her ex-husband's house like I belong here.
"Who's this?" she asks. Her voice is hoarse. Tight. The voice of someone who's been crying or arguing or both.
Coin doesn't answer her. He looks at me, and underneath the shut-down wall I can see it—relief.
The barest flicker, gone as fast as it appears.
I came.
He called and I came.
"This is Leah," he says. Not to Angelica—to me. Like he's reminding himself I'm real. "Leah, this is Angelica."
I don't extend my hand. Neither does she.
"Where are the girls?" I ask Coin.
"Upstairs. Garrett's with them."
"Do they know she's here?"
"Not yet."
I look at Angelica.
She's watching me with an expression I can't quite name.
Resentment, maybe. Or jealousy.
Or the pain of watching another woman stand in your kitchen and ask about your children.
"I just want to see them," Angelica says. Her voice cracks on the last word. "I'm their mother. I have a right to?—"
"You don't have a right toanything." Coin's voice is quiet. Deadly quiet. The quietest I've ever heard him. "You gave up that right when you put their names on a gambling debt."
Angelica flinches. Actually flinches—full body, like he hit her.
And I watch her face cycle through three emotions in the space of a second: guilt, anger, and something that looks terrifyingly like self-pity.
"I didn't know they'd come here," she whispers. "I didn't think they'd actually?—"
"You didn'tthink." Coin uncrosses his arms. His hands are at his sides and they're steady—rock steady, zero tremor. That scares me more than if they were shaking. "You never think. You just do whatever feels right in the moment and you leave the damage for someone else to clean up. That's what you've always done. That's what you did when you left, and that's what you did when you gave them our daughters."
Angelica's eyes fill with tears.
I watch them form and I feel—not nothing. Something more complicated than nothing.
This is a woman who abandoned her children.
This is also a woman who's terrified and alone and sitting in the kitchen of a man who looks at her like she's a ghost he's been trying to outrun for a decade.
Both things can be true at the same time.
"I'll stay," I say to Coin. Not asking. Telling.
He looks at me.
