“I’m their son,” he says, and my eyes snap up, taking him in with renewed interest. My first thought is automatic, innocuous:How can this—thisgiant—be the son of the short, ruddy-skinned couple from conference room four?My second is more painful:theirsurvivingson.
“I apologize for bothering you,” I say.
“You didn’t,” he says, firmly. The sentiment is so clear: I am not worth himbeing bothered.
I offer a small nod, turn my back to return to my car, to put this entire mistake behind me.A guilt jar.What a fucking joke. What a perfect encapsulation of the worthless person I’ve become. I feel so strangely unwell; it’s hot out here, the still-muggy heat of a southern September.
When I have my shaking hand on the car door, he speaks again. “If you have business with them, you need to take it up with me. I don’t want you trying to contact them. They’ve been through enough.”
And haven’t you? He was your brother, after all,I think, surprising myself.
I turn back to face him, my spine straightening, even though I am desperate to fold myself back into the safety of my car. “I came to apologize. That’s it. I can see it was...” I have to pause, take a deep breath in response to his forbidding expression. “I can see thatwas a mistake.”
“Can’t imagine your firm would like that.”
“I don’t work for them anymore,” I answer, as though this might magically change hisopinion of me.
“I know. I heard you came into some money.”
If it was possible for me to feel sicker, I didn’t know until now. Kit, Greer, and I had all agreed on privacy when our numbers came up. The state required a public disclosure of identification, but the jackpot had been comparatively small, the most interesting part of the win being the grainy security video of the three of us buying the ticket, which I’d buried as best I could with some threatening legalese. Greer and I had helped shield Kit—who’d had bigger reasons for keeping it quiet—by doing the small, state-lottery-required press conference, which didn’t even make the news, and other than a brief clipping in the local paper, which had identified us by first initial and last name only, we’d flown under the radar. He would’ve hadto go looking.
“Listen, I came to apologize to your family,” I say, the effort to keep my voice steady almost Herculean. “That apology extends to you. I can see you’re not interested, and I’m sorry for that too. I’ll leave you alone. I would appreciate the same courtesy.” It’s a warning. If this guy has been sniffing around my private life, he’ll find out there are limits to my guilty conscience. I don’t deserve to be stalked,for God’s sake.
He makes a derisive noise, a half snarl. “Believe me, I don’t care to know anything more about you than I have to. Your former secretary told me. Without prompting.”
Ugh, Janet. Probably because I forgot her birthday (2x, per my guilt jar). And made her time my bathroom breaks. Still, my brow furrows in curiosity, wondering what dealings he’s had with my former firm. He’d certainly never been involved with the Aaron O’Leary settlement before. But I stifle this curiosity; it seems my sense of what’s appropriate has picked this moment to return. Would that it had a better sense of timing.
“Well,” I say. “Again. I am sorry forbothering you.”
“Are you on some kind ofapology tour?”
Good God, this man cuts like a knife, doesn’t he? Or am I really that transparent?
“Something like that,” I manage.
“For your next stop, I’d say show up in something other than a Mercedes.”
I am torn, at this moment, between two instincts. The first is to fight back against this man’s ire, to cut him down to size, to push back against his scorn. That Mercedes is four years old, after all, bought not with lottery winnings but with my own salary, the salary I earned for billing the most hours in the entire firm in my first year on the job.
But the second? The second is to stand there and take it. To invite more of it, in fact, because—because in some sick, dark corner of me, it feels good to have his scorn. It feels like I earned it as much as I earned that Mercedes. Maybe more, because, after all, I question every single billable hour I worked for Willis-Hanawalt. It wouldn’t feel easy. But it would feel likewhat I deserve.
There’s a long pause while I stand, frozen, caught between these two instincts, while he stares right through me, pinning me to the car with that gaze. In another context, I would find this man so sexy as to make me weak in the knees. But right now, I’m just…weirdly, uncomfortably weak in the knees, fuzzy headed and still overly warm. I have a distant memory, suddenly, of the senior partner at Willis-Hanawalt coaching me the first time I went before a judge. “Whatever you do, don’t stand there with your knees locked,” she’d said. “You’ll faint dead away from the nerves.”
I think I set a hand to my forehead. I think I hear this man say, “Are you all right?”; I think he moves closer to me.
But then, everything goes gray around the edges.
And then, it all goes blissfully, forgivingly dark.
* * * *
When I come to, my first sight is of lace curtains, yellowed but beautiful, delicate and fluttering before an open window. I jerk up, instinctively, and hear the man’s voice, lower now, no trace of anger. “You’re all right,” he says.
I’m inside the rambler, sitting in a dusty rose velveteen chair that is both hideously ugly and incredibly comfortable. “Oh God,” I mumble. “Was Iout for long?”
“Maybe two minutes.” He’s kneeling in front of me, a black duffel next to him. “My name is Aiden. I’m a paramedic. Do you know where you are?” I stare down at him, bewildered at this new information.Aiden. Paramedic. Probably carried me in here.But I realize I need to answer, if I don’t want things to get more awkward.
“Ah—I’m assuming I’min your house?”
