What the hell did she say to you?he typed.
Jay didn’t respond.
He called her phone.
It went to voicemail.
“Fuck,” he said again, glancing around surreptitiously. So she wanted to playthisgame, did she? Running away, the way she always did. Icing him out.Not this time, Jay.
He grabbed his briefcase off his desk and began cramming papers into it one-handed, keeping his phone pinned between his cheek and shoulder as he made a call to the nearest airport, wondering, even as he did, how much it would cost to have his stepmother put in an oil drum and buried alive somewhere in Coachella Valley.
???????
A police siren woke her up.
This sound was a familiar part of the city soundscape. Growing up in San Francisco in the 90s, Jay had often stared up at her water-stained ceiling in terror wondering if it was her mother that was being taken away. Her mom always laughed it off, of course—“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Jay, don’t be so dramatic”—but how was she supposed to turn off her worries just like that when her greatest fear was being left alone?
It had been different in the house. She had woken up there, too, but Nicholas would take her into his arms and whisper, “It’s all right, blue jay. Daddy’s here” and stroke her until she fell asleep.
His tenderness had awakened something inside her that threatened to devastate, even as it promised to satisfy the deep-seated craving she had to be loved with a savagery that bordered on ruthless. And if she let herself accept that love, she would also have to live with the fear that it could be taken away or wielded against her.
She turned and banged her hip on the corner of a box, making the contents rattle. She lurched to straighten the fulgurite, imagining, as her fingers traced over the rough, brittle surface, the lightning that had caused those minerals to crystalize. She could almost picture the flash of blinding brilliance jettisoning from the heavens, only to be imprisoned between layers of dull, dead rock.
It made her cry, actually, which was so stupid.
Because all of this was her own damn fault.
A knock sounded on her door just as the tears started running down her cheeks.
She jumped like she’d been shocked, glancing at her clock. Past ten. Who could it be? She barely saw her neighbors and didn’t even know their names—she certainly knew none of them well enough that they would be pounding on her door to summon her this late.
Her unease from before returned, backed by fear. She made sure to keep the security chain latched as she cracked open the door, which didn’t have a peephole, and found herself staring into a familiar pair of piercing grey eyes that left her feeling faint as the owner of them slowly came into focus.
“Oh my god, N-Nick?”
He put his hand on the wall, next to the jamb, like he was considering forcing her way in.
“Open the door.”
Jay stared at him dumbly, unable to process the sight of hertall, wealthy stepbrother standing in the dilapidated hallway of her not-so-cheap apartment. He was wearing distressed dark-wash jeans and a blazer that was perfectly tailored to his broad shoulders. A backpack hung loosely over one of them and in his other hand was a yowling cat carrier. That was what broke through her glaze of shock and made her fumble to undo the chain.Someone might see—
“What are you doing here?” she asked, stepping back, as he shoved the door open with a bang that made her wince. “Shouldn’t you be at the office?”
“I took some personal days.”
“To come here?”
He set the carrier down, fixing her with a look. “What do you think?”
Jay did not know what to think, so she stepped past him to shut the front door before bending to undo the one on the carrier, half-expecting him to grab her. He didn’t, but just him being in the room had her shaking so badly that it still took her two tries to undo the latch.
Her poor cat immediately darted under her bed. Jay wanted to hide, too.
Conscious of the tears on her face and Nicholas’s silent anger, Jay removed the top of the carrier, and took the three-quarters empty jug of cat sand out of the front hall closet to fill the now-converted litter box. She was glad for the task. It bought her time, because she could feel his eyes on her, heavy and accusing, and she was not sure how to speak around the lump that had formed in her throat. Too much lay between them and the thought of broaching any of it left her feeling paralyzed, especially while he was looking at her like that.
“I asked you a question, Jay.”
“I—I d-don’t know.”
