Braedon sits with his disappointment for a few minutes. He’s about to close the laptop and call it a night when the idea comes out of nowhere.Of course. It’s so obvious. So sensible. So… duh.Why didn’t he think of it earlier? Braedon reopens his photos app and begins to search.
“Something feels wrong,” says Judd.
“With us?” says Mei.
Mei’s condo is a ten-minute walk from the Gonda Building of the Mayo Clinic. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and wall-to-wall white carpet throughout except for the bathrooms and kitchen. Not off-white. Not linen-white. White. Shoes have never touched it, nor have bare feet with their oils and barnacles. The walls are also white but covered in art, much of it Chinese, as is most of the furniture and things displayed in glass cabinets.
“God, no,” says Judd. “Everything with us is…” He shakes his head.
“What?” says Mei.
“I hesitate to use the word… But everything with us is perfect.”
“Oh, it is not,” says Mei. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”
They’re in Mei’s queen-size bed in her king-size master suite, their naked bodies under the silk duvet as they lie on their sides facing each other. Judd reaches out and cups Mei’s cheek in his palm.
“I do mean it. You’re a doctor. That’s job security. Plus if one of ourperfectsessions in the bedroom gives me a heart attack, you’ll know what to do. And you live and work half an hour away so I don’t have to worry about you barging into my place all the time.”
“Stop it,” says Mei. She laughs and grabs Judd’s wrist sohe doesn’t take his hand away, then she pulls it toward her lips, kisses it, and puts it back where she found it. “So what feels wrong?”
“You know,” says Judd. “Teddy. I don’t know what it is but something’s not adding up. Maybe it’s a twin thing. I can feel it but I don’t know what it is. My cop sense is on code red. My Teddy sense is on code red. But I’m not putting the pieces together. It makes me feel like the city council was right. It was time for me to move on. I can’t do the job like I used to.”
“Maybe it’s a blessing,” says Mei.
“How is not being able to find my brother a blessing?” He says this with a smile so she understands that his question comes from hope and is not belittling her idea.
“It’s not that you haven’t found Teddy that’s a blessing. It’s that you’re not working as a police officer.”
“Okay…”
“Let’s start with the irrefutable evidence,” says Mei. “Your relationship with Clay seems to have improved.”
Judd wishes he could tell Mei that Clay worked as an intelligence agent while playing soccer in Europe, but that would not only be inappropriate, it could get Clay and him in a whole lot of trouble. In a way, Clay’s admission helped heal things between father and son. That and Clay moving back and bringing Braedon with him. But more than anything, Judd’s owning up to his parental shortcomings. He’ll tell Mei about it sometime but not tonight. It’s too late for that conversation. Instead he simply says, “Yep. Clay and I are getting along a little better.”
“Have you two talked about it?”
“Our relationship?”
“Yes, your relationship.”
“God, no,” says Judd. “We don’t talk about things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I suppose it’s because we don’t know how to. Clay and me, we’ve been at odds with each other since he was born. If he was crying in his crib and his mother picked him up, he settled right down. But if I picked him up, he screamed like I was pulling his fingernails out with pliers. And things between us deteriorated from there.”
“Maybe,” says Mei, “you just need some time in this better state, some time getting along, and then you’ll be able to talk about your relationship.”
“Maybe,” says Judd, “but talking about it just might wreck it.”
“Why would talking wreck it?”
“Eh, it’s a guy thing,” says Judd. “Sometimes the less said, the better. No risk of embarrassment.”
“You don’t treat me like that,” says Mei. She nudges Judd onto his back and rests her head on his chest. “You told me you loved me after only knowing me four months. You opened yourself up to the possibility of all kinds of embarrassment.”
“That’s different,” says Judd. “If you had rejected me, we would have gone our separate ways. Probably would’ve never seen each other again. Then I could have buried my shame deep, pretend I hadn’t met you, go on living my life with dignity.”
