“Yeah. She was singing it to you. I don’t know if you could tell. But I could. Back then, even back then, I knew. She’s so gifted.”
They sat in a moment of sort of radiant silence that they could both feel even over the phone. Smiling through tears.
“She’s some girl,” his mom said, finally, in a more normal voice. Processing this. Coming around to the idea, albeit cautiously. He heard the humor in her voice. After all, she’d known Glory her whole life. Caution was a reasonable reaction.
Eli’s smile grew into a grin. “She is, at that.”
“You two will have theprettiestbabies. I can’t wait to hold them.”
“Yikes. First things first, Mom.”
He sat on one side of the glass.
Jonah sat on the other.
And he still looked like Jonah. Handsome devil, a lot like his sister, lucky with the ladies, particularly fond of bad girls. There wasn’t a single ugly Greenleaf, that was for sure.
He looked like Jonah, but he was a little pasty and hollow-eyed, and prison-buff.
Jonah, expressionless, bemused, picked up the phone.
And then Eli saw his hands were shaking. “Hey, man,” Jonah said.
“Orange isn’t your color, man.”
Jonah snorted softly. “Since when do you care about color?”
“Went on a couple of dates with a makeup artist a while ago. Did you know your eyebrow isn’t supposed to go any farther than past here?” Eli pointed to that spot.
“No shit?” Jonah was genuinely interested. He touched his own eyebrow.
It was such a stupid thing. But the fact that they could instantly fall into talking about whatever, that Jonah was feeling his own eyebrow made Eli miss him like mad. Because he was curious about everything. He didn’t really judge anything. He could make anything funny.
Eli knew a swift surge of frustrated anger, but it evaporated pretty quickly.
Things were how they were.
Neither of them had apologized to each other for how things had gone down. It was sort of implicitly understood how it had happened. And Jonah, unlike his stubborn sister, really didn’t quite have it in him to hold grudges.
They were silent a moment. Kind of just happy to be sitting near each other again.
Jonah cleared his throat. “Hey, check this out, Eli. I’m learning Spanish.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet you are.”
“No, man. For real. Not just the filthy words. Learning Portuguese, too. Gorgeous language. They started me in on French. Next up is the fancy stuff, Chinese and Farsi. Tagalog, probably. Damned if I’m not actually good at this stuff.”
Jonah did have that kind of mind. Quick and absorbent. There were easily about fifty things Jonah could have done for a living. If he’d had flawless grades or a family with money or the patience or focus or...
There was really no point in thinking about the “what-ifs.”
Ironically, being confined to one place was about the only way Jonah would have ever channeled his endless energy and cleverness.
“Yeah, I can see how that might be true. Damn, Jonah. You can make a living as a translator, you know. Something like that. When the... time comes.”
Government agencies were hardly eager to hire felons. But Eli knew he’d pull strings and move heaven and earth to get Jonah a job like that, if it helped.
What Jonah did after that was out of Eli’s control.
