"My father knew," he says. Not to me, exactly.
"Yes."
He turns from the window. His face is sealed again, fully controlled, the version of him that decides things and doesn't show them until he has. His eyes are wet at the corners, just barely, and he blinks once and it's gone.
"I need to talk to him," he says.
"I know."
"Not tonight." He looks at me. "Tonight, I need to sit with this."
"Okay."
He crosses to the table and stands behind me and puts both hands on my shoulders. I feel the weight of them, the warmth, the slight pressure of his thumbs against the back of my neck. He bends and presses his lips to the top of my head and stays there for a moment.
I put my hand up and cover one of his. We stand still together for some time, not wanting to pull away.
He straightens eventually. Goes to the counter and turns on the light above the stove, the low warm one, and starts making dinner without asking if I'm hungry.
Phoenix's back is to me. His shoulders haven't dropped since he stood up from the table. Neither have mine.
7
PHOENIX
Ileave before Jade is awake. She's on her side when I get up, one hand curled under her cheek, her breathing slow. I stand in the doorway for a moment and look at her before going.
The drive to my parents’ house takes forty minutes in early morning traffic. I don't turn on the music. I run through what I know and what I'm going to say when I sit across from my father, and by the time I pull through the gates I have an idea of how it should go.
The house is quiet at eight in the morning. The housekeeper lets me in and tells me my father is in the study. She’s new and offers to show me where it is but I grew up here.
The door is open. He's at his desk, white shirt, no jacket, sleeves rolled to the elbow the way he works when he's been at it for hours. There’s a cup of coffee next to him and a file is open in front of him. He looks up when I walk in and something in his face goes quiet. It’s almost as if he was expecting me.
"Phoenix." He closes the file. "Sit down."
"I'll stand."
He doesn't argue. He leans back in his chair and waits.
"You know why I'm here," I say.
"I have some idea."
"Jade told me last night." I move into the room but stay on my side of the desk. The study smells like old paper and the cedar of his cologne, the same scent I associate with every serious conversation I've had in this room since I was fifteen years old. "She told me about James. About Sydney. About what happened."
Dad picks up his coffee cup and drinks from it, unhurried. Sets it back down. "And …"
"And I want to know what you knew and when you knew it."
He holds my gaze. "I looked into her," he says. "Before you brought her home. I look into everyone."
"She was a woman I was seeing. Not a business partner."
"No," he says. "She was a woman you were serious about, which made it more important, not less." He pauses. "I found her background. Sydney Catalano's daughter, raised in Boston, father not in the picture. I found the James connection."
"You found it."
"Yes."
