Page 10 of My Girl to Take

“I’m head of operations at Edwards Capital.” I hadn’t planned to say it. “So I know what it takes to be that hard to find. It’s expensive.”

He turns his head fully then, and it’s the first time all morning he’s actually looked at me. I struggle to hold his gaze.

“It was,” he says.

The quiet comes back. But it’s a different quiet.

And I hear myself say, “You were cold yesterday.”

I don’t know where it comes from. Two minutes ago, I was managing him.

He doesn’t pretend not to understand. He leans forward, forearms on his thighs, and looks at the floor for a second.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Because of my mother.”

“You’re not her.” His voice is even. “But you’re standing in the middle of everything she did. And everything he let her do.” A pause. “That’s not fair to you. But it’s still true.”

I think that might be the most honest thing anyone has said to me in this house in nine years.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “For her. For what she did to you—to both of you.”

He looks up, and there’s something wary in it, like he’s checking the sentence for a hook.

“I don’t need an apology.”

“I know,” I say. “You’re getting one anyway. I’ve had it for a while, and I’m tired of holding it.”

Something in his face shifts. Not softens. Shifts.

“Can we try to be cordial?” I ask. “You’re going to be here. I’m going to be here. It would be easier if we weren’t doing—” I gesture at the space between us “—this.”

“Cordial,” he repeats, like the word is faintly ridiculous.

“Yes.”

“Alright.” He leans back. “Cordial.”

“Good.” It comes out too fast, and I hear it. So does he.

“You did that when you were eight, too,” he says.

I blink. “Did what?”

“Agreed with people quickly so they’d stop looking at you.”

Heat goes up my neck, immediate and total, because he’s right. He was in this house for one year while I was in it, and I didn’t think he had registered a single thing about me.

“You were terrifying when I was eight,” I say, to say something.

“Was I?”

“You never spoke. You looked like you were summing everyone up.”

He laughs. It’s short and surprised, and it changes his entire face. I feel it go through me like something dropped.

“I was,” he says.