Page 103 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

I checked the time. They'd taken Jessica for a cardiac CT a while ago and she'd be another fifteen minutes at least, sedated and still, nothing for either of us to do but wait for her return and confirm what we already knew, that she was holding.

I set my cup down.

"Derek. I need to go home."

His head came up.

"She's stable. She doesn't need me sitting here, and I'm no good to anyone if I don't get a few hours of sleep. My shift starts at seven." I pushed my hair back off my face. "I need to sleep and change and come back like a person. I'm assuming you're staying."

"I'm staying."

I gathered my bag off the chair. He watched me do it, and then, when I was half standing, he said, "Can you do me one favor?"

"Sure."

"The team tonight. The ones who came out on the helicopter, the ones in the room with you." He turned the coffee cup a slow quarter on the table. "Would you ask them if they'd have dinner with me next week? I want to thank them personally. Each of them. Not a plaque on a wall. I want to sit across from the people who kept my daughter alive and thank them to their faces."

"Derek, that's not necessary," I said gently. "This is the job. And we love Jessica. You don't owe anybody dinner for that."

He put his hand up.

"No. I want to do this." A beat. "I want to know the people who are going to be in her life."

Then he looked up at me. "Especially you, Lacey. I'd like to get to know you better. If that's all right."

"I—" I started over. "I think that would be great. I'll tell the crew before I leave."

"Thank you." He didn't quite smile. "I'll send you an email. All the details."

He looked at his watch, and the practical man came back up over the other one, smooth, automatic. "She'll be down from imaging soon. I want to be in the room when she is." He stood.

Especially you.

The thrill went through me.

I shook my head at myself and pushed the button and let it go.

It stayed a little. All the way to the car it stayed.

46 - NO GREATER SORROW

Lacey

It had been over a week. She'd texted four times. Lunch, then coffee, then dinner if that's easier, then just the word talk, with nothing after it, which from Janice was close to begging. I'd left all of them unanswered. For years, I'd handed her my life in pieces as it happened, both the good and reckless, narrated it to her the way you narrate to the person who's going to help you understand what it meant.

What I couldn't do was sit across a table from her. Not yet. Not where she knew what I was feeling before I'd felt it. That was the trouble with Janice, the thing I'd loved and didn't trust anymore. So when I finally answered, I told her no to lunch and to bring her bike to the trailhead off Reed. A bike ride kept your eyes on the road. You talked to the air in front of you and the other person caught it sideways, and nobody had to watch anybody's face.

She was already there when I pulled in, leaning against the rack with her helmet on, and she came off it the second she saw my car. She crossed the lot before I'd gotten the bike down off the hitch.

"Lacey." She stopped a few feet from me, hands working at nothing. "Look. I've been thinking. About the plane. About all of it, and there are things I want to say to you, things I should have said before I—"

"Don't." I kept my eyes on the strap, working it loose. "Janice. Don't."

She closed her mouth.

"I'm not here for that," I said. "I'm here to ride my bike and tell you what's been happening, because there's a lot of it, and you're the person I tell things to. That's it. No big talks. Not the cruise, none of it. If you can do that, we'll have a nice afternoon."

I looked up then. She was nodding before I'd finished, fast, like she'd take any terms I set.