Page 91 of Vicious Temptation

“Oi, tia,” I say. “Tudo bem?”

“Don’t you give me that.”

I close my eyes and rub the back of my neck. Of course that didn’t work.

“I haven’t wanted to bother you, so I gave you time. But nearly two months, Thiago.”

“I know, I know.” I sigh. “I’m sorry. Work has been...work. I’m still getting used to the new atmosphere, the guys. But I should’ve called.”

“You always disappear into yourself when things get heavy,” she says, her voice gentler now. “Just because you’re grown doesn’t mean you stop having people who worry about you.”

The guilt digs in deeper because she’s right.

I would’ve been lost without her after my father died. She gave me a home and never once made me feel like I was something she’d been forced to take on. Yet whenever life gets complicated, I shut everyone out and convince myself it’s easier that way.

“How are you doing?” she asks, and I can picture the concern on her face even from thousands of miles away.

“I’m okay,” I tell her, undoing my belt and tugging my shirt over my head.

“You sound tired, meu filho. Like you’ve got a lot on your shoulders.”

I sit on the edge of the couch and rub my face, wanting to tell her everything. To tell her how conflicted I am and how every line I once thought was clear has blurred the deeper I get into this assignment. But mostly, I want to tell her about Remi and how being around her has me questioning things I stopped questioning a long time ago.

But I can’t.

She can never know what I’m really a part of. To her, I’m still the good man my father would have wanted me to be, the hero I spent most of my life trying to become.

For a long time, I thought I was that man too.

Lately, I’m not so sure.

“It’s part of the job, Tia. No rest for the wicked, huh?”

She laughs, but it sounds forced, as if she hears more in my voice than I meant to let slip.

We move on to easier things after that, where she tells me about her garden, complains about her neighbor’s dog digging holes beneath the fence again, and eventually makes me swear I won’t wait another month to call.

“I mean it, Thiago.”

“I know, Tia.”

“Don’t disappear on me.”

“I won’t.”

The words stay with me after we hang up, probably because we both know I’ve made that promise before.

I head back into the kitchen to grab some water, and my eyes fall on my father’s notebook still sitting where I left it on the counter.

I was too young when he died to remember much of him. Most of what I know comes from stories my aunt told me, old photographs, and the few things of his I’ve carried with me all these years. Sometimes I think the hardest part of losing him so young is that I don’t know what it feels like to sit across from my father as a grown man and ask him what the hell I’m supposed to do when life gets complicated. I never got to tell him about my first day on the job or ask whether he ever questioned it the way I do now.

I never got to tell him about a woman.

My eyes drift back to the notebook. Right now, there’s a lot I wish I could tell him.

I pick it up and flip through pages filled with his handwriting until I reach the first blank one. There’s a pen in the junk drawer. I grab it and stand there for a second, feeling like an idiot because I have no fucking idea what I’m doing.

Then I think about the reports I’ve written more times than I can count. At least I know how to do that. I write the date at the top of the page, followed by two words beneath it.