Chapter 5

My heart had stopped when he burst through the door. Or maybe it finally started again. Either way, it hurt like hell.

Harlan fucking Dean. The once and future love of my life. Out of all the gin joints in all the world and all that bullshit.

DT joined me as I stood at the bay window, hoping to get a look at Harlan as he left the building. “Are you going to tell him?”

I shook my head. “No. What’s the point?” Oh, but I had been tempted stronger than Eve by the apple. I wanted to taunt him, to smile mysteriously and say, I know something you don’t know. But if the future unrolled the way it had been foretold, Harlan would find out what fate had planned for us soon enough. “If I told him, he’d run out of the city so fast, there’d be a Harlan-shaped hole in the atmosphere behind him.”

“Like in a cartoon?”

“Exactly like that.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“You often do.” On the street, Harlan came into view, leaning heavily on his cane. He stopped and worked out some stiffness in his shoulder. I knew from personal experience how a wrist cast strained your upper arm and shoulder after a few hours. A beam of sunlight shone on Harlan like a spotlight, bringing out the silver strands in Harlan’s blond hair.

Despite how heavy they weighed on my heart, the years had been more than kind to Harlan. He’d been a raw-boned kid, tall and skinny, with gangly limbs he never seemed to have complete control over. The knobs of his knees and the points of his elbows were deadly weapons. After long, sweaty nights in bed, I’d worn the bruises from both on my skin. Ten years later, he’d filled out, adding inches to the breadth of his shoulders and lean muscle to his thighs.

His jawline was as sharp and strong as ever though, but there were new lines around his grey eyes.

I couldn’t quite believe he was here. Over the ten years, two months, and thirteen days since I’d last seen him, I’d thought about him a thousand times. He’d written. The letters had arrived weekly at first, and I’d tossed them, unopened, into a shoebox. Eventually they tapered off to once a month, then stopped completely after my thirtieth birthday.

Of course, I’d looked him up. I was a PI, after all. Finding people was in the job description.

When I’d stumbled off the plane, lost and hurting and not fit for human company, my parents had welcomed me back with open arms and an open kitchen. After a few years of eating homecooked meals and watching hours of Romanian television shows with my mother every day, I was up twenty pounds and back to my childhood level of fluency in Romanian, only this time around I had an adult vocabulary.

A vocabulary that now included profanity that I currently employed as I contemplated Harlan’s return. I wanted to be hopeful and believe that everything would be fine, that we were fated to be together. But life didn’t work like that.

Desperate for something to strengthen the thin string of hope that was the only thing keeping me from total nihilism, I turned to my emotional support Magic 8-Ball, holding it up in front of me like it was poor Yorick’s skull and I was a discount, aging Hamlet. “Are you absolutely sure that Harlan Dean is the man I’m supposed to marry?” I twisted my wrist once and looked into the viewing window.

Absolutely.

Shit.

Absolutelywas also not one of the twenty stock answers on the 8-Ball die.

I could count on one hand the number of times the 8-Ball had given me a non-standard answer, and each time it was important. And now I’d gotten two in one day.

But the 8-Ball always seemed to have a special place in its bubbly, liquid heart for Harlan.

The first time I’d gotten a nonstandard answer I was fourteen. My mother had gone to the hospital with an infected gallbladder and I asked the ball if she was going to die and nearly freaked at the response: Don’t Worry. Terrifying enough on its own, but then the die had flipped completely on its own to display: She’ll Be Fine.

I hurled that thing across the room like I was a major league baseball pitcher throwing the last pitch on the final inning of a shutout.

When my my na??, my godmother, gave me the Magic 8-Ball for my thirteenth birthday, she told me it was truly magic.

Aunt Agrippina, as the family called her, was old, older than my parents. She wore her pure white hair in two braids that she wound on top of her head. Her skin was as thin as crepe paper and seemed to have moved beyond wrinkles into a new kind of smoothness.

Thirteen-year-old me had assumed she was senile given that she practically had one foot in the grave. I’d had to eat those unspoken words. I’d been meaning to have a more in-depth conversation with her about the ball, but somehow, I never got around to it.

The best and worst Very Special Answer had been five years ago, on the evening of my thirtieth birthday, at a dinner at my parents’ house. All of my family had been there, including my older brother and sister, their respective spawn, and my godmother. The food was plentiful and the wine flowed, so after a few hours, we were feeling no pain.

Then my brother, Florin, decided to start in on me about being an old maid. “Isn’t thirty pretty much dead in gay years?”

I flipped him off. “Aren’t you going to be fifty soon? That’s just fucking old in general.”

“I’m forty-five, dick.” Florin snatched the 8-Ball off the table. “Oh, Magic 8-Ball, will my brother ever find his prince?” I made a grab for it, but he held it up and out of my reach in the time-honored tradition of older brothers everywhere.

“What does it say?” my mother, Ileana, asked. “Will he?”

The betrayal. Unbelievable. “Mom. Not you, too.”

My mothershrugged. “What? A mother worries.”

Florian squinted at the viewing window. “I can’t see it through the stupid bubbles. Liz, catch.” With the flick of his wrist, he sent the ball across the table to my sister.

She caught it and squinted into the window. “‘Don’t count on it.’ Eh. Tragic, but not unexpected.”

Aunt Agrippina smacked her cane on the ground. “Elizabeth, you will never get a true answer with that kind of disrespect. Give it back to Dashiell.”

Liz rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at me but did as she was told. Ignoring my na?? was a risky proposition.

She patted my hand. “Now ask it again, scumpete. Nicely.”

Slouching in my chair, I hesitated, not sure that I wanted to know the answer. But, then again, what could it hurt? I kind of wanted to know the answer, too. Even if it was magical, the stupid thing’s responses were usually vague. Holding the ball with both hands, I closed my eyes and shook it while asking the question aloud. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, will I ever get married?”

I took a look at the answer. Yes, definitely.

“Well?” Florian smirked at me.

“It said ‘Yes, definitely’.”

“See. Nothing to worry about,” my mother said.

“Congratulations!” Florin said. “Who’s the lucky man?”

“No idea.” Since at the time I was single and doing a lot of mingling, I figured the ball didn’t mean anytime soon. Assuming, of course, that it meant anything at all. As I tried to imagine my future husband, I rolled the ball between my hands, a habit I’d had for years. “I wonder who it could be.” The ball trembled slightly and I looked down to see the answer clear as glass.

Harlan.

Only fear of my mother’s scowl kept me from once again hurling the damn thing against the wall. Instead, I left and went to play video games with my nieces and nephews.

I’d held onto that secret for years, until it slipped out one lost weekend on the town with DT, but the knowledge always haunted me. Alone, in my bed at night, I’d admit that I wanted it to be true, but I never believed in fate.

And even if I was wrong about fate, I wasn’t going to let her make me her bitch. Fate, schmate. There was a such a thing as free will, damn it, and no mass-produced plastic orb was going to tell me otherwise.

After that dinner, I swore off casual hookups and starting hunting for a serious relationship in a childish attempt to show the ball wasn’t the boss of me.

This may not have been the most solid foundation for a relationship.

Needless to say, none of them lasted. There was one guy I dated for almost a year and a half. That ended when he proposed at a fancy restaurant and I turned pale and ran for the bathroom.

Since then, I’d been almost celibate. I convinced myself I didn’t care about marriage or dating, and I certainly didn’t care about Harlan Dean.

Right until the bastard strolled into my office like it was just another day.

What the fuck did I do now? He was trouble, yes, but my kind of trouble. The world where I could walk away from Harlan Dean didn’t exist.

From my perch at the window, I could see up the street in either direction. Something in the corner of my vision caught my attention. Pressing my head against the glass, I searched to find what it was.

Off to Harlan’s right, an unmanned Segway careened down the sidewalk, moving faster than I thought they could go. A red-faced man in a polo and khakis, a messenger bag strung across his chest chased, behind it, his hand outstretched as if he were trying to stop it with his mind. If he was a telekinetic, he was a weak one, because the Segway didn’t even wobble.

DT gasped and pointed to my left.

On the other side of Harlan, two men were carefully maneuvering a new car windshield off their delivery van. Just as they blocked almost the entire width of the sideway, a dog darted out from nowhere, a long red leash trailing behind him. The dog dove and slipped under the glass, smoother than a contortionist in a limbo contest, then ran circles around Harlan.

The Segway drew closer as the brown-and-white mutt wrapped his leash around Harlan’s legs like he was a fucking maypole. Harlan’s cane slipped from his hand and he wobbled dangerously.

As clear as day, the immediate future unfolded behind my eyes. The Segway was going to crash into an immobilized Harlan, sending him flying through the windshield. I could almost see the arc the spray of arterial blood would make on the sidewalk.

Frantic, I tried to open the window to yell some kind of pointless warning at someone, anyone, but they’d been painted shut decades earlier and wouldn’t budge.

Goddamn it!Piece-of-shit window.

Unless I instantaneously developed the ability to teleport, there was no way I could make it outside in time to stop the disaster from unfolding.That didn’t stop me from trying.

Taking the steps two and three at a time, I flung myself down the stairway. I couldn’t lose Harlan now. Not like this. I’d just gotten him back. Dread clawing at my throat, I slammed through the door just in time to hear my mother’s voice yell, “Stop!” at the glass movers.

In one smooth move, she unclipped the dog from the leash and tugged Harlan out of the path of both the runaway Segway and the out-of-breath tech bro chasing it.

There was the sound of shattering glass and a lot of shouting as my mother unwrapped the leash from Harlan’s legs and then gave him a big hug. “Harlan, it’s so good to see you again, draga mea. You have been away much too long. What brings you back to this part of the world?”

Harlan looked at her, eyes wide, and then staggered, off-balance in more ways than one.

“Someone’s trying to kill him,” I supplied, handing Harlan his cane.

My mother’s eyes widened and then narrowed. She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at each of us in turn. “Dinner. Tomorrow. Both of you. And bring that DT, too.”

“I’ll be there with bells on, Mam? Bucur,” DT called down from the window.

“Bring wine,” she called back at him. He gave her a jaunty salute.

“What are you doing here Mam??”

“I am running errands. The bakery. The dry cleaner for your father’s shirts.” She turned her sharp-eyed gaze on Harlan.“Is someone trying to kill you?

Harlan’s mouth opened and closed several times. He reminded me of a landed fish, suffocating even while surrounded by oxygen because it lacked the organs it needed to breathe. The yearning in his gaze brutally reminded me that Harlan’s family had disowned him for joining the army.

My mother’s face softened and she patted him on the arm. Then she turned to me, one eyebrow raised. “Well?”

Ten years’ worth of conversations passed silently between my mother and me when our eyes met. She knew Harlan had hurt me badly, but she also knew I’d never stopped loving him even though I tried. I looked away and answered her. “Ball says yes.”

My mother prodded me with her finger of iron. “Well, go fix it.”

“I am. I will.”

“Good. Then you can tell me all about it after dinner.” She kissed us both on the cheek and went on her way.

When she disappeared around the corner, Harlan turned to me, hand cupping the cheek she had kissed. “She doesn’t hate me?”

The surprise in his voice hit me like a dart. It was the voice of a child who expected to be hurt, who felt he deserved the pain coming to him.

I shook my head. Harlan and I, we had a hard journey ahead of us to get to what the 8-Ball said was our fated destiny. I couldn’t pretend those years of separation hadn’t happened. But I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—let him think that my mother’s love was conditional. It would only hurt them both.

I forced a smile to my face and rolled my eyes. “Once Mam? Bucur loves you, that’s it. You’re stuck with her for life. I’m expecting you to take care of her when she’s old and senile. Make my life easier.”

He tried to glare at me, but his pallor and the way his legs shook negated the effect. He closed his eyes and scrubbed his face with his good hand. “So, where do we start?”

The growling of his stomach offered me a way to get some space from him, some time to think. “You need to eat. Go get some food and go to work like normal. Send me whatever information you have on the new recruits that you can get me without getting yourself fired. I’ll do some research.”

A green Fiat with a Lyft decal pulled to the curb. The window slid down and the driver leaned across the front seats. “One of you Harlan?”

Harlan nodded.

The guy, whose hair matched his Fiat, reached over the backseat and opened the rear door. “I’m supposed to take you to your car.”

Harlan paused with his hand on the door. “Ah, dinner at your parents? We don’t have to, obviously. I mean, I don’t have to be there if you don’t want me to. But you’ll have to tell her.”

I did want him there, damn it. The thought of watching him drive away from me again cramped my stomach. The things I needed to say to him bounced around in my brain like balls in a pachinko machine, clanging and ringing, as old resentments and older love broke through the paper-thin veneer of denial I’d buried them under. All I had left to fall back on was my old standby sarcasm. “Aw, you scared of my mother?”

Harlan nodded vigorously. “Yes.”

Good. Maybe that would make him think twice about breaking my heart again. “I’ll text you the address. Don’t drive, there’s no parking.”

“I remember where it is. And I remember the lack of parking. What time?”

Tempting as it was to give him the wrong time, I didn’t want to have to face my mother’s wrath if she learned I’d lied to him. “Seven.”

“That’s early for your family.”

It was true. We used to keep more European hours, but when the grandkids started coming along, my parents moved dinner earlier to accommodate bedtimes. He’d know that if he’d stuck around. I shrugged one shoulder. “Ten years is a long time. Things change.”

He sighed and suddenly looked older and more tired. “Not everything.” He said it so quietly that I could choose to ignore it if I wanted to, so that’s what I did.

“See you later.”

After a few seconds, he nodded and then slowly folded himself into the small rear seat of his Lyft.

Before Harlan could shut the door, DT called down from the window like he was Juliet on her balcony. “Stop and get him some food first and I’ll double the tip. Volcano Curry. Get him the pork katsu curry, hot, with an egg, a piece of fried spam, and extra curry. He’ll pay.”

“You got it, boss.”

Harlan pulled his door closed and I watched as the car drove off down Geary Street.

Time to get to work. I shoved my emotions away, lying to myself that I’d deal with them after I knew Harlan was safe.