Chapter 3

I f she did that one more time, I was going to kill her. I let her know before that happened, since it was only fair to give someone a warning before you drew blood.

“Grace, if you don’t stop tasting from that pan, I’m going to use my knife to slice across your neck instead of cutting the caramels,” I informed her.

“Sophie!” Addie scolded me, and Nicola picked up her head from the table. She had just emerged from the bathroom, where we’d all clearly heard her yakking from morning sickness. It was not really morning anymore but the name for that affliction was apparently a lie, just like the phrase “maternal affection” was patently untrue unless it applied to someone’s brother.

That was why we were all here in my parents’ kitchen and why I was making caramel candy: it was all about my mother’s affection for her only son, my brother Patrick. That affection was why she had invited him to live with her and my father, or rather, she had invited Patrick and his soon-to-be-born child to come and move in. That decision went against everyone’s better judgement.

“It’s a terrible idea,” Nicola had stated flatly when my mother had announced the plan at Christmas, and it was an opinion I shared. I further agreed when Nicola later said that neither our mother nor our brother would take care of that baby.

Lately, Mom had seemed to be moving toward that opinion, too—at least, she was starting to come around to the idea that having a newborn in the house might be hard. She had remembered that they would need some stuff, a lot of gear, and she had none of it; hence, she had sent out invitations and we’d been cordially asked to attend a baby shower that she was throwing for herself. The shower was tomorrow and it turned out that a ton of people had RSVP’d “yes.” Our mother was active in the community and she had a lot of friends.

“Mom, what are you planning on serving at the party?” Addie had texted her after we’d gotten wind of the plan, and the answer was a familiar chorus of crickets.

“Who decided on this menu?” Juliet crankily asked us now. She was in charge of the chicken salad and had been muttering angrily about how she couldn’t deal with raw poultry, but she was the one who’d insisted that we all had to come to our parents’ house to decorate and cook. I still wouldn’t have except that Addie (minus the boyfriend this time) had shown up at my door and knocked until I came to answer, and then she’d looked so hopeful and friendly that I’d had a difficult time saying no to her. That was why I’d ended up making candy this afternoon, and if Grace touched my cooling caramels one more time then I was going to kill her.

“I came up with the menu,” Addie said cheerfully, and she explained why she’d chosen each item. The caramels were our grandmother’s recipe, for example, and she suggested that we could start a tradition of having something special from our family at each baby shower. “I think we’ll be having a few more,” she concluded, and she got a little smile that told me that her own wouldn’t be too far off.

“We’re not throwing Nicola’s shower,” Brenna said. “It’s so tacky for a family member to do that.”

“Would you say that it’s also tacky for someone to throw a baby shower for herself?” I asked. “Just a general question.”

“It sucks,” Nicola muttered. She looked almost green. “It’s awful that she’s doing this but we can’t let all those people show up and then have nothing to serve them.”

“We’ll have caramels,” I noted, and then used the handle part of the knife to smack Grace’s knuckles as she reached for another taste.

“Ow!” she yelped, but she did back off, which had been my intention.

Juliet changed the subject, since she didn’t like to hear us badmouthing either our mother or her twin, and that was definitely the direction that this conversation was going. She started telling us instead about her boss at the commercial real estate company and she went on enough that I saw Addie and Nicola give each other a look.

“JuJu, you’re not interested in him, are you?” Nic asked point blank. She didn’t usually mess around.

Juliet made a face. “Ugh, no. I don’t even like him.”

“I actually hate my boss, probably enough to kill her,” Brenna put in, because that was how she rolled. Whatever you said, Brenna said it more. She recounted story after story about how much her employer sucked and the terrible things that woman did until Nicola snapped and said she should either quit or shut up, and she herself was calling her husband and going home because she felt like crud and there was no way they were going out to celebrate tonight. Brenna piped up about her own big plans and soon enough, Nicola’s husband Jude arrived and they left together. That was fine because we didn’t actually need her to boss us. The food was almost all ready and I had to go, too.

“Come on, Addie,” I urged, and further urged by taking her arm and propelling her toward the door.

“JuJu, please finish up,” she called as I closed the side door behind us. “Why are we in such a hurry?”

“I’m going to a concert tonight,” I said and she got so happy that she actually clapped.

“I’m so happy!” she told me, which was obvious. “Which band? Who are you going with?”

“It’s a group called Cineribus,” I said. “I haven’t heard them play in a long time.”

“And?” She unlocked her car and we both got in.

“And I’m going with a friend from high school.”

“Daniel Ryder?” she asked me. “Nic told me that he stayed at the hospital with you. How is he doing?”

“He’s ok,” I said. “Financially, it looks like he’s good. When he left the service, he started working for a mid-sized company on the East Coast and it seems like he did very well there. But then his dad died.”

“Nicola told me that, also,” she said. “It’s too bad.”

“How did she know about his father?”

“I guess they talked for a bit,” Addie answered. “He explained why he’d come home and I was so sorry to hear it. I remember how complicated things were.”

I didn’t think she knew the whole story, but maybe I didn’t, either. “You guys used to go out,” I commented. I wondered how she felt about him being here now.

“I few times, I guess,” she said. “I never thought of him as a real boyfriend.” She seemed unconcerned. “He was a very nice guy and I did always think that he was cute.”

“Did you?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Maybe not like a model, not that kind of perfect cute.”

“So he’s not handsome?”

“He is!” she insisted. “But it’s more like he’s interesting, and what makes him really attractive is who he is as a person. Like all the stuff with kids.”

“What stuff with kids? That sounds weird.”

“Sophie!” She looked my way and shook her head. “I mean the community service stuff. He was always doing tutoring and coaching. I thought that was so nice. Not many boys in our school did things like that if it wasn’t to add to college applications, you know?”

Obviously I didn’t know. “Danny did volunteer work?”

She nodded and told me all about it, and she knew a lot. No, it hadn’t been for college applications because higher education hadn’t ever been one of his goals. “I don’t like school,” he’d told me again and again. But he’d wanted to leave Michigan and he’d wanted to travel, and more than that…

There was something about his expression when he’d talked about getting out, something I saw again in a funny place when I was older. For a brief period, my sister Grace had worked at an animal shelter (like all her jobs, it had lasted for about fifteen minutes, but that was beside the point). I had been forced to pick her up and drop her off a few times before she’d quit or maybe been fired—it was hard to keep her employment history straight. But I’d hated being there, because she was never outside waiting and I’d had to find her, and I couldn’t stand to see the animals in their cages. I remembered one dog in particular, a mean-looking one with a scar across its muzzle. It had stared at the door when it opened and closed as people went in or out, and its expression had reminded me of how Danny had looked when he talked about getting out of Detroit.

“He got to travel, like he always wanted,” I said. “I’m glad. He thought that I would have become a journalist, like I used to talk about.”

“Well, things don’t always turn out like we think they will,” she consoled. “I was sure that by now, I’d would have married Briggs.”

“Sometimes things turn out for the best.”

Addie definitely thought so and told me what she and her new boyfriend planned to do later, after his restaurant closed on what would be a busy night there. She was very happy with how things had gone for her.

Sometimes everything really did work out, I thought as I stood in front of my bathroom mirror again. I had cleaned that weird goo off the makeup I’d found and was using it again to beautify. It was for the best that Addie and Briggs weren’t together anymore, and things had gone that way for me, too. I’d deliberately chosen not to try to make it as a journalist or as a CPA, I’d deliberately chosen not to date or to have a big friend group. Instead, I’d wanted to stay in my home and reduce my interactions with people. And I liked my choices just fine.

I screwed the top back onto the ancient mascara that I’d revived by adding a little water and shaking the tube whole lot. Yes, I liked my life just fine. I earned a good income, I owned this home that I didn’t leave too often, and I had a car that probably worked. I also had a family that I loved, generally. Things were great for me but I could also change it up if I so desired. Like now, I was going to the concert.

Danny opened his front door in response to my knock. “Hi, Sophie,” he greeted me. “What’s happening?”

“Are you busy?”

“Do you need my help with something?”

“I have tickets to see Cineribus downtown tonight,” I answered. “Do you want to go?”

He didn’t say anything, but just looked at me.

“Do you have plans with Carrington?” I asked him.

“Uh, no, I don’t.” He was still looking, but now he seemed even more quizzical. “Cineribus is still playing together?”

“It’s a different drummer but the singer and lead guitar are the same guys, and I think the bassist is, too. Do you want to go?”

He considered. “Sure,” he said finally. “Sure. Give me a few minutes.”

“Come over when you’re ready,” I suggested, and he nodded back at me and stayed on the porch as I hopped across the street. I spent the time until he walked over dealing with my car. First I tried to start it, which did happen eventually and I saw that there was enough gas to get us to the Orpheus Odeum for the show and back. There was a slight mess in the interior and it was something that Nicola had always frowned at, so I was cleaning out the passenger side when Danny appeared. The area was now empty enough for him to fit into it.

He continued the clearing efforts once he was in the seat next to me and made a neat stack of papers. “This is from two years ago,” he remarked, holding up a receipt. “Are you saving it?”

“No, I just didn’t get around to tossing it,” I answered. “I’m really busy with work.” To prove that, I started telling him about the Horner case (except I didn’t use their names) and how I’d been occupied with trying to prove to her that her husband was sleezy. I thought Danny would make a comment about my client being obtuse, but that wasn’t where his mind had headed.

“Why do you need to be right about it?” he asked. “Why do you have to force her to believe you?”

“I’m not forcing her,” I said, “and I don’t need to be right. I’m trying to present more information so that she’ll support the valid conclusion that I already established. And she asked me to do it,” I reiterated. “She asked me to keep investigating. I would have let it go and I do have other cases that I could be working on right now. There’s a guy who suspects that his girlfriend is stealing at her job, for example, and it’s going to take a lot to get information about a private company. He wants to ask her to marry him but he doesn’t feel like he can until he gets proof that she’s trustworthy.”

“Do you think she’s stealing?”

I shrugged but told him what I always said to Addie: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If you’re questioning whether your girlfriend is committing a crime, then she’s probably been giving out bad signals. There’s something wrong. People pick up on things and maybe they can’t pin down exactly what the problem is, but if your gut is telling you that something’s off, then…”

“If you’re questioning whether your girlfriend is committing a crime, then you shouldn’t be with your girlfriend,” he pointed out.

“It usually ends up like that,” I agreed. “I don’t always get feedback on what people do after I submit my reports to them, but the ones I have heard about have all ended in splits. Broken marriages, business partnerships, and relationships.”

“What was your craziest case?”

“I don’t know if it was crazy, but one I remember a lot was when a girl asked me to investigate whether her mother had given birth to another child before getting married and starting their family. It turned out that the answer was yes. The mom had a baby in her teens and placed it up for adoption.”

“And you told the daughter that? You told her mother’s secret?”

“It wasn’t a secret if I could find it!” I said, although…yes, that had been tough. I’d gone back and forth a lot before I’d hit the send button with my answers. “The girl knew that there was something wrong. She knew that her mother was keeping something from her. What if the woman had been a drug addict? Should I have buried that, too?”

“It’s not the same thing. Are you saying that people shouldn’t be allowed to have secrets?”

I took a breath. “You shouldn’t keep secrets that are hurting other people. That’s what I think. The mother believed that it wasn’t a problem to hide things from her daughter, but it was obviously creating issues in their relationship if it made her reach out to me.” But they’d probably had more issues, worse ones, after I’d sent the report, because I’d gotten back a furious message from the daughter saying she’d known that her mom was a liar and she hated her. I could almost remember the email word for word, that was how much of an impression the case had made on me.

“Secrets don’t help,” Danny said, which made it seem like he was agreeing with me—except he was still frowning. Maybe that was because there was a bit of a smell in here…had I spilled milk on the upholstery at one point? I would have opened the windows but a mixture of snow and rain, icky sleet, was currently falling from the February sky.

February. Wait a minute. My sisters had all been buzzing about today because it was a specific one in this month, the fourteenth.

“This is Valentine’s Day,” I said. “Why don’t you have plans with Carrington?”

“How do you know her name?”

“Her license plate, obviously,” I told him. That dumb red car had been over at his house a few more times since I’d first seen it. “I don’t know if other people would be aware of her, though. You’re doing a good job of keeping your relationship under wraps.”

“I’m not trying to keep anything under wraps.”

Was she the one doing it, then? Because I’d hunted for signs of them together and hadn’t come up with squat, so somebody was either extremely private (and I wouldn’t have ascribed that quality to a girl who drove a flashy red convertible with vanity plates) or somebody was hiding something.

“She’s busy tonight. It means I’m free to go to this concert,” he pointed out, and I wasn’t sorry that the girl had better things to do than spend Valentine’s with her boyfriend. I’d done a bio on her and I hadn’t been too impressed—she didn’t present as someone who’d achieved a lot or deserved much recognition. Of course, she had plenty of time to do bigger things. She was Juliet’s age, four years younger than I was.

Anyway, I hadn’t found information about her relationship with Danny but I had found plenty about other aspects of her life. Her family was majorly wealthy. She’d grown up in a beautiful house in Bloomfield Hills and gone to one of the private schools there, and then she’d attended a private college, also. She had an older brother and the two of them seemed poised to take over the family business, which was large and profitable. They had a home up north and I’d seen many pictures of her posing in her bikini on the beach and on their boats. She’d also brought a bunch of girls to visit and they’d all documented their good times with carefully produced social media uploads. They’d gone on other trips together too, like to Nashville and Florida—there were seven or eight steady members of a group that was, to a person, beautiful and gorgeously dressed. Today as we’d cooked for the party, I’d shown some of their pictures to Brenna, my go-to source for clothes questions, and she’d seemed slightly impressed by their attire (which for her, demonstrated the highest approval).

“How did you two meet?” I asked him.

“At a party.”

“Whose party?”

Danny started to laugh. “Are you researching me right now, at this moment? Why in the hell do you care, Sophie?” But he still seemed amused. “This is exactly how you were in high school. It’s why I thought you’d be a journalist, digging up stories.”

“There’s a spot,” I commented, and whipped my car into it. “We’re kind of far away but parking around the Odeum sucks when there are concerts.”

“I remember. You drove us here the last time we saw them play, but you had a lot more trouble getting into a space back then. I had to get out and give you hand signals, I think.”

It had been a much warmer night the last time we’d come, when we were both eighteen. I’d picked him up in front of the fence that hid his father’s mess and we’d driven together, laughing and blasting the band through the speaker I’d hung from the rearview mirror. Partway through the show, though, he’d pulled on my arm and I’d followed him out to the building’s old lobby.

“I have to go,” he’d said, and he had such an unhappy expression—unhappy and angry. “My dad is sick.” And then we’d left.

“Nice job,” Danny complimented me now. “Ready?” We got out and he opened a little umbrella, which he held over my head.

“Walk closer and we can share it,” I said, and he did. He also picked up the pace until I, with legs that were now much shorter than his, was close to running toward the venue. Maybe my sisters were right that I needed more exercise (more than walking from my office to the bedroom) because this was hurting my lungs.

The show was great, loud and fun, with a seriously dedicated group of fans who knew every song. The band was still so good. It was like stepping back in time, except they did look older. The lead singer talked about his kids once or twice, shocking me. These guys had always been so crazy but they had settled down, I supposed. Kind of, but they were still drinking from bottles of liquor on stage.

“Hey!”

I was busy singing along, and I didn’t pay attention.

“Hey,” a man repeated loudly, and he tapped me on the shoulder. I looked over with a universally recognized “what do you want” expression on my face. “What’s your name?”

“Brenna,” I called back. “Bye.”

“Brenna, you’re gorgeous,” he yelled, and I started to laugh. Was he kidding?

“You’re drunk.” I rolled my eyes. “Leave me alone.”

“I’m drunk in love.”

I laughed harder and returned my attention to the band. This was the best time I’d had in at least ten years. Why had I stopped going out? Danny glanced down at me and smiled, and—

“Hey, Brenna!” The drunk guy grabbed my arm and pulled, pretty hard. “Come over and dance with me.”

“No.” I yanked away.

“Is he bothering you?” Danny called. I was shaking my head when the drunk guy grabbed my arm again and he pulled even harder, with enough force that he almost knocked me down. Then he grabbed my butt too, and things got a little crazy.

Unfortunately, we had to leave the concert immediately.

“Goddamn, Sophie!” Danny exclaimed as we rushed toward my car. “You laid him out!”

I was huffing along at his side. He also held my arm but I didn’t mind too much, since he’d taken it to get me out of the Odeum as fast as possible when he’d seen the problem with the drunk guy.

“He grabbed me,” I said. “He was pulling on me, and I wanted him to let go.” We were nearing my car and I felt around for my keys.

“I turned my head and when I looked back, I watched him topple over like someone chopped down a tree, and there you were shaking out your hand,” he said. “I forgot you could swing like that.”

My grandpa, as well as being a fun person who’d taken us camping and bowling, had also been an amateur boxer in his youth. Out of all my siblings, I was the only one who’d really wanted to learn how to hit, and he’d taught me. “That guy had a glass jaw,” I panted, and unlocked the car. “Let’s get out of here.”

Danny was in before I was. I swung a U-turn and got us headed away from the concert hall, looking back in my mirrors a few times to make sure we were clear. I didn’t see any flashing lights behind us and in the tumult of the people standing and dancing, I didn’t think that anyone would have caught exactly what happened. Anyway, the drunk guy thought that my name was Brenna.

“Are you ok?”

My eyes flicked over to Danny, because I was surprised by how concerned he sounded. But that was just how he was, and I’d forgotten how much he cared about others. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “But I didn’t want him touching my butt.”

“He what? He grabbed your ass?”

“Until I made him let go, yes. He was holding hard enough to bruise and I don’t like that.”

“No, I don’t like that, either.” He clearly didn’t, because he sounded very angry. “Are you sure you’re ok?”

“I am, but I didn’t want to leave the concert,” I answered.

“It was almost over. They were winding down,” he said. “They still sound great.”

“We could go the next time they play,” I suggested, and he nodded.

“I forgot how it was to go out with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m suddenly having flashbacks to junior prom,” he said.

“Oh.” I nodded. When the prom king was announced, I’d been horrified. He had, after all, recently been suspended for bullying, and I knew his victim as a member of the yearbook staff. The poor guy had gotten pounded, and I thought that Mr. Prom King should have been arrested for assault. So I’d yelled a little when he was on stage getting crowned, reminding him and everyone else of what he’d done to a smaller guy who hadn’t deserved it, and tossing in a few insults, too. “I thought that was totally justified,” I said now.

“I agreed. I also remember having to run out of the gym as a bunch of drunk hockey players charged after you.”

“We hid in the bushes next to the parking lot,” I said, and smiled. “You covered us up with your suit jacket to help us hide in the dark, since my dress was pink.”

“The lining of that jacket got torn on a branch,” he said. “I had to pay for it when I tried to return it.”

“What?” I looked over again. “I didn’t know that. I would have paid for it, since it was my fault. At the least I could have gone halfsies with you.”

He shrugged. “It was worth it to see that guy on stage frothing at the mouth as you screamed that he was a bully with a micropenis.”

“He covered his crotch with his hands when I said it, too,” I mentioned, and Danny laughed in his quiet way. “That was then, but I didn’t mean to cause trouble tonight. I wanted us to have fun and be friends again. You know, since we’re neighbors.”

“You didn’t cause trouble, you ended it,” he said. “If I’d seen him grab your ass, I would have done the same thing.” He didn’t continue to talk about us being friends. That was fine; if I wanted to make friends, which I really didn’t, I had an opportunity to do that the very next day.

“Tomorrow is my mom’s baby shower,” I mentioned, and he asked me what I meant. “She’s throwing herself a party to get ready for when Patrick and his kid come to live here,” I explained. “I still don’t totally believe that will happen, though. What kind of woman would hand over a child to my brother?”

“Liv Lassiter used to like him,” he reminded me. “Even when they were kids, she used to say that they were going to be a couple.”

“And now she’s married to someone else. Maybe this new woman doesn’t know Patrick well enough to get how much he sucks,” I suggested. “Or maybe she does, but she doesn’t really care about the kid. She might be happy to have someone take it, even someone like my brother.”

“Not everyone is meant to be a parent.”

I didn’t think Patrick was, but Addie kept hoping that he would surprise us, and Juliet seemed to believe that he would be ok. She was going to help them, she’d promised. At least I was sure that Nicola wasn’t going to have to raise this kid like she’d done with all of us, her siblings. I’d had a long talk with her husband about it, and both of us were going to do whatever it took to keep her from shouldering the responsibility.

“You were lucky that you had Nicola,” Danny said, echoing my thoughts.

“We were also lucky that before she took over, our grandma was involved,” I responded. By the time that my grandmother’s memory loss had gotten severe, my sister had been big enough to step up to raise the Curran siblings. I’d helped some, sure, but nothing like what Nic had done for us.

And Danny? He hadn’t had a sister like Nicola to take care of him, only his dad who was a problem himself. But now, he was talking about a different guy.

“The man I worked for in Maryland was a good dad,” he told me. “He had four daughters, and he was great to all of them.”

“How did you know? Is that what he said about himself, or did you hear it from those daughters?”

“Always investigating,” he mentioned. “I saw it myself and I also heard it from the horses’ mouths. No, scratch that. I’m not comparing women to horses.”

“I understood you,” I assured him.

“He showed up for his kids and for his grandkids, too,” he continued. “If somebody had a game, it was on his calendar and we’d change around the schedule so that he could be there. If somebody was sick, he’d drop what he was doing to stop by and check in, bringing ice cream sandwiches. That was his thing.”

“He sounds like a nice person.”

“He was. The people in his family didn’t get it, though. I guess they thought that it was normal to have someone loving them that way, that it wasn’t exceptional. Like you think it’s normal to have your sisters love you.”

“Brenna doesn’t love me. Brenna loves Brenna.”

“Brenna’s fine,” he said. “They’re all fine, and you’re lucky, too.”

“You’re right. I am,” I agreed. “I guess I should try to consider this new baby like my mom does, that we’re lucky to have it in the family. All I can think, though, is that she and Patrick are going to try to drop it on one of us. Nicola’s out, because she’s pregnant, too. And that’s not common knowledge, so keep it to yourself.” But Danny had never spilled secrets. He’d known, for example, about my scoop that the vice-principal was going to leave our school under a cloud, and he’d never breathed a word about it until the day that I’d broken the story in the paper (and gotten in huge trouble).

He’d known that I was worried about Addie, too, that she’d been sad and lonely, and how she had thought that she wasn’t good enough to have a boyfriend. He’d been reluctant to ask her out but I’d phrased it as a favor to me, and I’d really believed that they would end up liking each other. I was sorry it hadn’t happened, although she seemed happy now with her current guy, the imposing Nordic Hulk.

“If I were ever a father, I would want to be like my former boss,” Danny said.

“If that ever happens, I hope that someone appreciates you more than that guy’s bratty kids did.”

“They weren’t bratty,” he told me. “They loved him and he knew it. But sometimes we just don’t see what’s right in front of us. We don’t appreciate people like we should. I know that when he died, they were totally broken up,” he continued. “They’re probably sorry now, when it’s too late.”

I thought about that. “Are you saying that I should tell my mom and dad that I love them?”

“Do you?”

In spite of everything, yes. At a red light, I texted both of them and almost immediately got messages back, asking if I was ok or contemplating self-harm. “Never mind,” I typed.

“Thanks for a fun night,” Danny said when I turned into his driveway. “How’s your hand?”

“It hurts, but it’s to be expected. My butt hurts more.”

“That guy was an asshole.” He got out, but then leaned back down to talk to me. “I remember when you hit a guy for me.”

“He deserved it, too.”

“Yeah, he did. I never forgot it.”

Neither had I. I watched him walk into his house and I saw him stand on his front porch and wait for me to go into mine.