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Sighing, I force myself to sit upright and turn toward him. “This is about my collaboration with Ruthie.”
He nods. “I figured it might be. She’s been weird too, like when she’s about to unfold a new business idea and isn’t ready to tell anyone yet.”
“Well…” I pause. “It’s kind of a business idea.” I think about launching into this by telling him that Ruthie lost her job at the diner, but it’s a shitty tactic and I won’t stoop to it. Maybe I would if we were in the courtroom, but we’re not. I owe him more than that. “This isn’t easy for me to say…”
But say it I do. I launch into a story about Freeman’s misunderstanding, and how Ruthie wanted health insurance for Izzy. He’s stone-faced through it all—as unreadable as the most hard-to-woo jurors, and I feel sweat beading on my hairline despite the cold.
“So you’re getting married?” he says flatly.
This is where I really screwed up. I steel myself to tell the truth and nothing but—and accept all the pain it brings. “We already did. Yesterday.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, this time not at all comfortable, looking out at the view. Finally, he says, “I thought you didn’t like Ruthie. The two of you have never seemed to get along, even when we were kids. You could barely handle being in the same room as each other. But Mira sees something different.”
“What?” I ask, so taken aback, I nearly fall off the edge of the chair I’m sitting on.
“You should have told me the other day, at the ring shop. It’s fucked up that you didn’t say anything.”
I feel like I have whiplash, but this obviously isn’t the moment to interrogate him about what Mira thinks she’s seen. “It is,” I acknowledge. “I’ve felt bad about that.”
“Not bad enough to be honest with me.”
“That’s true.”
He finally turns to look at me, and I see the banked anger in his stare. Maybe he’s not just pissed about this—maybe it’s a hundred little things that I’ve done. How I’m the one who wanted to stop the weekly D&D games we’d had with our friends since middle school. How, before I quit my job, I’d pared back on the time we spent together, including our morning bike rides. The truth is, I don’t understand why I did any of those things.
“You got my sister to lie for you.”
I don’t try to defend myself. He’s right. I was desperate, and I did a desperate thing. I wasn’t thinking about Danny or how he would react or whether it would destroy a friendship I had already undervalued. I was thinking about myself and my need to have some sort of meaning. To have a purpose that went beyond the mechanics of taking care of my body.
“I would have taken care of Izzy’s operation,” he continues. “I would have found a way.”
I nod, but I can’t help but add, “Ruthie wouldn’t have let you. This way she feels like she’s doing something for the money. She wouldn’t have let you—or me—just give it to her.”
He considers this for a moment, then gives me a tight nod. “You’re still an asshole. If I’d known, I would’ve…I would’ve at least gone there to support her and you. You took that away from me.” He doesn’t look pissed anymore, but I can feel it radiating from him. I can see it in the way he’s pulling splinters out of the arm of that chair. He probably doesn’t even realize it, but later his fingers will be raw, maybe even bloody.
If only he knew…
Guilt claws at me. But I meant what I said to Ruthie. Even if Danny finds out, even if he is livid, it’s hard to be sorry for that stolen night.
“I’m going to leave,” I say, “but there’s something else I need to tell you first.”
I fill him in on the situation with his mom and the school and my plan to get a security system installed at the apartment.
He shakes his head. “I should have let her get put away for the Drunk and Disorderlies.”
“They wouldn’t have given her much jail time for that,” I say. “I figure you bought yourself some time. Some goodwill. Ruthie says Rita has been leaving her voice messages for weeks or maybe months. This is her amping up her behavior. Ruthie’s going to give her a call. Tell her to back down. I told her to make a police report, too, but you know they won’t do much, particularly not since it’s a family member. An old woman.”
He swears and runs his hands through his hair. Sighing, he adds, “I’ll call her too.”
“I don’t like that she said she wanted to introduce Izzy to someone,” I say. “Do you think she could have been talking about Rand?” I didn’t mention that particular fear to Ruthie last night because I’d already done a good job of inciting rage in her.
But he’s already shaking his head. “My mother doesn’t know Rand. Not personally. Ruthie stopped talking to her way before she and Rand started dating. And he never would have struck up a friendship with my mother. Ruthie’s family was a source of embarrassment to him.” He says this with no self-consciousness. His parents are a source of embarrassment to him too, of course, and he has no ego I’ve ever seen evidence of. He wouldn’t have cared if Rand found him embarrassing, because he’d strongly disliked the tool even before I’d cautioned him. “If he wanted to see Izzy, he’d tell Ruthie directly, but he’s never shown any interest. I doubt that’s going to change. He got re-married last year to some eighteen-year-old debutante.”
If anyone would know, it’s him. Danny’s good at finding information other people don’t want him to, and I’m guessing Rand didn’t see fit to hide that. He’s probably proud.
“Fucker,” I say, growling it out.
“You think the new wife knows he got a vasectomy?” he asks.
