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“Even ex-rich people need salaries. ”
“But why there?”
He didn’t glance at her. His focus stayed on the long, winding road down to the gates. “I don’t think we need to discuss my job, Bryn. It’s not healthy for either of us to dig too deep into the details. ”
“But back at Joe’s you said—”
“Bryn. ” He cut her off, cold as a guillotine blade. “Change the subject. Now. ”
She hadn’t been going to spill anything top-secret, damn it; she wasn’t that stupid. It offended her that he thought she would. “Fine. Tell me about your family. ”
“Pick something else. ” He finally reached the estate’s gates, which silently opened for them, and they hit the open road. She could sense his frustration in the way he edged the accelerator up past legal speed.
“Oh, no, you already warned me off of one topic. Liam said your family got its money the old-fashioned way. ”
“By oppressing others? Yes, there was a lot of opportunity for that around the early industrial age, and they took full advantage. Great-Granddad was a rival of Rockefeller for a while, only he lacked the civic responsibility. It’s not a glamorous story, Bryn. ”
“It is to someone whose biggest family celebrity was a cousin who made it to the second round of American Idol. Nobody’s ever going to mention the Davises in the same breath as the Rockefellers. ”
“That’s almost certainly a good thing. ”
She laughed. “And you really don’t have a clue what it’s like to grow up poor, McCallister. ”
“I know what it’s like to grow up—” He stopped himself, shook his head, and said, “Let’s not talk about this. ”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not germane to the problems you face. ”
“I didn’t think you wanted to talk about my problems. What with all the secrets. ”
To her surprise, he laughed. It was a strange, almost humorless little laugh, but closer than she’d ever heard from him. “You can be infuriatingly right; did anyone ever tell you that?”
“I can safely say it’s not a problem that’s really bothered me so far in my life. ”
“All right then,” he said. There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and a ghost of a smile on his lips. “You tell me about your family. ”
“You’re kidding. ”
“No. ”
“You probably know everything about all of them. ”
“I know facts. Tell me what they’re actually like. ”
So she did, as the miles hummed by under the tires: Annie, her sweet but financially incompetent sister; her brother Tate’s current deployment to Afghanistan; her older sister Grace, the know-it-all, working as a department manager at Wal-Mart, but with embarrassing secrets; George, the asshole Bryn never spoke to, who was still the apple of her mother’s eye because he ran his own business; and, last, Kyle. “But you know about Kyle,” she said.
“Do I?”
She sighed. “He’s serving fifteen years for armed robbery. Don’t tell me you don’t know about my big brother. I barely know him, though. He took off when he was fifteen years old, and I was just a kid. He was smart, though. Smarter than George, for sure. He got in with bad people after he left home. ”
“Isn’t this where you tell me he’s not a bad guy?”
“No. As far as I know, he’s a hard-ass Aryan Brotherhood member. It’d be stupid to say he’s not a bad guy. ”
McCallister let that lie for a moment before he said, “What about Sharon?”
“What about her?”
