Page 40 of Plain Sight

Nate and Lydia exchange a glance.

“You have to let Derek bring it up. Family rules,” Elise says, faux-sternly but with an I-mean-it edge to her voice.

“Okay,” Lydia chirps. “We’re going down to the guest place, then. Our place. To watch a movie.”

“Be safe,” Elise orders. “Do not smoke weed.”

Nate clutches invisible pearls. “Smoke week? Elise, we wouldn’t.”

Elise rolls her eyes.

“We would do edibles,” he whispers.

“Stop it!” Elise tries and fails to hold in a laugh. “This is serious! No drugs. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nate salutes her. “No drugs.”

Elise waves them out of the kitchen.

They tease each other as they go. The last thing I hear as they go down to the foyer to get on the elevator is both of them laughing, Lydia’s voice bright and melodic, Nate’s deeper and satisfied. I can’t help smiling at that sound, but when the penthouse is quiet again…

I don’t frown. I’m in a warm, beautiful kitchen with two women who’ve bundled me up into their family and the cutest little baby I’ve ever seen.

“Ugh.” I rub my hands over my face, hiding the expression that can’t decide what it wants to be. “Is that a thing with the teens now? Smoking weed?”

“Mostly a joke,” Elise says fondly. “Last fall, Nate and Lydia smoked on the roof of the brownstone a couple times. I was more scandalized about it than Gabriel was. He doesn’t want to be too heavy-handed with Nate, given everything, and it hasn’t been a problem since. Not that I think—I don’t think smoking weed a time or two is a problem, I just—I want the very best for him. Not just a lifetime of smoking weed. Or edibles.” Elise wrinkles her nose. “That makes me sound like a mom.”

“It makes you sound great. My grandfather—” It still hurts, talking about him, but I don’t want this to be some forbidden topic, so I push through. “He made it seem like smoking weed would cause an apocalypse. It was not, like, the most welcoming way to have those conversations.”

“Gabriel’s way is better,” Elise agrees.

Charlotte moves around the kitchen, dancing slowly to Elise’s music with a sleeping Robin.

“Given everything?” I ask, because now that I’ve thought of my grandfather and the cut on Jameson’s cheek, my emotions are doing that pregnant-hormones thing, and I need to get back on steady ground. “Jameson had mentioned that Nate didn’t have a place to stay, so that’s why he’s with you and Gabriel.”

“Oh, yeah.” Elise balances the bowl in front of her against her hip, stirring with the other hand. She’s moved on to making frosting now that the cake is in the oven. “Gabriel actually…found him in the alley next to his brownstone.”

“Seriously? He has an alley?”

“He doesn’t own the alley.” Elise laughs. “But he thinks of it as his own, so I’m not sure there’s a difference. Still! Super rare.”

“And he found Nate there?”

Her face falls. “Yeah. We both did, one night. It wasn’t good. He stayed at Gabriel’s, and then—” She waves the spoon in her hand, indicating a long story. “Later, we came home and he was on the stoop. He’d been beaten. It was horrible, but Gabriel was…” She sighs. “He was great with him. And then there was everything else.”

She and Charlotte fill me in on everything else. It’s a distraction from my own ridiculous feelings. How are these people so great in the face of all that everything?

“We’re okay!” Elise comes over and gives me a hug. “Everyone’s fine. Jameson will be fine. We’ll make sure we’re all fine. Including you.”

I wipe my eyes with a napkin. “I am fine! I’m so okay!”

“We’re all fine, then! Yay!” Charlotte bobs Robin up and down. “But you don’t have to be fine if you’re not! I feel like I have to say that to you. If you’re having a hard time, that’s normal.” She brings me another napkin. “And if you want to talk about it with us, you can.”

“I’m afraid for him,” I admit. More tears. They’re not the sobbing kind. Just the overwhelmed-with-concern kind. “Jameson. I know—I know what it’s like to keep things inside. Not as much as he does, but it’s—I mean, we all know he didn’t trip and fall. He got in a fight somewhere.”

“It doesn’t seem like a trip and fall thing,” Charlotte says. “But I hope you know that Mason and Gabriel are doing everything they can to look out for Jameson. They don’t want anything else to happen to him.”

“I don’t think anybody can stop things from happening to him. But I can’t—we can’t just wait around to see how things shake out. That can’t be the answer.”