Page 9 of High Water

“Anyone could. I’m—” I start to say I’m married. But I’m not. Not for several weeks now.

“You’re?” he asks, waiting for me to finish my sentence.

“I’m trying to go to bed. I have a lot to do tomorrow. Levi and Zephyrine need my help doing some research on the last relic they’re trying to find. I don’t have time for games like this.” I’m desperate to change the subject and get him out of the room.

“I’ll make this quick.”

“I’d prefer you just leave.”

“Is she mine?”

“You scare the hell out of me. Hide out in my room. Spy on me. And now you ask if my daughter is yours?”

“It’s a simple question.”

“Simple. Right. Then I guess I have a lot of complicated ones for you. Or maybe not so complicated. Maybe they’re pretty simple too. I suppose you could answer just one for starters.”

“What’s that?”

“How hard is it to pick up a fucking phone?”

He curses under his breath, and it fuels me to keep going.

“Just once in, what has it been, fifteen plus years? A simple ‘Hi. How are you? No, I’m actually not dead. Thank you for asking. How are you doing?’”

“Would you have picked up?”

I’m stopped in my tracks by that question. I don’t have an answer for it. But I’m not the only one who was affected by his leaving. My whole family mourned the loss. His best friend, the one who advocated to our father on his behalf, was left thinking he was gone.

“Never mind me. What about Levi? My father? Levi might forgive you. Maybe my father would have too. But—” I shake my head, trying to stop the cloying feeling of tears at the back of my throat. I don’t cry. I hate crying. But when I think of all the moments… “Everything you missed. You don’t even know what you lost.”

“I have a pretty good guess.”

“Did you have that guess months ago in the kitchen? Or did you start guessing after you disappeared again? You didn’t even talk to me before you left.”

“I didn’t expect to see you. I didn’t know you were in town. I had no idea about your marriage or about—I need to know. Is she mine?”

“I don’t owe you an answer. Not after what you did. Not after you ran, again.” I shake my head, infuriated when I think about it. “And this time you were a fully grown adult.”

“I didn’t run. I had an assignment. It was halfway to nowhere, and I didn’t have cell access. Levi knew that. I said I’d be back.”

“Months later?” I give him a skeptical once-over.

“There was an accident. One of my guys was in the ICU for weeks, and I spent a few nights in the hospital myself.”

“What kind of accident?”

“I can’t discuss it.”

“Of course you can’t. Just like my brothers. All this cloak-and-dagger shit you all are always up to. Acting like I’m not a grown woman.”

“You’re grown, Jones. No one is denying that.”

“Don’t call me that.” I snipe at him when he uses the nickname he gave me when he found out about my love of archaeology, comparing me to the fictional one that graced our screens as kids. I tried to talk him out of it. But it stuck when he heard the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” one day in school and passed a note after class where he told me there were too many ways I lived up to it to even consider stopping now. I grew to love the name and then hate it in equal measure. I didn’t let Fallon watch a single one of the movies for fear that she’d like one and make me rewatch it a million more times like she did all her favorite shows.

“Is she mine?”

“Why would you think she is?” I’ve managed to keep the secret all these years. No one has ever questioned it.