Page 29 of Wicked Games

I swallow a sip of my wine. “Why?”

“Because I’ll never want to get married again. I’ll always come home from work expecting her not to be there. I don’t want to give up my friendship with Violet. I don’t want to stop working because I actually like my job. Those things make me who I am, and it would just be really nice if when the woman I love says she loves me too, she fucking means it. Shit.” He sighs and leans back in his chair.

“Do you still love her?”

“There’s nothing to love.” He stares at me. “Do you still love Darren?”

I could echo his words because there’s nothing to love, but it’s not only that. “No, but I didn’t realize it until after he left me. It wasn’t love, it was hate. I didn’t want to feel like that, but I did, and sometimes I still do. I’m more than a broken baby machine, and if that had mattered so much, he should have been honest and gotten rid of me first. He was a coward and I hope he’s happy.”

Tears burn my eyes but I don’t want to let them fall. He’s not worth crying over. He really isn’t.

“How did your sister die? Cancer?” he asks, pouring more wine into my glass. I’m thankful for the change in subject, but I wish he would have asked me something else.

I brush at a tear that made its way down my cheek. “Oh, no. The cops think she was mugged. Her purse and jewelry were missing. She was always so brash. She wouldn’t have let someone steal her things, like her wedding ring or the bracelet I gave her for her birthday. I can picture her fighting back and getting killed for it.”

“Christ, I’m sorry.” He squeezes my hand.

“It’s hard, but it can’t be any harder than knowing you’ll never see your little boy again. Can you talk about it?” I’m not asking because he asked me first. It’s just that I can’t get the comment on my blog post out of my mind. Theo would still be alive if Hattie hadn’t been snooping around. What did that mean? It’s obvious Seth won’t be able to tell me where Brooke was spending her time, so he won’t have any ideas why Hattie and Brooke were working together, for lack of a better way to describe their relationship. Was it the community center or something else? Were they friends? That could be all it was. Brooke was planning on leaving Seth and she wanted to start living her own life. Hattie was exciting, liked to party, and maybe Brooke wanted in on the social aspects of being friends with her.

“It’s the call no parent wants, you know?” he starts, but he’s not here with me anymore. “I was at the office, and a cop, the detective handling the case, called my cell. Someone had taken Theo while he was at the park with his nanny. Marcy was hysterical and they had to drug her to calm her down. I rushed home, and Brooke, I don’t know where she was. Detective LaSalle called her cell, but she didn’t get home for another hour. The playground was huge, and Marcy, she was always good, giving him space to play so he wouldn’t feel smothered. The fuckers, they were waiting for it. They knew where she took him and snagged him right off the playground. She called 911, but the van was gone by the time the cops got there. They found it later that day, abandoned on a street not far from the park.”

“How long did they keep him?” I ask softly.

“Two days. It was the longest two days of my life. It’s like on all the TV shows . . . cops sitting around our house, waiting to trace a ransom call.”

I don’t remember much about that time. I knew Darren was getting ready to leave me, and I was preoccupied. I was looking at apartments, knowing in the back of my mind I’d need somewhere to go once he finally did. Hattie was being quiet, but I was used to that. It just meant that she was working on a big story and I left her alone. We were always respectful of each other’s space.

“They called you,” I say, trying to picture it.

“Yeah. We set up a ransom exchange on the west side of the city. Most of the area was blocked off for construction and they knew we’d be alone. I was supposed to leave the bag in a newspaper box and walk away. He said no cops and only LaSalle was there watching. They had Theo, and one of them was going to leave him by the box after he took the bag. I don’t know what happened. I made the drop and walked, just like I was supposed to. I waited, and LaSalle waited. We wanted to catch the asshole, but Theo’s safety came first. All of a sudden a gun went off, and when I ran back, Theo was on the ground. He was dead when I got to him. LaSalle didn’t see what made him do it. We don’t know why he killed Theo.”

Tears are running down Seth’s face, but he doesn’t acknowledge them or wipe them off his cheeks. Half his steak is still on his plate and his potato glistens with butter in the candlelight.

“Brooke moved out a week later,” he finishes.

We sit, the crickets still chirping, the water brushing along the shore. There’s a slight breeze, and it whispers through the trees. The stars shine and the moon glows, and it would have been the perfect evening except a little boy is dead for no reason other than greed. A little boy’s life was worth five million dollars when Seth has billions and he would have given it all away if it had kept his son safe.

“You should go,” he says, roughly pushing his plate away.

I study his face, his weary brown eyes and the scruff, and I try to decide what’s best. Some people need to be alone, and if this is one of those times for Seth, then I don’t want to be in his way. But sometimes people want to be around other people even if they say they don’t. Brooke left him at a time when he needed her, and if I do that to him, whatever we might build will be ruined before we start. He’ll always compare me abandoning him to what she did, and it wouldn’t matter if he was the one who told me to go.

I decide to turn it on me. “I don’t feel like being alone right now. Can I stay? Just for a couple of hours.”

He sighs, relieved, and I hold in a sigh of my own. I made the right choice. “If you’re sure.”

“Yeah. Thanks. I just need to run across the yard and get some pajamas.”

“No, don’t. You can wear one of my t-shirts.”

“Okay. I’ll clean up.”

“I’ll help you.”

We scrape our half-eaten meals into the garbage and I wash the plates, forks and knives, and wineglasses. He dries them and puts them away. It’s after one in the morning when we go up to his room and I change into a plain black t-shirt he digs out of a dresser. He crawls into bed wearing his boxer briefs and curls his body around mine. He’s still tired, and his body sinks into the mattress.

“Be here when I wake up?” he mumbles into my hair.

“Yeah. I will.”