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The small apartment has two bedrooms. She offers Grace her room, but Grace insists on the sofa. “The less space I have to bump around, the better I sleep,” she says. She lies down and seems to be snoring instantly. Una covers her with a blanket and scares up blankets for the boys. “The spare bedroom has one bed and a bedroll on the floor.”
“I’ll take the bedroll,” says Connor quickly. “Lev can have the bed.”
“No argument,” says Lev.
Una now notices that Connor is wearing one of Wil’s shirts. The fact that he wears it so obliviously makes it all the more infuriating. He should apologize to every thread of the garment. He should apologize to her. But Una won’t tell him this. All she says is, “You don’t quite fill out that shirt, do you?”
Connor offers a smile that is apologetic, but not apologetic enough. “It’s not like I had much of a choice, considering.”
“Yes, considering,” she echoes. She expects him to try to charm her, maybe sidle closer to her, because she assumes this is the kind of boy he is. When he doesn’t, she is almost disappointed. She wonders when it was that she started looking for reasons to dislike people. But she knows the answer to that. It started the day she put Wil’s guitar on the funeral pyre and watched as the guitar burned in his place.
She hands the two their bedding and fetches her rifle, leaning it against the wall near the stairs. “You’ll be safe as long as you’re here.”
“Thank you, Una,” says Lev.
“My pleasure, little brother.”
She catches Conner smirking when she calls Lev that. Una doesn’t care. Let him smirk. Outsiders always do.
35 • Lev
The bedroom has more pictures of Wil than in the Tashi’ne home, all from long before the brief time that Lev knew him. In fact, the room has the uneasy sense of being a shrine.
“Ya think she’s got issues with her lost love?” says Connor blithely.
“Her fiancé,” Lev corrects. “They knew each other all their lives—so try to be a little more sensitive.”
Connor puts up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”
“If you want to win her over, wash that shirt and leave it here when we go.”
“Winning her over isn’t high on my list of priorities.”
Lev shrugs. “Guess you won’t be getting any discounts on guitars.”
After he’s settled in his bed, Lev closes his eyes. It’s getting late, but he can’t sleep. He can hear Una in the kitchen, cleaning up her burned dinner, tidying up so that she can pretend the messy apartment they saw tonight was just their imagination come morning.
Although Connor isn’t moving on his bedroll, it seems his head is far from sleep as well.
“Tonight at dinner was the first time I’ve said that word in almost two years,” Connor confesses.
It takes Lev a few seconds to recall the moment, which was much more traumatic for Connor than for him. He notes that Connor won’t even repeat the M word. “I’m sure Elina knows that and understands.”
Connor rolls over to face Lev, looking up at him from the floor in the dim light. “Why is it that it’s easier for me to deal with a sniper shot than to deal with what I said at the table tonight?”
“Because,” offers Lev, “you’re good in a crisis and you suck at normal.”
It makes Connor laugh. “â??‘Good in Crisis; Sucks at Normal.’ That about sums up my whole life, doesn’t it?” He’s silent for a moment, but Lev knows there’s more coming, and he knows exactly what it will be.
“Lev, do you ever—”
“No,” Lev says, shutting him down. “And neither should you. Not now, anyway.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“It’s the parent question, right?”
Connor stews a bit, then says, “You were annoying as a tithe, and you’re still annoying.”
