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I shrugged. “I am strange, Mom.” I put my arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Are you just figuring that out?”
“Sit and talk to me,” she said, pointing to the table. I spent the rest of the afternoon with her in the kitchen while she cooked and insisted on doing my laundry for me.
“You aren’t going back into the city tonight,” she said, not phrasing it as a question.
I hadn’t planned on it, so I didn’t argue.
She, my father, and I were just finishing dinner when my mother got up and looked out the window.
“What?” I asked when her brow furrowed.
“Tackle is here.”
While my father got up and answered the door, I went in the opposite direction and ran up the back stairs to my bedroom. “Bathroom,” I shouted behind me when my mother asked where I was going.
To stop myself from listening to hear if he asked for me, or worse, giving in to the urge to go downstairs and confront him, I ran a bath, undressed, and climbed in before I could change my mind.
I don’t know how much time had passed when I heard a knock at the bathroom door. “Sloane?” my mother called out when I didn’t answer.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“Fine, Mom.”
“So strange,” I heard her mutter as she walked away.
The next morning, my father and I drove into the city together since he had meetings all day at the State Department field office, located in the same building as DHS.
“Seems you have a lot on your mind, peanut.”
As with everything else that could be remotely linked to my brother’s best friend, his use of the nickname Knox had given me and Tackle had taken up using regularly made my heart ache all over again. Not that it had ever really stopped.
“Anything I can help with?”
“It’s nothing,” I said, looking out the passenger-side window.
“Work related?”
“Have you heard anything about Abdul Ghafor? I mean, anything you can tell me?”
“Funny you should ask. Tackle is coming in for a meeting today on the same subject.”
I spun my head and gaped. “Are you serious? Why?”
“Probably for the same reason you asked about him.”
“I was curious. That’s different than having a meeting.”
“You’re welcome to join us.”
“Thanks, but no thanks, Dad.”
He glanced over at me. “It’s at thirteen hundred hours if you change your mind.”
“Thanks,” I repeated.
“You’re welcome,” he said again, not realizing what I’d offered my appreciation for was that I now knew exactly at what time I’d be heading out for lunch.
