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Brigit sat behind me, and I noticed the traitorous armchair didn’t dump her on the ground. Brutus.
“You didn’t do it on purpose.”
“But I hurt him.”
She started to braid my hair, her fingers tracing soothing paths along my scalp. Brigit was great at being a girl.
“You love him. Sometimes we hurt the people we love. If he didn’t really, really love you back, he wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“Huh.” I thought about the logic of her statement, and it made a funny sort of sense. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“You need to give him time.”
“How much time?”
“It isn’t a set sort of number. Just give him time.”
“I need to know how much.”
She tugged my hair. “Secret, be patient.”
“Make up a number.”
“Twelve days.”
She said it too fast
. She was making it up. When I told her so, she took the second bottle of Jameson away before I could open it.
We watched an infomercial for a juicer, and once it was over I was glad I drank blood instead of disgusting carrot-and-beet-juice blends. I was also sober, and the emptiness of my apartment opened before me so wide that my grief threatened to swallow me whole.
When Gabriel had left me, I’d promised to never let anyone in again.
Now I remembered why.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Keaty didn’t look happy to see me.
His mood didn’t improve when I sat down and said, “I need your help.”
He slipped the folder in his hand into his file cabinet and closed the office door behind me. “Where are you on the Gerry case?”
I knew he was going to get on me about my outstanding projects for him, like a parent who can never be thankful for all the things done right and only focuses on how you forgot to do the dishes. This was Keaty’s way, and I was prepared for it.
I threw an envelope full of hundred dollar bills on his desk. The money spilled out dramatically, all seven thousand dollars worth. Not our biggest payout, but seventy hundred-dollar bills looks pretty pimp when it’s fanned out on a desk.
“What’s this?”
“I closed the Gerry case.”
“Did you—”
I threw a folder on top of the money. “Paperwork is done.”
I’d actually completed the case a week before leaving for Louisiana but hadn’t taken the time to tell him.
He counted out thirty bills and handed them to me. “Good work.”
