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“Oh my god!” When the silence hangs too thick and I don’t volunteer information, Aubree explodes. “We’re in the Neutral Cube of Truth-Telling and Fantasy-Living. Did you sleep with Detective Fletcher?”
“No.” Soft laughter works its way along my throat. “I did not have sex with Fletch.”
“Did you spend the night with him?”
“In the most technical sense?” I glance across as the doors open, then step out and cross the glistening tile lobby, continuing my explanation only when we’re on the sidewalk outside the George Stanley and heading toward the police station. “Yes. I slept at Archer’s place last night, because Fletch turned up with something kind of important to discuss. It got late, so I slept in Archer’s bed.”
“To have sex with Archer?”
“Nope.” I fold my arms across my chest to keep the chill out. “But that was an awfully personal question to ask, Doctor Emeri. Be careful.”
“Are you and Archer together?”
“No. We’re just… trying to be friends.”
“But he wants to be more?”
“As do I.” I hunch in defense of the cold. “But as I’ve said what seems to be a million times, we’re not compatible. And for us to become compatible, one of us has to compromise too much. That’s not fair on either of us, so our only option is to—”
“Be friends. Yeah, I heard you. What was so important for Fletch to discuss that it required an all-nighter?”
“Lucky for you, you’re about to find out.”
I clamp my lips shut for the rest of our journey toward the station, then climbing the steps I posed on so recently, my mind instantly jumps to the mayor’s ball I still haven’t bothered trying on a dress for.
I’m giving Seraphina a hard time about hair and makeup. I don’t want to select shoes. I simply have no interest in going.
Tragically, only about thirty percent of my reticence is because I’m not interested in dressing up and showing off to a crowd. The other seventy percent revolves around the fact I wish Archer would ask to be my date.
Which, of course, would only lead to more complications in this thing I’m trying to shove into a box labeledfriendship.
“Are you definitely going to that stupid dance?” I hold the door open and allow Aubree to step in ahead of me. “Even if Fletch can’t make it?”
What was a smile only a moment ago, turns to an instant scowl. “Fletch can’t make it? He said he would take me.”
I follow the signs toward the station’s daycare center, moving through hallways and passing officers of all shapes and sizes. Some are in uniforms, many are not. Some are tall and lanky, while others are short and round. Skin colors range, and the way they watch me and Aubree pass through differs just as much as their family’s origin.
“He didn’t say he couldn’t,” I tell her. “But some stuff is happening in his world right now that may cause him to reconsider. If he does, will you still go?”
I find the door labeledNurseryand hit the security buzzer to be let in. “Because I already don’t want to go. But if I drag my unhappy ass there in a stupid dress and in shoes that will hurt my feet, then I find out you bailed and I have no one to sit with, I’m gonna go on a frickin’ rampage.”
The momentrampageleaves my mouth, the door before us opens, and a woman with messy curls—and eyes so blue, they’re almost purple—thins her lips in disapproval.
“Heh.” A nervous snicker works through my chest. “Doctor Minka Mayet. I’m here to collect Mia. I have security clearance.”
“Who is Mia?” Aubree’s head swivels back and forth between the side of my face and the front of the woman’s who studies us. “Minka? Who is Mia?”
“Come this way, please.” Not at all friendly, the woman whose nametag readsJoanturns on her heels and heads into the room, which is mostly packed away.
Toys don’t litter the floor like one might expect of a daycare. Funky smells don’t permeate the air. And there are no children running around like it’s their mission in life to make the most noise possible.
In fact, the lights are out, so the muted sunlight filtering through the windows is all that illuminates the room. A large television sits bolted to the wall, and on it is some weird show led by puppets who sing their A-B-Cs. On the floor directly in front of the TV, on a beanbag so her body is completely eaten up by the beans and fabric, lies a content Mia, who sucks her thumb and watches the television in a kind of meditative daze.
If no one disturbed her, I expect she’d be asleep within minutes.
“You need to sign her out.” Joan shoves a clipboard into my hands so the corner smacks my ribs and rips a snarl from me. “Provide your identification and relationship to the child. Signature. Telephone number. And the time you’re checking her out.”
“Who is Mia?” Aubree hisses while I go to work filling out the papers. “Mayet? Who the hell is that little girl?”
