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“Of course not. I let them watch from a safe distance.” He propped one hip against the car. “No special resources for this job. You’ll have to work with what you’ve got.”
I hefted the pack of firecrackers in my hand, thinking of the last time I’d seen a fireworks stand on the side of the road. A tired-looking woman at the wheel of a station wagon full of snot-nosed little boys had looked the other way as they loaded up on the crackers, stuffing them into apples and tossing them out the back window at passing cars.
I looked at Taverner and shrugged. “Story of my life. Why should it be any different now?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Helen and Taverner made a run to the grocery store for supplies—potatoes, a huge beef roast, individual Yorkshire puddings, apple tart, nondairy creamer—because for the last night at Benscombe we decided on a special dinner. Taverner did the cooking, a bath towel wrapped around his waist in place of an apron. Nobody had much of an appetite, but we always remembered Constance Halliday’s golden rule: eat, sleep, and use the facilities at every opportunity. The Duke of Wellington, she’d explained, had told his troops to make water whenever they could, and it was pretty good advice. You couldn’t always count on a toilet or a cruller when you needed one.
So we forced ourselves to eat, and when the dishes were done, the others wandered off, leaving Nat, Helen, Mary Alice, and me. Natalie emerged from the cellar with a cobwebby bottle. “Guess what I found?” She wiped the bottle clean andHelen rousted out the good glasses, giving them a quick wash. I proposed the toast.
“Tomorrow has been a long time in the making,” I began. “Forty years.” I paused, thinking of the Shepherdess and everything she had taught us. I cleared my throat and started again. “Forty years ago, Constance Halliday set us on this road and created her squad of Sphinxes. It hasn’t been exactly what any of us expected. But we have done our best, and we will make her proud. She challenged us to make justice our priority, and tomorrow, justice will be done.”
“Justice,” said the others. We clinked glasses and drank. Then we took out our phones and opened our Menopaws! app. It was time to sync our cycles.
The next day I woke and stretched, a good two hours of yoga to get me limbered up. Then I took a long shower and dressed in jeans, a white silk shirt, and a suede jacket the color of burnt caramel. I put on a pair of flat boots and brushed out my hair. There were a few extra grey ones in the mix, but I figured I’d earned them. I clipped half of it back with a simple silver barrette Natalie brought me; the rest hung down, brushing my shoulders. I didn’t bother with jewelry or perfume.
The others were scattered around the property. Taverner was busy in the kitchen, sharpening a boning knife, while Mary Alice and Helen were tinkering with a decrepit old tractor, unscrewing a heavy panel of steel from the side that was painted with the word “Bettinson.” Natalie was keeping busy with some knitting needles and a skein of yarn she’d found in the attic.
I looked at the knotty shape she was making.
“Scabbard?” I guessed.
“Penis warmer,” she told me.
I laughed and went to the garden shed for a long time, having one last cigarette and clicking through my phone as I ran through the plan. I was gambling, not just with my life, but with everyone’s. I couldn’t afford to get this wrong.
I pulled my jacket around me and stubbed out my cigarette before saying my good-byes. I thumbed through the apps, opening the one for text messages. I keyed in a few sentences and hit “send.” When I was finished, I left my phone with Mary Alice.
“You ready for this?” she asked.
“Nope.”
She grinned. “Neither are we. Now, get going.”
I went to the driveway to find Taverner waiting, swinging his keys in his hand.
“I thought Minka was taking me to the station.”
“She’s busy working on her fastball with Akiko,” he said. “I’m driving you.”
I got into the passenger side without waiting for him to open the door.
“So we’re spending some quality time together?” I asked.
“It looks like it.” His voice was casual, but he was tapping his finger on the steering wheel and I knew exactly why.
Those last few hours before a job goes down, the adrenaline is pumping and there are limited ways of releasing it. Sex and exercise are effective, but they’re a bad idea before a job. They can leave you tired and rubber-legged. Alcohol can alsotake the edge off, but it can also dull the sharpness you need for the work. There’s only one solution and that’s to sit with it, that simmering feeling of wanting to jump out of your skin. It’s the reason I took up meditation, and most of the time it worked, but not with Taverner sitting next to me, eighteen inches and thirty years of history between us. We’d been good together in a way that I could never have explained to anybody. The sense of recognition, of the world slotting into place when I met him, was something I’d never felt before or since.
We’d lasted three years, stealing time between jobs to meet up in out-of-the-way places since romantic entanglements between field agents were strictly prohibited. Our last rendezvous—in a dive lodge in Mozambique—ended with him proposing for the fourth time and me packing my bag two days early. He’d driven me to the station then too, kissing me on the cheek and telling me he understood. It wasn’t complicated. We wanted different things. He was six years older and ready to settle down, build a life, and make some babies. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out how to make myself small enough to fit into that picture.
Two years later, he’d left a message for me when I was on a job in Venice. When I called him back, he’d told me it was his wedding day, and I wished him luck. I very nearly meant it. He didn’t say the words, but I was fluent in Taverner and I could hear the subtext.I loved you first and I will love you last.
I’d hung up the phone and gone on to kill my mark in Venice with my bare hands, probably around the time he was cutting his wedding cake.
I turned to face him, studying the profile that had somehow gotten better with age. “Do you ever regret it?” I asked him. “Breaking up, I mean.”
He paid me the compliment of at least thinking about it before he said no. “If we hadn’t broken up, I wouldn’t have my girls. I would have missed thirty good years with Beth—and they were good, most of them.”
