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“And he’s still with them?”
“They gave him my partnership spot, which tells you they’re born of the same cloth.”
“So this case is personal to you,” she adds.
“No case is personal to me,” I say, my own words an unfriendly reminder of the fact that I’ve made her personal. “When you get personal,” I add, a warning to myself as I speak it, “you end up on the bottom with everyone else on top.”
“Yes,” she agrees, and when she says nothing more, again reaching for her ice cream, that one word becomes loaded.
“Yes?” I prod as she removes the lid to her ice cream and jabs her spoon inside.
“Yes,” she says, offering nothing more but my pint of ice cream, which she shoves into my hand. “It’s ready.” And then, before I can press further, she moves on, “Did you leave and open your firm, or did that come later?”
I pull the lid off my pint. “I left and opened my firm. Ten years ago next month.”
She hands me a spoon. “Why San Francisco and not L.A.?”
“I can do everything I can do there in San Francisco, with fewer assholes and less traffic.”
“Yes,” she says. “There are.”
“You’re very agreeable,” I say. “That’s different for you.”
“You haven’t said anything outrageous for me to call you on in at least fifteen minutes. But I’m sure you can remedy that if you try really hard.”
“That’s more like it,” I say, watching as she scoops up ice cream and takes a bite.
“Hmmm,” she sighs. “I love this stuff.” She motions to me with her spoon. “Try yours. I’m dying to know if you like it.”
I reach over and take a bite of hers. “Yes. It’s delicious.”
She smiles and sticks her spoon in my ice cream before taking a bite and then says, “A spoon for a spoon.”
“Like trust for trust?” I ask.
Her mood is instantly somber. “Trust does matter to me, Nick.”
I feel a punch in my chest with those words and my betrayal, but I have to know she’s innocent, and this is about murder. Evidence is everything. “No lies,” I say, hoping like hell mine are the only ones between us. “Tell me something about you.”
She settles back underneath her blanket, the withdrawal in the action easy to read, even before she says, “You already know about me. You researched me.”
“Tell me what documents and the internet can’t. The important parts. Who are you, Faith?”
She takes a bite of ice cream, and I do the same times three, its sweetness easier to swallow than the idea that she might not be what she seems—what I want her to be. “Faith?” I press when she doesn’t immediately reply.
“I’m just trying to figure out what there is to tell outside what you know. I mean, the checklist is pretty obvious. My father died two years ago. My mother died two months ago.”
“That’s how you define yourself?”
“Death does a lot to define us.”
“I disagree,” I say. “Life defines us. And yes, before you ask. I’ve known death. My mother died in a car accident when I was thirteen. My father died a month ago.”
She stares at me, her expression remarkably impassive. “I’m not going to offer you awkward condolences.”
“I appreciate that, but most peopledon’toffer me condolences.”
“I guess that’s the difference between women and men, which is really pretty messed up.”
