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I remind myself that he doesn’t want the same thing I want.
He isn’t thinking about a sun-drenched backyard and little kids running here and there, maybe spattered with paint from the art session we’re having.
I see a giant canvas covered in little footprints and handprints, every color of the rainbow shining our happy family life back up at us.
“Thanks for saying that,” I murmur after a pause.
He brings my hand up, guiding it to his lips, and then kisses it tenderly. The warmth lingers, shivering down over my arm, coiling around my wrist like some kind of phantom sign, one step down from a real wedding ring.
Our eyes meet, and for a moment, I know he’s going to do it. He’s going to start telling me intense, captivating things.
He said he’s never just kissed anybody like he kissed me…and doing it when he was supposed to kill me, surely that’s a sign.
Surely it means something.
“Hello?” I turn at mom’s voice. She’s looking up at Felix, eyes narrowed, probably wondering what this giant is doing on her doorstep.
Then she spots me, closely looking as though I’m going to disappear.
“Freya?” she says, voice rising. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Of course, mom isn’t going to automatically assume Felix is my boyfriend or that anything romantic is happening here. Still, when I read the anxious note in her voice, it hammers it home.
She thinks I’m in trouble, probably assuming Felix is some kind of law enforcement.
“We need to talk inside,” Felix says, his voice low but firm as he glances over his shoulder, looking for them, whoevertheyare.
“Mom, I’m sorry, but we need to come in. Now.”
* * *
Mom and Julie sit on the couch, close but not touching.
Julie came downstairs soon after we came in here, wearing a baggy T-shirt that made her look thinner. She’s tied her hair up, and her eyes are red and puffy, as though she’s been crying.
I tried to take her aside when she came down to ask what she meant on the phone.
But the second she saw Felix, she just said, “Later.”
In a quick burst, almost angry, though Julie rarely gets angry at me.
Now she sits beside mom, processing what Felix is telling them. Felix talks quickly, giving them the same basic facts he gave me, but much quicker.
“So you were hired to kill my daughter,” Mom says once Felix is done, slowly speaking as if she needs time to compute it.
Felix looks at her steadily. He looms over us all, but he doesn’t use his bulk as a tool the same way some guys did in high school. He simplyishuge.
“Yes,” he says. “I’ve got no way of knowing if they’re coming here, but we can’t risk it. We have to go.”
Mom sighs, looking at me, then at Julie.
“It’s been quite a while since you two pulled an old-fashioned practical joke, hasn’t it?” she says. “And there I was, thinking I’d be able to drift off into a nice peaceful sleep.”
Julie stares at the floor, her arms crossed, making me think of how she used to be…and making me hate myself for thinking that.
“It’s not a joke,” I say.
“How do you know?” Mom asks.
