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He shrugs a shoulder. “Just messing with you. It’ll be easier to watch her here anyway. Especially once she’s pregnant.”
My jaw tightens, and it takes me a minute to speak. “I want you and Mom to move to the apartments at Augustine’s.”
He’s mid-way to bringing his glass to his lips but stops. “Why?”
The front door opens then, and we both glance toward the hallway where we clearly hear our mother’s voice. I stand, shove my hands into my pockets, that bead burning a fucking hole in my brain. “Easier. You don’t like it here anyway,” I tell him as I listen to her heels clicking along the floor.
“That’s true, but you’re kicking us out for her?”
“Who’s kicking whom out?” comes my mother’s voice as she enters the living room. She’s wearing a dress I haven’t seen before. I wonder which designer but can guess the price tag.
“Mom,” Caius says, swallowing the contents of his glass. “Drink?” He moves around the bar to make a vodka martini for our mother and pour himself another whiskey. She studies me as he carries her drink to her. “Santos wants to move back in here with his wife. And he wants us out.”
She takes the glass and turns back to me, eyebrows furrowed. “Why would you want that?”
“Which part?” I ask.
“Don’t be a smartass,” she tells me. “If you want to live here, that’s fine. I wanted that anyway, especially as we move into phase two.”
I take a deep breath in and force myself not to comment on thatphase two.
Caius watches us, and when I open my mouth to answer, he comes to stand beside me. “I have good news,” he says.
She raises her eyebrows, surprised at the interruption.
“Thiago Avery is dead,” he tells her, saving me from having to answer. Because the answer is that I want to keep my wife away from them. I feel that in my gut.
“What?”
“I think that’s one of the reasons my brother wants to move his wife here. She went out to the lighthouse last night after they… had a disagreement.”
“You mean after she stabbed him,” Mom says, surprising me but also not. Cummings must have told her he patched me up. So much for doctor-patient confidentiality. “I heard tonight. Let me see.”
“It’s nothing. Flesh wound.”
Caius snorts.
“That’s not what Dr. Cummings said. That girl is dangerous, Santos.”
“What were you doing with Cummings?” I ask.
“That’s my business, isn’t it? Your father has been dead for two years. I won’t answer to my own son.”
“Hey you two, knock it off. Infighting is no good, remember?” Caius says casually. “Don’t you want to know about Thiago’s unfortunate accident?”
“Tell me.”
“Apparently he was at the lighthouse doing devil knows what, and hefellover the edge.” He puts air quotes around “fell.”
It takes her a minute, and it’s like she’s forgotten about the stabbing. She cocks her head, and a small smile begins to creep along the corners of her mouth.
“I’ll go to the Avery house tomorrow, get a feel for what’s going on there,” I say. “In the meantime, no one mentions he was at the lighthouse. I don’t want anyone to know that.”
“Hmm,” Mom murmurs, sipping her drink, thinking. “That’s a pleasant turn of events, isn’t it?”
“A man is most likely dead,” I remind her.
“Most likely?” She looks to Caius for clarification, not me.
