Locked (20 page)

“Your house, of course. I said you would be keeping an eye on him.”

And Mycroft drives away.

|||

I open Carol’s door—Sherlock’s door—just as he’s getting dressed.

He’s standing by the window, pants on but no shirt, gazing out at what I assume is Mycroft’s car driving away. I love the way he looks there, half-bathed in light, that thoughtful expression. Someone should paint him. Then he turns to me and I nearly break at the way his face changes, just slightly—becoming cooler, more guarded, the way he looked when I met him for the first time. “What was Mycroft—”

But I don’t let him finish his sentence. I cross the room and hug him, tightly.

“Irene—what—” He’s frozen, his voice hoarse. The muscles in his chest and stomach are rigid. I can feel them. I can feel his chest rising and falling with breath. I can feel his heartbeat.

I can feel everything.

“I didn’t go into your house to put myself in danger, or because I wanted an adrenaline rush,” I say. “I did it because I thought you were in there.”

“Irene,” he says. But he doesn’t say anything else.

“I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you.” I’ve thought about what I’m going to say, and it’s not even a lie. “I was scared. You’re a dangerous person and you do dangerous things and I was scared of what would happen to me if something happened to you. After my sister died, I turned into—I don’t know what I turned into. I was different. There was no color in anything.”

He’s completely motionless.

“But the colors came back when I met you, Sherlock. I woke up. I don’t think I can ever repay you for that. And I decided it’s stupid to try not to care about you because I’m scared about losing you. Anyway, I don’t think I can. Not care about you, I mean.”

“You care,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“About me.”

“That’s what I said, yeah.”

“And…you weren’t talking to me…
because
you cared.”

“Pretty much.” I look up and his eyes are slightly glassy. He gives his head a little shake and then squints down at me.

“Perhaps I should take you to the hospital. It’s possible you hit your head when you passed out.”

“I didn’t hit my head.”

“Or that the smoke inhalation is interfering with your mental capacities.”

“No, Sherlock, I’m pretty sure I’m fine.”

“Then it’s possible that you have some sort of latent mental disability and I recommend a psychiatric evaluation.”

“You’re recommending a psychiatric evaluation because I said I cared about you.”

“Correct.”

“I think you’re the most conceited person I ever met who also has bad self-esteem.”

“Self-esteem is a construct based on—”

“You know, you’re kind of ruining the moment.”

“Sorry.”

My brother apologizes to you when he has never apologized to anyone else.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Irene?” he asks, the sunlight still turning him into this kind of—being of light, I don’t know. “The ambulance driver said for you to come to the hospital if anything seemed wrong in the morning.”

I heard you tell him just this morning. Every time you asked if he was okay.

“I’m fine.” I pull back and smile. “Let’s go tell my mom you’re moving in with us.”

“You can’t always not be in the burning building.”

|||

(written on a breakfast napkin)

Things I must do:

1. Fewer dangerous things. At least life-threatening things. At least blatantly life-threatening things. Irene deals badly with death.
   
2. Stop being irrational. This is irrational. Irene is being irrational.
   
3. If we were being rational, Irene would isolate herself from others (ex.: me) so as not to experience the pain when I inevitably die. (Mortal coil always shuffles off.)
   
4. If we were being rational, I would isolate myself from others (ex.: Irene) for approx.. five hundred reasons, including: distractions, self-preservation.
   
5. Should stop being selfish. Being selfish not distancing myself from her. Mycroft has always called me selfish. Hate when he’s right.
   
6. Likely will not do any of these things. Will prioritize the first.
   

|||

“Sherlock, what are you writing?” I ask.

He stuffs the scribbled-upon napkin in his pocket. “A list of possible ingredients used in this French toast. It’s is a paragon of perfection by comparison against which all other French toast is doomed to fail.”

He smiles winningly at Mom. I’ve never heard him trying to be charming before. I try to hide my laughter by drinking orange juice and end up choking on it.

“I can just give you the recipe,” Mom says faintly. She hasn’t touched her breakfast, even though she broke out the bacon-French-toast-eggs combo this morning. She cooks when she’s nervous.

“I like to figure things out on my own.”

“Okay,” she says, mostly to herself. “Okay. So you need a place to stay.”

Sherlock makes a tragic face. I kick him under the table.

“What?” he whispers. “I’m appealing to her motherly instinct by widening my eyes to evoke the aesthetic of an infant and projecting an aura of vulnerability so that she’ll feel obligated to take me in.”

“It’s mostly just creepy,” I whisper back.

“I can hear you both, you know,” says Mom.

We freeze.

She takes a numb sip of coffee. I’m rather proud. She’s handling her first Sherlock experience better than most people. “So you need a place to stay and you want to stay here.”

“It was my idea,” I say quickly.

“I just didn’t know you two had become such good friends.”

“It was sort of an accident,” I say.

“Yes, entirely arbitrary.”

I kick him again.

“And by arbitrary, Mrs. Adler, I mean I was drawn to your daughter by a mixture of her intelligence and fine character.”

“Oh…thank you.”

“She must have inherited those traits from you, as well as her large earlobes.”

I whip out my phone.
She’s self-conscious about the earlobes.

He glances down at the phone screen and looks up again. “And by large I mean absolutely miniscule. I would need a microscope to see those. Truly tiny.”

“Irene?” says Mom.

“Yes?” I reply sweetly.

“May I speak with you for a moment in the living room?”

I get up at once, resting a reassuring hand briefly on Sherlock’s shoulder.

He twists his head to look at his shoulder, frowning. “Are you trying to get a bug off me?”

“…Just stay here.”

In the living room, Mom rubs her hands together anxiously. I feel sort of bad that I’ve sprung this on her, but not bad enough to take it back. “He can’t stay with his brother?”

“His brother has some sort of big job. He’s always off on business trips.” I chew my bottom lip. “His house just burned down, Mom. Come on. I’ll always do the dishes. I’ll clean the basement.”

“We don’t have anywhere for him to stay.”

“There’s Carol’s room.”

That hangs between us like something suspended on a spiderweb.

“He slept in there last night and it was fine. And,” I add firmly, “we can’t leave her room exactly as it was forever. It’s not healthy. It needs a change.”

She nods slowly. I’ve been wanting to say that to her for so long. “Maybe…how long will he need to stay?”

“His brother’s looking for a place, but you know how the housing market is. And I think Sherlock was really shaken up by the fire,” I lie. “He doesn’t have any parents and his brother’s never around and I’m sure it would be good for him to be with people.”

“He’s just…a little odd.”

“You get used to him. Trust me.”

She laughs nervously. “He’s not going to murder us in our sleep, is he?”
      

I place both my hands on her shoulders. “Mom, listen to me. Sherlock Holmes is a very, very, very good person.”

“Well…” she says hesitantly.

“And his brother will pay us.”

“He will?”

“Yeah, he’ll give us extra money for the extra groceries and stuff. Sherlock doesn’t eat that much, though.”

“We’ll have to fix that, I suppose.”

I smile.

“Thanks, Mom.”

|||

A few hours later, I’m holding up a little yellow card. “What about this color?”

“Is it paint?” Sherlock isn’t even looking.

“Yes, of course it’s paint.”

“Then I’m satisfied with it.”

We’re at the home goods store. The walls of Carol’s old room are filthy, the paint chipped and faded, and I’d decided it needed a new coat. But it’s not Carol’s room anymore, I have to remind myself. It’s Sherlock’s room now.

“Okay, but it can’t just be paint.” I flick through a few shades of purple. Purple seems like a Sherlock color. Elegant and dark. “It has to be a color you like. You’ll be staring at it all the time.”

“I have no particular feelings for one color over another.” He raises an eyebrow at a display of doorknobs, like he can’t believe people would need so many different kinds of doorknobs. “The space in my brain where ordinary people choose to store color preferences, I have put quantum mechanics.”

“Fine.” I grab sample card of a shade of pink lurid enough to make someone’s eyes bleed. “This color then.”

“…Maybe not that one.”

“Careful, your dislike of pink is pushing the quantum mechanics out of your brain.”

We settle on a shade of almost-dark blue and lug the cans to the car. I start it up and Sherlock starts complaining that they never put classical music on the radio. It’s like the space between us, the one I made, is almost gone. I hated that space so much.

On the way back, I say, “So I need to lay down some ground rules.”

“Rules for the use of the ground?” He’s gazing out the window. “Am I still allowed to step on it?”

“Stop being a smartass for two seconds and listen.” I stop at a red light and poke his shoulder until he faces me. “Rules about the house. Number one: no smoking inside.”

“Shocker, that one. Never saw it coming.”

“Number two: no experiments in the microwave. In fact, let’s just put a blanket ban on all experiments requiring kitchen appliances.”

He smirks. “What about experiments requiring garden tools?”

“I’ll bring it before the board. Number three: you have to eat normally so my mom doesn’t think you’re anorexic or something.”

“When I agreed to move into your house, you neglected to mention it’s virtually indistinguishable from prison.”

The light turns green and a car behind me honks. I give them a thumbs up in the rearview mirror before stepping on the gas. One of the paint cans in the back falls over. “It’s very distinguishable from prison, thanks. We’re not making you wear an orange jumpsuit.”

“Yet,” he says ominously. “To be fair, I suppose it’s better than living with Mycroft. Though having all my fingernails pulled out with pliers would be better than living with Mycroft.”

“Well, we won’t do that to you either. And don’t say ‘yet.”

He closes his mouth, which had been forming around a Y.

When we get back to the house, we pack up all Carol’s things.

Her old soccer trophies. Her CDs. Her books. Her posters. Every time I put something into a box, it’s like cauterizing a wound—painful, but necessary. Having all her room exactly as she left it has kept me bleeding.

Sherlock picks up a patched old sweatshirt, holding it away from his body like it’s about to poison him. “You didn’t tell me she was in the drama department.”

“She wasn’t.”

“Oh. I thought she must have played a hobo and this was part of her costume.”

“Yeah, it was her favorite sweatshirt. And maybe don’t make fun of my dead sister’s fashion choices.”

“Sorry.”

When I’m almost done and the boxes are stacked high and sweat is dripping off my nose, I turn around to see Sherlock staring at me in that way he does sometimes—eyes intense, brow slightly furrowed, like he’s working out the most difficult puzzle he’s ever been presented with. I don’t get it. Someone like me couldn’t possibly be confusing to him. I balance a box full of books on top of the pile. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he mutters.

“No, what’s wrong?”

“Me.”

“You’re wrong?”

“No, I’m never wrong. Something’s wrong
with
me.”

It’s such an uncharacteristic thing for him to admit that I put down the stack of folded clothes I just picked up. “What do you mean?”

“I keep seeing you,” he says. Eyes still narrowed, contemplative. He’s sitting on her bed. Somehow, just him sitting there has turned her bed from a ghost back into just a bed.

“That’s not something wrong with you, Sherlock, that’s the fact that I’m standing in front of you.”

“No. Not here.” He absently plucks a loose string on the quilt. “When I close my eyes. I see you. In my house. During the fire. The way you were when I found you. I have no idea why.”

I blink.

“When I came back and realized that you’d gone into the house after seeing that both your front door and mine was left open, I had a physical reaction. I’ve researched it and they were somewhat similar to heart attack symptoms. Shortness of breath. Chest pain. Never had a physical reaction to a piece of information before. Perhaps I should see a doctor.”

“You don’t need to see a doctor.” I smile at him. His slightly puzzled expression is downright cute, but I’m pretty sure if I told him that, he’d kill me. “Thanks.”

The puzzled expression deepens. “Why are you thanking me?”

“You cared, that’s all. That’s what you’re talking about.”

“Like I said.” He stands up and sweeps several picture frames off the dresser, tossing them into an almost-full box. “Something’s wrong with me.”

We’re interrupted by a loud knocking downstairs.

“That’s weird.” I straighten and wipe some of the dirt off my knees. Carol wasn’t a big fan of vacuum cleaners. “Mom’s not getting home until five.”

We go downstairs together, trailing dust. Sherlock has a big clot of it stuck in his hair. I pick it out before reaching the door first, pulling it open. A burly policeman is standing there.