No Returns (The Blankenships Book 6) (5 page)

“They never do,” he said, in that same haunted, destroyed tone. “They never do until it’s too late.”

“It’s not paranoia when you’re right,” she said. “Say what you want about Arturo and Thalia, but Cindy—I was there. She was killed right in front of me, Alex. She didn’t kill herself.”

He didn’t yell. He didn’t throw anything or argue with her more or tell her that she’d lost her mind. He just stood and walked quietly out of the room, down the hall to his office, where he shut the door.

That night, he didn’t come to bed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

By the day of the funeral, Zoey was close to giving up. She and Alex had barely managed to have a single conversation since Olivia’s visit to the penthouse, and although they’d had a couple of episodes of rough, almost violent intercourse, the connection and release that it had prompted in the beginning was gone. She missed it so much that her body ached with longing, not just for the sex, but for the comfort and connection. Alex spent almost every moment in his office. She hoped that he was sleeping there, because he wasn’t sleeping in what she’d started to think of as their bed — at least, before.

Sophia was a ghost in the house. She cooked and cleaned and was firm and unbreakable, but her eyes were always red rimmed and tired. Once, Zoey tried to start a conversation with the woman, offering her a chance to share her grief, but Sophia simply kept her eyes focused ever so slightly off to the side and nodded until Zoey finally sighed and released her.

“It’s the way things are done in some places,” Helen said, when Zoey talked to her about it later. “You were closer in family to Claire than she was, so it’s her job to absorb your grief, and never let hers show.”

“But she knew Claire for years. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does to her,” Helen said, quietly.

Olivia didn’t come to the penthouse again, which was probably for the best. Zoey had daydreams about somehow forcing reconciliation between Alex and his mother, but she was fairly sure that any attempt on her part to do so would be met with resistance and result in disaster.
You can lead a horse to water
, and all that.

She got a call from a number she didn’t know the night before the service. She stared at her phone for a long moment; she’d had to call the AEGIS PR rep the night before and let them know that she was still getting dozens of calls a day from reporters. The older sounding woman who’d taken her call had assured her that she’d take care of it, but advised her not to answer any calls from people she didn’t know, all the same.

She knew she shouldn’t pick up the phone, but she hadn’t talked to anyone except her mother and Helen in days, and she was sick of talking to people who expected her to be happy and cheerful or burst in tears at the drop of a hat. Getting angry at a stranger could be entertaining.

She swiped to answer the call. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Ms. Zoey Gardener?”

She didn’t know the voice. It was a man’s, deep, with a hint of a Slavic accent. She didn’t know enough to pin down its origin more closely. “Yes, who’s calling please?”

The voice turned on its heel and moved quickly from cautious to jovial. “Ah, hello. This is Leo. Leonard Kordorkovsky. I am a friend of Alex. Perhaps he mentioned my name?”

“It’s a name I’ve heard,” Zoey said, surprising herself in her caution. “But I’m not sure how to know that you’re Mr. Kordorkovsky, since he and I haven’t met.”

The man gave a laugh that she loved. It was big and bearish, and the kind of sound that she could curl up in and pull in after her. She could make a pillow fort out of that laugh and hide away from everything. “I like that you are cautious for him. Do you have Internet?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Find the phone number for Kordorkov Investments, dial it, and ask for Leo. I will wait.”

Well, that was reasonable.
She searched around in her phone for a moment, verified as much as possible that the website she found for Kordorkov Investments was legitimate, owned by a company that was actually affiliated with Leonard Kordorkovsky, and that it hadn’t been thrown up in the last few minutes. She’d heard of journalists who’d done way more shady things in pursuit of a quote or a snippet that would catapult their story to the top of the search rankings.
The church of the almighty click
. She called the number, and when the receptionist answered, she asked for Leo. She was transferred back through to the man she’d been speaking to just a few minutes before.

“Convinced?”

She gave a shrug even though he couldn’t see it. “I believe that if you’re a reporter, you’re working very hard. Are you a reporter?”

That laugh again. So warm. When had she gotten so incredibly cold? “I am not, Ms. Gardener. I assure you. I am a friend of Alex, and I am very concerned for his wellbeing.”

“Join the club,” she said, before she managed to censor herself. God, every word coming out of her mouth pasted itself into a headline behind her eyes. “I shouldn’t talk to you. I shouldn’t talk to anyone.”

“Please don’t hang up on me, Ms. Gardener,” he said. Interestingly, that was what convinced her. If she were on the other side of this as a gag, she knew she’d be desperate, willing to say anything to keep her target on the phone. Leo sounded resigned, sad, and concerned, but not desperate. Not at all. “Please.”

“You talk,” she said. “I’m going to be quiet. You talk.”

“Fair,” he replied. “I have been trying to reach out to Alex since the night of Claire’s death.” The man’s voice twisted for a moment, and then he continued on. “He will not take my calls, and when I came to the building and asked to be buzzed up, the doormen said that he is not accepting any visitors. I am concerned. I do not know how much you know of our friend’s history.”

There was a lot in that word, history. It concerned her in a way that nothing else had. “What do you mean ‘history?’”

He cursed in something she thought was Russian before he continued. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry. Has he been out of the house at all?”

Zoey considered for a moment, and then shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to answer that.”

“So no,” he said, and cursed again. “I will see you tomorrow at the funeral,
moy podruga
,” that affectionate word she remembered from conversations in college with more well-traveled friends, “and I will make your lout of a lover introduce us, so you will not be afraid any more. And we will get him well.
Da
?”

“
Da
,” she said. “Um—
spasibo
?”

He laughed again, and the warmth of it she wanted to build it into a fire and let it heat her bones. “You’re very welcome. We shall talk again soon.”

Alex came to bed that night, and Zoey did her best to reach out and curl up around him. It was a bit like holding a chunk of ice, even though his body was warm enough. There was no give to him, no flex.

She slept poorly, tangling herself with nightmares whenever her eyes did close. She woke early and climbed out of bed to shower and drink some coffee. She brought a cup to Alex, too. He was lying on his back in the bed, his eyes open and focused on the ceiling. She doubted he’d slept at all.

She ran her fingers down his chest, making idle little patterns with her fingertips. He didn’t react, and she let out a sigh she’d meant to contain and shifted her weight to stand.

His hand closed on her wrist without his eyes moving from the ceiling. “Don’t go,” he said, his voice rasping and exhausted. Had he been crying all night long? “Please.” His voice sounded a beat away from whimpering. “Please. Don’t go.”

“I’m here,” she said, “I’m right here.” She kept stroking his chest, his face, his cheeks, his throat, as the tears ran down past his temples into the pillow.

After a time, he sat up and rested his head on her shoulder as he sipped at his coffee. She thought about putting her arm around him, but she had a sense that he wouldn’t welcome it. She drank her own coffee and tried to think quiet, loving thoughts.

He stood, eventually, and showered. She dressed in a simple black skirt and long sleeved shirt, and he wore a dark suit. He didn’t say much at all. They picked at a light lunch that Sophia had put together, and then went downstairs to the waiting car.

At the funeral home, Zoey tried to tell herself to go to the casket, to have one last view of the girl who had been her friend, the girl she’d promised would remain her friend, no matter what happened between herself and Alex, but she couldn’t do it. She heard some of the older people, business associates of the Blankenships, whispering amongst themselves that the funeral home had done an amazing job, and didn’t she look just like she was sleeping? She hated the words. Claire wasn’t sleeping; Claire was dead. Pretending otherwise was somehow worse than admitting what had happened or what had been done to her.

Every so often, Alex turned his gaze towards the coffin, but he didn’t take a single step towards it. Zoey told herself firmly that she would follow his lead and be there to support him if he needed her, but otherwise, it wasn’t like seeing the girl lying cold and still in her casket would erase the memories of trying to somehow push her blood back into her body as the girl cried out in pain.

She felt her hands starting to shake, and took a deep, steadying breath. It didn’t help very much, but it gave her something to do, which was better than nothing.

She picked Leo out of the crowd before he said a word to her. He was as big as his voice, a bear of a man with black hair and a wiry beard cropped close to his chin. He nodded to her from across the room, and when he drew close to her and Alex in the line of mourners, he bent over to kiss her softly on the cheek. Alex he drew into a hug that made her understand the term “bear hug.” Alex wasn’t small by any measure of humanity, but his friend engulfed him. They spoke quietly for a few moments, and Zoey did her best not to listen in. She also tried not to listen to the tiny corner of herself watching the two men and wondering about the encounters that Alex had described to her.

He turned back to Zoey then and gave her a soft, sad smile, the expression of a man who knew that his bulk could be threatening, and had learned to modify that presence when he chose to do so. “Nice to speak to you again, Zoey,” he said, in the light Slavic accent she remembered from the phone call the night before.

“Sorry that I gave you such a hard time on the phone.” Alex gave her a confused look, and she gave him a smile and a small head shake that she hoped he would understand as her saying that she would explain later.

“I am glad that you are taking good care of him.” He glanced behind himself at the line of people still waiting patiently to speak their quiet words and sighed. “I will talk to you more later. Perhaps after the service.”

“Yes,” Alex said, with a passion that surprised Zoey. “Yes, I’d like that.”

The ride from the funeral home to the church was silent. Olivia was in the limousine with Zoey and Alex, and not one of them said a single word. In fact, Zoey tried to think back, and she wasn’t sure she’d heard Olivia say anything at all, even as they’d greeted, shook hands, and returned hugs. An ugly, little knot started up in her belly, especially as she watched Alex and Olivia stare in opposite directions from each other. Claire’s body was like a fault line between them now, and she wondered if they’d ever be able to overcome it and find a way to be together without grinding so much that the world shook.

Zoey found herself inhabiting her body from a distance during the service. She let the words of the pastor wash over her in a familiar rhythm, letting herself fall back into the childhood space of when to stand, when to sit, and what to say and sing. She kept hold of Alex’s hand throughout. He’d chosen friends of Claire’s to do readings, and the teenaged girls were tearful, heart-wrenched in a way that only very young adults could manage. It was one of the most horrible parts of growing up, Zoey thought sometimes, the lack of ability to throw oneself into an emotion with everything one had. It was impossible to grieve in the same way, knowing that the sun was going to rise the next morning, and that the vast majority of the world would continue to carry on, as if nothing had changed.

It seemed that they were at the graveyard in the blink of an eye. Alex was among the men who carried the coffin from the hearse to the grave side. They did it the old European way: each man placing his hand on his opposite’s shoulder, the coffin resting on all of their shoulders together. Leo was there, too, and Luke Pyramus. Two young boys who looked to be Claire’s age.

When the coffin was placed by the raw and jagged wound in the earth, Zoey felt her knees sag and her stomach flip. Alex stood like a carving of a man, too solid and strong to fold, but she thought that if he were hit at just the right point in that moment, he might crumble into dust. His feet wavered slightly as he stepped away from the coffin. He’d said in the hospital that if he left her, it would be true, but she thought this might be the first time it really sank into his heart.