Tangled Thoughts (20 page)

“Is that a sexy
nun
?” Jack said, pointing to a girl at the edge of the bar, and I was laughing before I even saw her, because of
course
there was a sexy nun.

“Wow. I think it is.” The sexiest thing at the Northbrook Halloween was my friend Brooke's fake accent.
This
was a sexy free-for-all. The girl's rosary belt was longer than her “habit.”

“Kind of makes you look modest, doesn't it?”

“Thank God,” I said and we both laughed.

“Whose idea was your costume, anyway?” His eyes flicked over me again, and I couldn't help but flush. “I'm guessing not yours.”

I looked down at all the bare skin barely covered by my coat and tugged it tighter around my shoulders. In the light of the restaurant, my outfit felt more ridiculous than ever. “Serena's.”

Jack nodded and leaned closer. “Remind me to thank her.”

Blushing even more furiously, I plucked at the soft velvet of his jacket. It felt expensive. “And where did
you
get
this
?”

“Hugo Boss,” Jack admitted.

“So you're a
fancy
pirate, eh?” I teased, though I'd always suspected it. His clothes fit way too well for anything else.

He looked back at me with a lopsided grin as he twirled a piece of my coat's abominable fur around his finger. “Takes one to know one, I think.”

The harried server returned with two sodas and we ordered a chicken thumb platter to share, which clearly didn't impress her. I frowned as I watched her retreating back, hurrying to the station to input our crappy order.

“Somebody,” Jack commented, “is not having nearly as much fun as we are.”

“I should have ordered something else. I feel bad.”

“Why? We didn't do anything wrong.”

I supposed that was true. At Dad's Diner, people could come and sit at my counter all morning ordering nothing but coffee and toast. “But we could have done better, I guess. It's got to be a hard night to do her job.”

He sipped his Coke from a straw and it made him seem younger. But then I watched his lips as he did it, which didn't make me feel younger at
all
. He seemed to realize what I was doing, maybe even what I was thinking, and grinned. I flushed and looked away.

“You,” he said, “have to learn that you're not responsible for everyone else's happiness. Just your own. I can tell that about you. You worry too much.” He tapped a finger in the middle of my forehead.

“And you don't seem to worry at all.”

“As little as possible.”

Maybe I could learn some things from him. It was a hard habit to turn off. “Like you don't seem worried that someone might see us together,” I said.

He shrugged. “I told you, it's not illegal for us to be friends. Plus, whose fault is it we keep running into each other? Fate? I'm not going to fight it.”

“But—”

“Lainey.” Jack touched my hand, just for a second. “
If
there was a problem, it would be
my
problem. No worrying about my problem. In fact, no worrying at
all
tonight. Deal?” He held out his hand. I stared at it for a moment, wanting to take it but knowing that everything about this night
was
something to worry about.

I shook anyway. “Deal.” His hand was warm and slightly calloused from basketball and weights. He held on longer than necessary, or even appropriate, and I started to wonder what that hand would feel like spread across my skin. Heat crept from my belly all the way to my cheeks.

Finally, with a satisfied grin, he said, “Good. Let's talk about other things.” He still hadn't let go.

“Like?” I said, and I gently, regretfully, extricated my hand. But it was like it didn't want to be far from him, so instead of in my lap or somewhere out of reaching distance, it came to rest on the table between us.

He sipped his soda, considering. “What's the baddest thing you've done?”

I laughed. “‘Baddest?'”

“As opposed to worst.” And I understood. I'd been thinking about ‘bad' things all night. I wondered if he knew that. Or maybe he had too. The fluttering feeling in my stomach came back.

“Ever?”

“Recently. Say, since the semester started.” He looked down at the table, where my hand rested, and traced the outline of it with his finger. Not touching, but nearly. I wanted to reach my pinky over and let it catch his on the way by.

What
was
the baddest thing I'd done? Put on this costume? Had impure thoughts about my TA? I didn't
do
many bad things. That was when a whisper in my head said to
kiss him
. Really kiss him, right there, in the restaurant crowded with people pretending to be something other than what they were. That would be deliciously bad, forbidden. He was still my teacher. The voice was strong, and I leaned forward. He did too, almost as if he was waiting for it. My pulse quickened and we hung there, a breath apart.

But no. I didn't want to, not like this. If I was going to kiss him, I didn't want it to be a stolen moment or broken rule. I wanted to be able to do it again. At the last second, I covered his hand with mine. My lips just grazed the edge of his as they brushed over the stubble on his cheek and stopped at his ear.

“This,” I whispered, and then I Thought, making him forget it happened at all.

If I was going to do bad, I was doing it all the way.

Carter

W
ithout Grandma Evelyn, Thanksgiving was strange and quiet. I couldn't remember a holiday that didn't include Uncle Jeff's mother. She was dining this year with her first born—Uncle Dan—along with her real grandchildren, both born and unborn. I'd been invited to join them, but declined. I was a lot of things now: senator's analyst, college student, Washington DC resident, but I'd forever be a bookseller. There were two weekends a year I'd never miss at the store, and this was one of them. Black Friday was still black, even at Penrose Books.

Also, I assumed Lainey would be there, and therefore, I would not.

“Do you want more pie?” Aunt Mel asked hopefully. “I have apple-cranberry and pecan.”

I shook my head. “No thanks,” I said while Uncle Jeff said, “Cranberry, please.” Aunt Mel patted his hand and jumped up to get it with a fond smile. It wasn't that her pies weren't good—they were—but
they weren't Grandma's. Aunt Mel knew that as much as anyone and she was trying extra hard.

When pie had been meted out, I poured each of them more wine. The dining room table felt too-large and lonely for just the three of us. After I set down the bottle, I finally said, “Can I ask you both something?”

Aunt Mel looked up, ready to make a joke, but something on my face must have stopped her. “What is it?”

“Harlan Waites said something to me.”

“You met him?” Aunt Mel looked intrigued. Uncle Jeff paused with his fork halfway from his plate to his mouth.

“A few weeks ago.” Though it felt like half of forever. “He asked me to give him a tour, but he really wanted to see if I knew something.”

“And did you?” Uncle Jeff's quiet, deep voice rumbled in the too-empty room.

“No, but it makes sense. Theoretically.” I told them Harlan's “guess” and Aunt Mel gripped her wine glass hard enough for me to worry for it. They looked at each other then back at me. Their silence hung heavy for a long moment.

Finally, Aunt Mel admitted, “It does make sense. I don't know if it's true, but…it sounds like it could be. Jeff?”

He shook his head. He didn't know, but he didn't deny the plausibility. “How far have you looked into it?” he asked.

“As far as I can discreetly.” As far as I knew how, in fact, which was pretty far. I'd been researching Allen Young since the day Lainey showed up at Northbrook. He was truly a mystery, an intentional one. I folded my napkin into a perfect triangle.

Aunt Mel said, “So what do you think?”

“Allen Young was intensely private,” I told them. “No public pictures; no articles, despite his success; courthouse wedding with two
witnesses, Tessa and Martin. He established an elaborate trust for Lainey before she was even born, ensuring his fortune would go to her and her guardianship to Tessa if anything were to happen. Aside from Lainey, Tessa, and charities for foster children and victims of domestic violence, Chastine Young was the only other person mentioned in his will. I don't think she was lying when she said she didn't know who his father was. But
Allen
did. He knew and he wanted nothing to do with him.”

“Say it was Jacob,” Uncle Jeff pronounced. “He didn't give a damn what anyone else wanted. He'd have wanted his son. Why would he stay away?”

I thought about this. I'd
been
thinking about it, but mentioning her name made her words drift back into my consciousness.
That was all it took
, Allen's adoptive mother, Chastine Young, had said the day Lainey and I visited her. The day Allen left her for good, he'd shoved her abusive husband away from her.
Willie stumbled, fell, and never got back up
. One touch—one
Thought
—was all it took. I looked at my uncle. “Because Allen knew how to use his Hangman gift.”

The soft music Aunt Mel had put on to make the apartment feel less empty drifted around us, incongruous to our topic. Softly, she said, “Knowing how doesn't mean he would have,” because she liked to believe that everyone was good despite knowing that they weren't.

“He would have.” I knew that as well as I knew anything. He'd have protected his family without hesitation. He'd done it once. The first time, I didn't think he'd meant to
kill
Willie Young. But he'd known about his gift. Maybe Allen hadn't believed it, or maybe desperation turned a thought into a Thought. But once he'd used it, he knew how to do it again.

Assuming Jacob Astor was Allen's biological father, I was willing to bet Allen had seen him again. Jacob couldn't have done much while Allen was still a minor, without risking a kind of exposure he wouldn't
have wanted. But when Allen turned eighteen and left home? He settled in Baltimore. He was in Jacob Astor's back yard. They had to have met. And Allen had to have said something to scare even Jacob Astor away.

“Did you ever see a picture of him?” I asked Aunt Mel and she shook her head.

“No. And you didn't either? Not even, um—” She glanced in the general direction of campus, and the dorm I used to sneak into. “Not even in Lainey's room?”

“No.” I'd never thought to wonder about it until it was too late. I didn't walk around showing everyone pictures of my dead parents either. Lainey was more likely to hang art or travel posters on her walls. “Not one when he was older than about eight, anyway.”

“Can you call her?”

“No.”

“Not even for this?”

“
No
.”

Aunt Mel looked like she wanted to say something else, but Uncle Jeff interjected. “So, what's next?”

“Grandma?”

He shook his head. “If she knew, we would too.” It was true. Grandma Evelyn knew her ex-husband's infidelities were extensive, but she didn't have a roster. The only one who might know the names was my uncle, but there was no way he knew this one. Was there? If this were true, it would make Lainey… I couldn't even think about that.

“Dan—” Aunt Mel said and stopped.

“There's no way,” I said. He'd have
told me
.

“Honey, I know you think…Listen, Dan isn't always honest.”

“He is with me.”

“Not with anyone.” She spun her glass between her fingers, not looking at me. The movement caught the candlelight, throwing a warm red kaleidescope across the table cloth, not unlike the color of blood. I watched it until the patterns came to a halt and she met my eyes.

“He's not like that anymore.”

“No. He's
less
like that than he was. He's not perfect. He never was. He—he'd
not
tell you a lot of things if he thought it was better.”

“Not
this
.”

Aunt Mel shrugged, conceding the point or giving up. Uncle Jeff cleared his throat. “I don't think he knows,” he said, though he didn't contradict anything else Aunt Mel had just said.

“Are you certain?” Aunt Mel asked. “You realize what it would mean if it were true?”

“Of course,” he said. In his deep, quiet voice, it sounded so final and true. “You've been looking for signs of a Hangman your whole life. If my brother had any knowledge there was one out there, and she was
related
to him, he'd have had me
find her
, no matter what it took. He doesn't know. That doesn't mean it's not true though.”

Uncle Jeff glanced at me and I looked away. When we were together, Uncle Dan had treated Lainey like one of the family. But what if she already was? And now with Tessa…Lainey could be more my uncle's family than
I
was. My stomach rolled, full of snakes fighting their way out, and needles pricked behind my eyes.

Elaine Young had already stolen my heart; would she steal my uncle too?

Under the table, I gripped my napkin in a tight fist to keep from running my fingers through my hair. More specifically, to keep Aunt Mel from seeing me do it. She was at least as shrewd as she was sweet, possibly more.

Proving that point, she said, “Assuming it's true, and accepting Jacob was frightened enough not to approach his son, why wouldn't he
tell
his other one?”

“He didn't have the chance,” I suggested. “The secret died with him. Or Allen's threat was great enough for him to want to take it to the grave.”

“Or,” Uncle Jeff said, “Jacob divined the outcome of telling Dan—or anyone—and it wasn't favorable at the time.”