The Book of Daniel (26 page)

“All right.” He nodded. Apparently he was far more sanguine about being dismissed than I would have been, under the circumstances.

I watched Bree enter my dingy, cramped rental and smiled at her obvious distaste.

“You live here? It’s like”—she glanced around—“the floor sample room in a cheap furniture warehouse.”

“It’s a crash site for the newly jettisoned. Everywhere you look, divorced people are bringing in single sacks of groceries and taking out small bags of garbage. No one meets anyone else’s eyes. It’s purgatory for the matrimonially deceased.”

Bree looked up at the painting over the sofa. It depicted a road leading off through a stand of birch trees in autumn shades that matched the brown leather couch. “It came furnished?”

“Can you imagine me buying a painting like that?”

She shook her head and turned. Wordlessly, she offered me one of the coffees, then clutched the other between her hands.

I took a sip. Vanilla latte.
Nice
. “Thank you for this. You didn’t come all this way to bring me coffee or redecorate my place.”

“This isn’t your place. This is a furnished rental in San Jose, a city you hate.”

“All too true. But it’s convenient, and cheap, and I find that it suits my mood. I only sleep here.”

“It’s four in the afternoon.”

“I sleep a lot.”

She didn’t seem to know where to look and eventually her gaze fell to my hand. “Are you still getting physical therapy?”

In truth I wasn’t. I was still doing the exercises that Jordan gave me as homework, but I wasn’t seeing a therapist. “I need to find someone here.”

“Isn’t there a window of opportunity as far as the potential for healing? You should get on that.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Jake told me about your brother and sister. And your father…I’m sorry about your father.”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t mean that, really.”

“Most of the time you think the worst of me. Pick a side, BreeAnna.”

“Jake’s in touch with your other siblings. Your brother and JT postponed the wedding.”

“
Damn
.” I didn’t want that. I’d never wanted that.

“You left without a word, and you haven’t answered a single message. I can understand why you might not want to answer mine, but there are people who need to hear from you. It’s been months.”

“My phone broke.” That was true.
It broke when I threw it off St. Nacho’s pier.

“You need to get a new phone and let your brother and Al know where you are. I practically had to hire a private detective to find you.”

I scrubbed at my face. Even at four p.m. it was too early for that shit. “Yet find me you did. Would you mind telling me why? I just got up, and I need to piss.”

Bree flinched at my crude language. “Get cleaned up and for heaven’s sake dress. You and I are going to talk whether you like it or not.” She glanced around, looking for a safe place to sit. Finding none, she steeled herself to balance on the edge of the leather sofa. It let out a loud, flatulent sigh as she did, and color flooded her cheeks.

“I’ll be back.” I left her there to fidget and took my time getting cleaned up. I took a shower and shaved. When I came back out wearing a fresh pair of jeans and a rock band T-shirt I’d gotten at some club, she rolled her eyes. I sat down on the coffee table across from her, close enough to touch her—to breathe in the familiar scent of Chanel and woman. She didn’t move away. I took that as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

“You look like a forty-year-old frat boy. You need to act your age.”

“That’s not what the guys said last night.” I don’t know why I needed to be flippant with Bree. I didn’t care what she thought of me anymore, not really, but I was proud enough that I didn’t want her to see how far I’d fallen.

I didn’t want her to see how much what had happened in the wake of Jake’s engagement party had cost me, personally and professionally, even though I assumed she was astute enough to guess.

Then Bree did something I’d rarely seen her do in a strange place: she took off her gloves and laid them in her lap. When I glanced up, she clasped my hands in hers and held them tight. She gripped them tightly when I would have withdrawn them from sheer shock.

“I know it must have seemed as though everyone you thought was your friend lined up against you.”

“It didn’t just seem like that. Everyone did.”

“Speaking for myself, I never understood how passionately you were prepared to fight—not until after the fact. I thought you were posturing for the sake of your image. You should have talked to me privately.”

“And said what? That I truly didn’t want to invest in a venture because it would hurt people I care about?”

“You could have let me know how you felt.”

“Since when have you given a shit about me?” I asked bitterly. “Since when has making money taken a backseat to emotions for Al? For any of us? You wouldn’t have believed me if I’d tried.”

“Neither of us realized how far you’d go to stop the project from going ahead.”

I couldn’t help the way my lips twitched into a smile. I couldn’t hide what I was feeling, which was triumph. No one was going to underestimate me again. Ever.

“I guess you didn’t count on my desperation.”

“No. We didn’t.”

“So maybe you can tell me why you came. Why you’ve disrobed”—I nodded toward her hands—“and what you could possibly want from me now that I have nothing left.”

“You
won
, Dan. You beat us. You got what you wanted. Why are you hiding here in this dump as though you’re indigent?”

“I can assure you, the indigent can’t afford to live here, Bree. And since I currently own a rather large parcel of land I can do nothing with, I will have to get a job, and soon, if I want to continue to live in this kind of luxury.”

“You always make jokes when things get serious.”

“Nobody needs a joke when things are going along just fine.”

“You used every last bit of your liquid cash to get that property, and from what I understand, you’ve leveraged yourself even more. Why? Why did you do that for people who turned their back on you the second they thought you’d betrayed them?”

“Because—”
Crap
. My eyes stung, and not for the world would I show Bree that she could still get to me. I got up and went to the sliding-glass door. The vertical blinds were dusty and tangled, but I pushed them aside to look out. It wasn’t the worst place to live. There was a parklike atmosphere beyond my back patio, complete with streams and a small play yard where the Sunday fathers took their children to swing and slide.

At least I didn’t have kids.

“Because?” Bree followed me. “Why, Dan? I need to hear you tell me.”

“Because I loved them. Because making money doesn’t justify hurting people or destroying the environment. In the past I’ve looked the other way, and I just can’t anymore.”

Bree’s hand landed on my shoulder and rested there. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry for me, Bree. Like you said, I won.”

“I’m sorry because you think you’ve lost the very thing you were trying to protect.”

“Yeah well. There’s a lot of historical precedent for shit like that. If nothing else, you have to love the irony.”

She peered at my face. “You aren’t capable of subterfuge anymore. It’s fascinating.”

“Now you’re just making wild assumptions.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” She stood beside me and watched out the window for a while. “I’m sorry I didn’t stand by you when you wanted to block the project.”

I laughed at that. “It would have made things considerably easier if you had, but at least you bought me out. That was the last little bit of cash I needed. I should thank you for that, if I didn’t already. Are you going to change your name when you marry Jim? It will be odd to see Livingston Properties without a Livingston at the helm.”

“I won’t keep your name in any case.”

“I see.”

“I never should have had it in the first place.”

Old news
. “I’ve regretted using you for a long time. I hope you’ll agree I’ve been fair enough that we can both put it behind us now. LP can move on without that land and I can move on to…whatever’s next.”

“How did you manage to get that land anyway? Al was furious. He says to tell you hello from Ellie and the girls, by the way.”

I nodded. That was
exactly
Al. He could be professionally furious with me during the day, and at night we could still have cocktails and catch up as though we were back in school. That friendship wasn’t going anywhere, at least. Unless I let it die of neglect.

“I still have one or two tricks I never shared with the folks at Livingston Properties.”

She bit her lip. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

“Oh, jeez.”
What more can there possibly be?

“I want you to know, I’ve been seeing a counselor. I think…I may have always known what you couldn’t tell me. I may have been hateful to your brother and…others like you because I sensed…”

When she didn’t continue, I guessed. “You thought I might be gay?”

“I didn’t need ESP to know you weren’t that into me. You substituted precise, almost clinical control for passion pretty early on. I was angry and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I resented the hell out of you for not wanting me. It made me feel unattractive and… Whatever. I must have known something wasn’t…”

What it cost her to say that, I couldn’t imagine. Bree did not like to apologize. So naturally, I made her clarify. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’ve said some pretty hateful things. Things that—looking back—I can’t believe came out of my mouth.”

“And?”

“
Must
I say it? I was vile to you and your brother. I was vile about your sexuality and insulted you every chance I got. But I knew I was losing you. I had lost you long since, and I—”

“Stop.” Suddenly I didn’t need her to say it. I could let her off the hook and tell her what she needed to hear because after all that time, it just didn’t matter anymore. “I understand. It’s okay. We both—”

“I’m sorry.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m sorry that I treated you the way I did. I never meant for things to get like that between us.”

“Neither did I. It wasn’t only you.”

She blinked and tried to wipe the tears that glittered on her lashes from her eyes before they ruined her makeup. “I swore I wouldn’t do this.”

“I have a box of tissues around here somewhere.”

“No doubt,” she said drily. “But you can keep them.”

“I beg your pardon? They’re not used or anything.”

“You know I can’t use
anyone else’s tissues
. I have some in my purse.” She snorted and gave my shoulder the tiniest shove. I got the briefest glimpse of the girl I knew before everything went so wrong. “You made me say that out loud.”

“Looks like we’re both falling apart.”

She leaned against me then. Or rather, she slumped, and I caught her. I felt her arms slide around my waist and then she was hanging on, almost hugging me, and I put my arm around her shoulder and held her there.

“I never meant to hurt you.” I said. “I swear I tried to do the right thing.”

She shook her head, but said nothing.

“I wish I could have been the man you wanted—the man you needed—I wish…” I couldn’t say it out loud. I wished, at that point, that I had never been born.

I held her, and we both looked out the window as if there was something fascinating there. People walked to and from the parking lot with shopping bags, or they led dogs along the winding pathways. We could hear children playing on the swings in the distance. Her voice, when she finally spoke sounded tired.

“When I met you, I saw something in you. A core of intelligence and passion and promise. I thought I could build a future with
that
man, not the successful con artist you became. I would have been glad for a life with a man who would risk everything he had for the love of his friends.”

“Oh,
Bree
.”

“You’ve become the kind of man I can believe in, Dan.” She swallowed hard. “And you could never have done that with me by your side. That’s…hard to take.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” She tried in vain to wipe her tears, then left to retrieve her purse from where she left it by the sofa. “I’m a mess.”

“Bree, you are always,
always
beautiful. You need to believe me when I say that, if for no other reason than because I can’t lie worth a damn anymore.”

Her lips formed what was sure to have become a genuine smile if she’d allowed it. “I know.”

“It’s a
curse
. Minerva from Rune Nation wrote these symbols on my damned driveway in sidewalk chalk, and I haven’t been able to lie since.”

“So it’s a magic spell?” She didn’t look too impressed. “
Right
. But good for her.”

“Them. There are three of them, and they followed me around like the witches in
Macbeth
.”

Bree was digging around in her handbag, no doubt to retrieve her tissues, but she stopped and glanced up at me. “You don’t really believe in witchcraft.”

“Of course not. But that’s as good an explanation as any for my inability to hide what I’m thinking or feeling at this point. I’m so…extremely uncomfortable.” Vulnerable.
Naked
. As things stood, I was afraid to leave the safety of my apartment. Apparently I could still
omit
some things even if I couldn’t outright lie, because I didn’t tell Bree that.

“Maybe,” Bree suggested, “you simply don’t
need
to lie anymore. I should think you’d be relieved.”

“No such luck.”

“All right. Well. Maybe you should see someone. I’ve had some success with my therapist. Maybe you need to see about getting yourself a good therapist and a good PT for that hand.”

“This is odd, hearing you concerned with my welfare.”

“Tell me about it. But it seems I have a conscience too.” She pulled an envelope from her purse and left it on the coffee table. “Who knew?”

“What’s that?”