The Tenderness of Thieves (28 page)

I
SAW HIM BEFORE
he saw me.

Handel sat at a long brown table, the kind they have in the school cafeteria for lunchtime. His eyes were downcast, and there were dark circles underneath. He’d cut his hair. Gone was the long mane that was always twisting in the breeze, that he was always brushing away from his face and that I’d loved to run my fingers through. It was so short now, he looked younger than before, almost boyish.

Almost innocent.

The guard led me into the empty gray room, the light dull except for a small window high up in the back corner. He left me there. Turned around and went to stand by the door.

Right then Handel looked up and saw me. His eyes went wide.

“Jane,” he said quietly, but the pain in his voice was clear.

I went to him.

I sat down on the other side of the table, facing him for the first time since I’d fled his room on that awful day that had at first been wonderful. By the time I looked into those familiar dark eyes, the ones I knew could hold me like no other boy in this world, I’d turned my heart totally and fully to stone.

What else could I have done?

Handel pressed his hands flat into the table’s surface, pale skin against all that ugly brown. “I’ve come here every single day,” he said. “Hoping that one time I’d see you walk through that door, wanting to talk to me.”

I blinked. I couldn’t speak.

It was probably better this way. For now.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “You’re all I can think about.”

I wondered if he might cry. He
should
cry.

I certainly wanted to.

The guard shifted behind us, the faint step of one shoe, the hard rustle of stiff fabric.

Handel glanced at him over my shoulder. “It’s almost killed me not to see you, not to have the chance to explain.”

“Explain?” I said, the word like a punch coming out of me. It filled the dim gray room, exploding through the stuffy air. “How could you ever explain?” I asked, but even through the anger I could hear the pleading in my words. I wanted Handel to convince me I wasn’t wrong about him—that I’d never been wrong about him. More than this, that I hadn’t been wrong about us.

Handel stayed steady. His eyes didn’t leave me. “You don’t know the whole story.”

I drank in his stare, though I tried not to. I’d missed how he looked at me, like I was the only thing in life that mattered. “I know enough,” I told him. “I know the important parts. I know that you lied. You lied all summer,” I added, as if he didn’t know this already—as if it needed to be repeated. “You had all summer to explain to me, and you chose not to.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be there that night, Jane. I wasn’t going to be.”

I looked away then. Stared at the only ray of light cutting across the room, tiny particles of dust floating in it, glowing like phosphorescence in dark waters. “So I heard.” I kept my voice even. “If it wasn’t supposed to be you, then why are you in here?” I asked, my eyes darting all around this dank visiting room. Everywhere but Handel.

“Because I should have gone to the police earlier. Because I knew the whole time and didn’t say anything. Because I deserve to be punished,” he added, his voice thick with remorse.

“You do,” I said quietly, my eyes on the wall.

“Jane,” Handel said. My name again, but I didn’t turn back to him. “I only went when I was called and only then to try and keep you safe.”

This made me laugh. I could taste the bitterness in it. “A lot of good that did my father.”

“Jane—”

“What, Handel?” I asked, my eyes on him now. It was all I could do not to stand over him and scream. “What could you possibly say to make this right? Maybe it’s true what you claim, and you went to the O’Connors’ that night to try to fix a break-in gone wrong, but it doesn’t change what you did afterward. Was I just some sick game to you and your friends? To you and that Cutter? For you and your
brothers
? Some fucked-up fantasy you needed to fulfill? Get the girl you held hostage to fall in love with you? To sleep with you, too? Did you report to them what I was like in bed?” It was there that I stopped.

“No.”

“That’s all? Just ‘no’?”

The way Handel watched me now, with more love in his eyes than I had ever seen—love and vulnerability and strength, too—it radiated out from him, a light in the fog of this room. I had to turn away. My heart, it was softening. Despite everything, it was. I could feel it. Handel could still do that to me. Take my heart and mold it however he’d like. I could make him into a lying monster if I didn’t see him, but now that he was here before me, the monster disappeared, and all that was left was the boy I loved who obviously still loved me back. Who—somewhere deep inside—I knew had never meant to hurt me.

“I didn’t plan to fall in love with you,” Handel said, as though he’d read my mind, like always, like nothing had changed and instead of this visit happening in a detention center, we were in his room in his bed, lying across his sheets.

“You want to talk about love,” I said. “Here?”

“I do love you.”

This made me wince.

“I didn’t plan any of this,” he went on.

I kept my eyes lowered; I wanted my heart to solidify, a tiny iceberg drifting at my center. But I made the mistake of staring at Handel’s hands, and all I could think about then were his fingertips on my skin. “Well, what did you plan, then?” I managed. “How was it that you ended up dating the girl you held hostage?”

“I just . . . I needed to find out what you knew. If you knew anything at all. If you could identify them. Us,” he corrected. “They were afraid you would figure out who they were and go to the police. They were going to kill you before you could. I told them I would take care of . . . the situation. I wanted to keep you safe.”

My gaze rose to his face—I couldn’t help it. “Right. So that’s why you talked to me that first day on the beach. It wasn’t because you thought I was beautiful or because I caught your attention. You planned our encounter. You wanted to know if I’d recognize your voice.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.

I didn’t, either.

Then all he said was, “Can you ever forgive me?”

My knuckles were white from the way they’d balled so tight into fists. It hurt to breathe. “No,” I whispered. “Never,” I said, even though this was a lie. With time I could forgive him. With time I might.

Handel inhaled sharply. The room was so still. So silent.

“You broke my heart,” I said, realizing that even now, even after finding out the truth, Handel still had the power to undo me, to see right through everything, my clothes, my skin, my heart, leaving me exposed and raw and vulnerable. I was sure, too, certain beyond a shadow of a doubt, that even now the only thing Handel wanted was to love me fiercely and gently until I was whole again. That in loving me this summer, he’d handed over so much power to me, freely and openly, in such a way that I was stronger now, stronger and more confident, despite everything else.

True love will do that to you.

And this part, the love we’d shared that was truer than anything I’d ever known—that I couldn’t regret. I could never. And I wouldn’t.

Handel placed his palms flat against the table, his fingers spread wide. “You said before that the first time I spoke to you wasn’t because I thought you were beautiful or because you’d just caught my attention—but you’re wrong,” he said. “I’d seen you at school and had always thought you were beautiful. There was something about you that made me look twice, that made me want to talk to you, Jane.” He turned away a moment, his profile sharp. Then he went on. “I loved you from the moment I saw you in that window at the professor’s house, even before I went inside. I loved you even if I didn’t know it then. I think I’ve loved you all along.” Handel’s eyes were glassy with tears, the second time I’d seen them this way. “I probably always will.”

“I don’t care,” I said, the words choking me.

I said this, but it wasn’t true.

I’d probably always love Handel, too, no matter how hard I tried not to. But this I didn’t say to him. How could I?

Instead, I said: “I hate you.”

Because this was true, too.

Sometimes love and hate can be so closely intertwined that you can’t tell them apart. So close they can even become one and the same. “Please don’t hate me. Please. Jane?”

I looked at him one last time. “What, Handel?”

“Even if you hate me, I won’t stop loving you.”

As he hung his head, waiting for some sign of hope from me, any sign that I might someday forgive him, that our love was powerful enough to overcome all of this—I realized something so clearly.

It was my turn to break Handel’s heart.

Maybe not forever.

But, at the very least, for now.

Sometimes love was like that, too. It was violent and it was reckless, and it was tender and soulful. And there were times when love didn’t play fair, not at all, not even a little, and this was one of them.

“I have to go now,” I told Handel, and then the two of us looked away from each other and didn’t look back.

I didn’t at least.

Not me.

• • •

Bridget looked up. “Jane?”

Tammy and Michaela turned to me.

My girls were waiting there on the steps of the detention center. Waiting for me to come out after my visit.

Miles had offered to be here, too, just like he’d been offering all sorts of things over this last month of summer. To take me to the movies, to dinner, to get ice cream, to meet his family for a barbecue, to take a drive in his mother’s Mercedes that purred so softly you almost forgot you were in a car. I hadn’t said yes to any of it, not at first, but then I started to.

But not today.

“Jane?” Michaela said this time, her arm outstretched.

I went to them—my girls. They folded me into a hug.

We stood there for a long while, the four of us. Together.

When we pulled back, Bridget took my hand. Squeezed it. “Do you think you’ll ever forgive him?”

I was silent for a long time. My girls seemed to stop breathing as they waited for my answer. “I don’t know,” I said. “But someday I might want to. I still love him,” I added, these last three words lodged tight in my throat like stones.

“No one is going to judge you for it,” Bridget said, squeezing my hand harder. “Not us, at least.”

“Not even me,” Michaela said softly.

“Did you tell Handel you feel that way?” Tammy asked.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It’s not the right time. Not yet. Maybe someday.”

Bridget’s eyes were glassy with tears. “There’s no rush. None at all.”

I sighed long and heavy, as though by letting out this rush of air I might be letting go of all the heaviness I’d been carrying around these last months.

“Let’s go down to the beach,” I said eventually.

Tammy’s smile was sad. “It’s the perfect day for a swim.”

We started to walk, the four of us, straight into the sun, toward that place I always went when I needed comfort, when I needed to feel better. When I needed to think, and when I needed to stop thinking, too.

Today it was all of the above.

On our way there, as the sounds of the surf got closer, the waves crashing in that uneven yet familiar rhythm, I thought about the Jane I’d become these last few months, the many different Janes I’d been this past year. And the Jane I was right now, too, this very minute, which was a different Jane still.

I was no longer the good girl I used to be. Definitely not her. That girl was gone. I wasn’t sure what Jane I was becoming at this moment, though, as we walked along the sea wall to the wooden stairwell that led down to the beach. Maybe a mixture of all the others, or maybe an entirely new one, a girl who would surprise me. One that was strong enough to handle anything. One that was good, too, but a different kind of good this time, a kind I’d yet to discover and appreciate.

Or maybe that’s the girl I was already.

Either way, it was okay. I was willing to wait for that Jane. I knew she was there. I was sure of it. I could feel her stirring, even as I took my flip-flops off, letting them dangle in my hand, and made my way, slowly and carefully, down the steps, one by one, my toes curling around their edges. Hanging on. Making sure I didn’t fall or stumble.

I reached the bottom, whole and upright and strong.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the salty tang in the air. Looked into the eyes of my girls. Bridget, Tammy, Michaela. Knowing with my whole heart that, boys or no, with them in my life, I would always be loved.

Then I set my bare feet onto the sand.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

J
ILL SANTOPOLO
, wonderful editor and friend, believer in this novel’s possibilities and future, I thank you for your guidance, your gentle prodding, and your talent for knowing how to shape this story into what it needed to be. I am grateful to have you as an editor and also just overall in my life! To everyone at Philomel for welcoming me into their publishing home, especially Michael Green and Talia Benamy. To all those at Penguin who have been involved in the production of this book, thank you for the care you’ve taken with it as you send it out into the world.

Carlene Bauer, Marie Rutkoski, and Daphne Grab all read drafts of this story at different points in its life. I am grateful to you for your feedback, ideas, and, most of all, your continued encouragement and friendship, especially over the last several years.

I feel confident in saying that Miriam Altshuler is the best agent in the whole wide world. I am so lucky to have you in my corner, Miriam. I think we just passed our tin anniversary. Thank you for your continued encouragement, feedback, and tireless cheerleading of my career, and your friendship most of all. I am grateful, too, to Reiko Davis at MA Literary for her support of this novel, willingness to read, offer feedback, and meet for brunch.

To Daniel Matus, for everything you are in my life.

Whenever I start a new novel, I realize that my heart seems to permanently reside along the beaches and towns of Rhode Island, where I grew up. I am grateful to this place and all those people who’ve inspired the various stories I’ve set there.