Yours, Mine, and Ours (32 page)

When they brought
him into the room, Patrick looked astonished to see me. Clearly, he had been expecting Michaela.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m your attorney. Thank you, Officers, I would like some time alone to confer with my client.” As they left, I sat across from Patrick, put my briefcase aside, and folded my hands on the table.

Patrick blinked at me in the powerful fluorescent light, then leaned forward and whispered, as if the microphones weren’t sensitive enough to pick up someone breaking wind in the vacuum of space, “Shiro, look, I really appreciate this but you can’t do this! You can’t pretend to be my lawyer.”

“Who is pretending? I
am
a lawyer.” I pulled the business card out of my left lapel pocket and slid it across the table to him. “In fact, right now I am
your
lawyer.”

He stared at me. He was still in his clothes from last night. No blood, thank heavens.

“You—you’re my lawyer?”

“I had nothing to do one week so I took the bar.”

Patrick slowly lowered his head to the table, then began banging it up and down. I stuck my hands in the way, so he was mashing his face into my palms. “Of course you did. Of
course
you did, it’s a perfectly normal thing, someone who doesn’t want to be a lawyer hanging around long enough to take the bar exam and passing it and every once in a while being a lawyer.”
Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Stop that; you’re going to make my hands numb. And I do not understand your shock. I must say, it wasn’t especially difficult. Which really only lowered my general opinion of the legal profession,” I confessed. “Besides, once upon a time, all FBI agents had to be lawyers. That is why I took those courses in the first place.”

His head jerked up. “Once upon a—yeah, but Cadence isn’t.”

I snorted.

“And Adrienne isn’t.”

I laughed out loud.

He bent once more, kissed my palm, then ceased banging, to my great relief. He sat up. “Okay, Counselor. What’s the plan?”

“Stop breaking the law.”

“Got it. Step two?”

“Stop telling the police you’ve broken the law when you haven’t.”

“Oh.” He looked abashed. “You know about that, huh?”

“Of course, you hirsute moron.”

“I don’t shave one morning and here comes the name calling,” he complained as he ran a hand over his stubble.

“I also know that you foolishly assumed Adrienne’s actions were your fault. I know you foolishly confessed to crimes you did not commit: destruction of property, breaking and entering—”

“Mostly it was just breaking.”

“Do not interrupt your attorney. You will be relieved to know I have arranged for your release. And Michaela knows the DA, so there may not be a trial. It was kind of you to offer to pay the damages, but I cannot allow that; I already have to deal with too much shame on this issue, so we shall work something out.”

“Shiro, you guys don’t have that kind of money and you know I’ll never miss it, so—”

“
In the meantime.
It would be a tremendous help if you … yes?” I prompted.

“Didn’t break the law?” he guessed.

“Correct. And?”

“Didn’t say I broke the law when I didn’t?”

“An A-plus for my star pupil. Come along, Patrick. You
idiot
.”

He didn’t move. “I’m really sorry I scared you. I shouldn’t have said anything. I messed it up and…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t figure out how to make it right.”

So in typical Mars fashion (as in,
Men Are from Mars, Women et cetera)
, he had tackled the larger problem. The one he knew he could influence.

“I’m really sor—”

“Do
not
apologize for inviting me to move in with you. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.”

“And one of the scariest.”

“Well. Yes. But that is hardly your fault.”

“But the big problem was, I was the coward. Not you. I was the chickenshit.”

“What are you talking a—”

He wriggled in his chair; I was betting he wanted to stretch more, or pace, but was forcing himself to sit still and keep eye contact. Interesting.

“When we were talking about dogs. How I knew about dogs. My sister had one when she was little. When she started … to get sick.
Really
sick. My parents…” He shook his head. “They couldn’t handle it. Okay, that’s not right … they
wouldn’t
handle it. Cathie was getting sicker and sicker and at first they said it was just for attention, then they decided it was a learning disability. They grounded her and got her new teachers and tried everything except what she needed, what it was obvious to all of us what she
needed:
a shrink. They never tried therapy, they thought it was something weaklings endured.

“Meantime it was ‘Patrick, are you packed for college?’ and ‘Patrick, have you signed up for Freshman Orientation?’ and ‘Patrick, are you sure you want to be prelaw?’ and that’s all they wanted to talk about. Their youngest, something was
very wrong
with their youngest, but they didn’t want to talk about that, they wanted to talk about their brilliant oldest, headed for college at seventeen.

“And I kept … I kept asking about Cathie, if she was better, maybe she should go to a hospital or something, you know … anything, right? And they were all ‘don’t worry about a thing, she’s fine, shouldn’t you be packing,’ blah-blah. They were lying and I
knew
they were lying and I just … just let them take me away.”

“Patrick, you were just a kid yourself, and Cathie’s mental instability obviously wasn’t your fau—”

“Shut up, I can only say this once.” He made a slashing gesture with his hand I had never seen, which went with the tight, hard tone of voice I had never heard, and though I mentally raised my eyebrows I let him continue.

“So after I was gone, after I’d been at school, I found out they committed her. A little kid! They went right to the out-of-sight-out-of-mind option and signed her over to the goddamned institute!”

His hands were fists on the table between us and he was breathing hard. After a long moment I said, “If you are awaiting condemnation, I trust you packed a lunch. Patrick, it was not your fault. Cathie being ill was not, and your parents’ cowardice was not, and you wanting to continue your life by leaving for college was not. Do you wish she and I had never met? We might not have, if things had happened another way.”

“Of course not.” Still he would not look at me. “It’s just … I went to school and I made a life away from all of them—her included—I just let them shut her away from the world. And when she met you—when I met you—I think I loved you before we met. Because when I found out…”

“Found out?” I asked gently.

“When I realized what my parents had done … what I had let them do because I let them send me away … I could actually feel myself start to go crazy. I could feel … I thought,
Yay, I’m going nuts, too, I can keep Cathie company, wheee!
I could … actually … I could actually feel my sanity sort of … teetering.” He held me with his dark gaze, where tears shone but did not fall. “Like it was a boat. Like my sanity was a boat on a lake and the lake was in the middle of a storm. I could feel my … my
self
tipping and tilting. I could feel my self start to want to split. I could
feel
that.

“And when Cathie told me about you, and I met you, I thought,
Here’s someone who had that happen … she split into pieces, only she couldn’t stop it in time.
It was like … when I knew you, it was like I always knew you. All the pieces of you. Not just the ones you thought were safe to show the world.”

I realized I had been staring at him, openmouthed. My pretty baker, the boyfriend I assumed I had taken on my terms!

“I have taken you terribly for granted,” was all I could say to his extraordinary story. Oh. There
was
one other thing. “And feeling responsible for Cathie’s mental illness is not only foolish, it is arrogant and self-serving.”

Now
his
mouth was hanging open. “What?”

“In a nice way,” I assured him. “With the very best of intentions. You should have a chat with Cathie about just this sort of thing.”

“I told Cathie all about it ages ago,” he snapped. “We used to talk about it every week in therapy.”

“You and Cathie have therapy?”

“Not anymore. But once I got out of college and actually grew a pair, of course I was going to talk to her about … about everything. Now my folks are … fading, I guess is the polite term, now they want to see her. It’s their own fault she doesn’t want to see them, but that’s—” He shook his head. “I didn’t plan for any of this when they told me my lawyer was here.”

I laughed. “No doubt! I brought enough of my own baggage; I never dreamed you had some of your own to share. And this,” I said grimly, “this is from someone who
does
have all sorts of therapy a week. Patrick, the truth is I was afraid. I was a coward. You were just a boy; I don’t even have the excuse of immaturity. You offered me something wonderful and my response was to run away from it. You deserve better.”
Yes. So run, Patrick. Run like the wind. I can only offer you more pain.

He raised dark brows at me, and smiled. “Sure about that?”

“Yes. I…” I looked away, then back. “I love your house.”

His smile widened. “My house?”

“Yes. And I would love to live in your house. With you. I just do not know how the three of us—”

“Five,” he said, his smile widening.

“Sorry?”

“The five of us. You, me, Cadence, Adrienne, and Olive the Dawg.”

“Olive the Dawg?”

“Yeah.”

I sighed and picked up my briefcase. “We will have to talk about this.”

“Uh-huh.”

“At length.”

“Yep.”

“Because it will be tricky. The sleeping issue. The sex issue.” Specifically: we weren’t having any with Patrick yet. Cadence was still a virgin. I was not, though it had been several months since I had indulged. And I didn’t know
what
Adrienne was. No one knew. No one wanted to know. Ever. “We will have to have a plan.
Why
are you smiling?”

“I didn’t know one of my girlfriends was a lawyer.”

“Yes, yes, a day of surprises.”

“And you came right down, didn’t you?” He smiled at me, clearly delighted. “I just realized. Michaela didn’t tell you until after your super-secret briefing. But once you knew, you came straight away.” Then, in a dreadful Sally Field impersonation: “You like me! You really, really like me!”

“I like your Meyer lemon tartlets,” I corrected. “Not you.”

“Aw.” He stood. I stood. “Can I get a kiss from the prettiest lawyer in the room?”

“I am the only lawyer in this room, you idiot.”

What the hell. I kissed him. Far be it from me to deny the request of a wrongfully imprisoned millionaire baker carrying long-misplaced guilt who enjoyed clandestine visits to PetCo with Olive the Dawg.

There was not one thing in my life that was uncomplicated. On days like this, I did not mind so much.

chapter sixty-nine

“Yeah? Then what?
Come on, Cadence, don’t stop now.”

“Then Shiro got him out, and Michaela got the charges dropped. And we’re all moving in together.” I was still a little bewildered by that last one. I hadn’t even known there’d been, you know, an invitation. But Shiro had agreed for all of us. (Nice of her!) It was hilarious when I thought about it. What else was I gonna do? Keep my no-dogs-allowed apartment while Shiro lived at Patrick’s? “Did I tell you I can’t have a dog in my apartment?”

“Yeah, at least three times.”

“Kindly drop dead, Emma Jan. So anyway, Patrick closes on his house in another few days, and then we’ll all live together. Oh my God, this house. Wait ’til you see it.”

“How’s that gonna work?” Emma Jan was whispering in my ear as she checked the west side of the building for stragglers. “You guys haven’t had sex yet.”

“How do
you …
oh.”

“What? Shiro wanted to hit the range again. It’s not my fault if she wants to confide in me.”

“It is! She never wants to confide in anybody.”

“Well, she confided
in
me. And got her butt whupped. Told her she couldn’t beat me with my own gun. Didn’t think she’d stop bitching the whole way to dinner … wait ’til she has to tell Michaela! Also not my fault,” she added.

I was pretty sure it
was
her fault. Shiro had certainly never needed anyone to confide in before this. Nor had she appeared to mind what Michaela thought … about anything! Now that Emma Jan was firmly in the Friend category, I was less tense about the two of them hanging out, but it was still new to me, Shiro having a friend who wasn’t my friend. And all this running back and forth to Michaela, bragging or bitching about range scores like she was their den mother or something? So so so so so weird.