Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series (36 page)

Des turned away and looked out the window at the view of the parking garage, which got blurry and swimmy.

“Jesus, Sarah,” Sam said.

“Just go. Both of you.” Sarah used her bed control to lean her bed back and turn off the reading light over the head of her bed.

Des looked at Sam. He had his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. He met her eyes. “Can you meet me by the coffee bar in the west lobby in about twenty minutes?”

“Sure.” She looked over at Sarah. “See you later, Sare.”

“Have fun having a
day
.”

“I’m coming up before I go.”

She didn’t answer.

When Sam joined her across one of the little tables in the coffee bar it had been way more than twenty minutes. Though she had expected that and used the time to play with her new phone, even returning emails for work. What she hadn’t expected was for
Sam to look pissed.

“Who’s this guy, Des?”

She looked back at him to confirm that he was serious. Because he
couldn’t
be serious. While it was true that he’d never been buddies with the guys she and Sarah had dated, he’d never interrogated either one of them about their dates or boyfriends. He mostly seemed not to care. If it lasted a while, he’d sometimes have some kind of awkward talk where he’d ask if the guy treated them well. But
who’s this guy?
No. Never.

She looked at him. He was serious.

“Hefin?”

“Where the fuck is he from, again?”

“Oh my God, you are not talking to me that way about this. Step
off
, Sam.” The back of her neck went cold, then hot again.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “He was here the night Sarah was brought in.”

“Yes, he was.”

“So he’s important to you?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Betty said he was moving back to wherever he’s from.”

“Wales.”

“Okay. Wales. He’s moving back?”

Des dug her fingers into her thighs. “Yes.”

Sam looked at her. His gray eyes actually boring into hers. “Don’t make me fucking ask, Des.”

Here it was. She wished she could push in on the place where her heart was beating out of her chest without giving Sam a clue she was upset. Her blood roared in her ears, and suddenly Sam seemed like he was far away. She pinched her thigh so that she would breathe and not pass out. “I don’t know.”

“Oh my God. You don’t know? So you’re actually considering going away with this guy?”

“There’s a lot I’m still thinking about, Sam. Work. Money. Family. I care about him. I believe he’s the right person for me, but our relationship’s been relatively short
and there’s been a lot going on with Sarah right in the middle of it. ‘I don’t know’ is a fair statement. I don’t.”

“So, to get this straight, this guy, this much older guy who you haven’t even dated very long, the one who was
in your fucking house
with you this morning would be totally okay with you just taking off with him, no savings, no nothing, leaving your family here, who need you, who are actually in crisis. He sounds like a winner. He definitely sounds like someone to ‘I don’t know’ over.”

Des stood up so fast her chair tipped over and crashed to the floor behind her.

“You can’t talk to me that way Sam. I said, already, that I’m not doing this if you talk to me that way. You don’t get to make it seem like I don’t care about this family when I was the one who used all my vacation time and all my leave time to sit in the hospital with Dad. When I arranged my whole schedule after I lost my job to help Sarah. When I had to fucking
beg
you to come to her place to help me. One time, one time in all of these months I asked you for a loan, and you were so patronizing about it I never asked again, even when it would have really helped. I sold my fucking car, Sam. I drove around town in the
limo
. And now, when I got a job, and I’m building my own business, and I meet someone great, you’re coming at me with this shit like I am nothing. Like I have nothing. Like I’m
stupid
.”

Destiny didn’t care that there were tears burning down her face or that there was a knot in her throat that was so painful it made her want to vomit, or that her voice was loud. Or that she didn’t even know how Sam was taking this because she couldn’t even see him through the tears and adrenaline. “I’ve been fucking
defending
you. Telling Sarah and PJ to back off, that you’re under a lot of stress, that you’re helping in your own way. But fuck that, Sam. After all of this, if you can’t believe that I wouldn’t do what I thought was best for me, and would be accepted by my family, than you can forget about my defense of your shitty attitudes. You can just stop. You can just forget it. I won’t. I just
won’t
.”

“Desbaby.” His voice was cracked and she watched him stand up.

“No.” She turned around and headed to the bank of elevators to go see Sarah because she told her she would see her before she left, and she would. Because she was a good sister, damn it. She
was
.

“Can we start over? Talk about this again?”

Des pushed the up arrow button on the elevators a thousand times and ignored Sam.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her to the staff car and shoved his ID badge into the reader. The doors slid open immediately.

She walked in but didn’t look at him.

“Look, I’m sorry.” He sounded like he would elaborate, but apologizing probably popped something in his brain.

Des felt the initial edge of her anger fade, and now she was shaking. She tucked her hands into her armpits and stared straight ahead.

“I don’t think you’re stupid, or a nothing. And”—he cleared his throat—“I do have a lot going on, but it isn’t fair that I dump on you or make you feel like you don’t have any backup or can’t live your own life.”

“That’s a pretty big speech for you, chief.”

“I know. Will you please talk to me about this guy?”

The elevator opened onto Sarah’s unit and Des kept right on to the nurses’ station to sign in. Sam followed her all the way back to Sarah’s room.

She was watching TV now, and someone had found the chocolate soy milk boxes she liked because she had six of them lined up on her tray. She ignored Sam, too, and he went to sit in the recliner.

“Is there anything you want me to bring back for you, Sare?”

“Could you find my ereader for me? I had it in the drawer that’s in the coffee table.”

“Sure.”

“Bring Hefin by, next time, too.”

Des looked at her and Sarah smiled, a little. “I like him. He’s nice to talk to and knows how to listen. Plus, if he steals you away, I want to know him better.”

“You knew about that?” Sam leaned forward

“About what?” Sarah glared at Sam. Sarah’s glares were scary.

“About this guy, and Des … I can’t even
say
it.”

“Seriously?” Sarah looked at Des, her eyebrows meeting her scalp, and Des
shrugged. The thing she hated most was that she kind of
understood
Sam about this one. If she let herself really, really think about leaving, her first reaction was closer to Sam’s than not.

But it was worse to think of Hefin in some unimaginable future without her than it was to think about an unimaginable future.

“You’d be okay with it? When you’re like this?” Sam’s voice threatened to go into the register that had Sarah pushing her call button, and Des held her breath.

“With me like
this
, Sam? You mean young and trying to get through something and have a life? This is fucked-up, but it’s also my problem. I’d miss Des, but it would be because I missed her, not her caregiving. I’m feeling kind of shitty for how much I’ve depended on her the last couple of months, already.”

Des was shocked. Sarah’s pain medicine must be really great.

“It’s what family does, Sarah. They step in, they take care of each other. I can see where you have a problem with that.”

Sarah pressed her lips together so tight, the skin all around them turned white.

“Sam,” Des warned. “Back off. Right now.”

“No. It’s okay, Des. He can say what he wants. What do you want to say, Sam?”

Sam pushed his forehead into his palms. “Dad hadn’t even been gone for a
minute
, Sarah, and you’re riding illegal races in the dark? On freeways? Tell me how that’s caring about this family. Explain to me how that’s caring about anyone but yourself. Enlighten me about the fucks you think you give. You were hit by a car, on a fucking
exit ramp
for no good reason other than the most important person you’ve ever thought of is you. Just you. And fuck anyone else who gives a good goddamn.”

Sarah breathed in, almost a gasp, long and deep.

Des felt her hands go numb and her heart slow down in a way that was painful and sharp in her chest. Sam’s voice hadn’t yelled. It had been soft and choked and broken, like it was what he was really thinking and could never say because it would hurt his throat, his voice. Like all of his yelling was just to cover up his real voice.

“Sam,” Des whispered. “Please—”

“No, Desbaby. It’s okay.” Sarah turned to her. “He’s needed to say that for a while, I think. You better go.”

“I can’t, not now.”

“Please go,” Sarah whispered.

Des stood up and walked to the doorway. Sam still had his hands to his forehead, leaning over, but he couldn’t be
crying
, could he?

She walked out into the hallway, the noise from the unit suddenly loud, like it had turned itself back on after going quiet to hear what Sam had to say.

She’d been asked to leave.

Now she could only think of one place she could possibly go, and he wasn’t even a place, just where she was starting to feel like she belonged.

Hefin watched Phil tap the last panel into place.

Looking at the panels of rich and glossy carvings that would greet visitors to the library where they were sunk against the expanses of marble cladding, he felt that he had managed something good.

The project was done.

He would always be here.

He was as proud of the panels he had restored, and he had kept a catalog of the signatures he found behind the carvings as they came off the wall, to make sure that at least one of the works of each previous carver was returned. So that they would always be here, too. In his project notes, notes that would be archived with the library and the Ohio Historical Society, he had explained his rationale for preserving the work of every carver who had contributed to the panels.

It was preserving their histories, their human presence. It preserved the chance for their ancestors to find them again. Who knew which of these carvers might have left some evidence with their families that they had contributed to these panels, and Hefin wanted those families to find them if they looked.

He wondered how many of the carvers lived and worked here, how many, like him, were from somewhere else.

Even though the professional photographer was busy taking hundreds of photos for archives and had promised to send Hefin the files, Hefin took photos of his own with his phone.

He’d been sending his dad photos all along; his dad loved them.

Every careful tap from Phil meant he was that much closer to his departure.

That much farther away from Destiny.

And they’d spent almost every moment possible the last three weeks with each other. She hadn’t told him what she had decided, and every day she didn’t, it seemed more impossible to count on it. They’d talked about her visiting, about his making treks
back once he’d determined how his potential work would be managed, about what a long-distance relationship would look like.

It looked kind of abysmal.

He was worried about Destiny, too. He had the uncomfortable feeling last night, when she came to his door clearly tired and upset, that he was, for lack of a better thought, on her
rounds
.

She hadn’t shared with him what had upset her though he suspected it was Sam, mainly because it had been Sam the few times she would mention it. Instead, she wanted to help him fucking
pack
. She wanted him to talk about the end of the project. She wanted to know more about how he was going to present his portfolio in Beijing.

It hadn’t been conversation, it had been her duty to him. He recognized it in how she talked to her siblings and talked about them. He’d ask her questions about the new business Web site she was building, how she was going to campaign for new projects, and she would give him a few maddeningly vague details and move on.

She wasn’t here.

What he loved about her was she was always right here, and that presence kept him anchored, too.

He would not be on her list of people to check in on, to keep inventory of. She was a woman who thought of domes and looked up maps and foreign languages and made love in the back of limousines.

Her mother had not named her Destiny so that she could make sure everyone was playing nice for the rest of her life.

He hadn’t thought that once Destiny understood where he was going with this, where he believed them to be going, that she would retreat. He had been prepared if she looked at him straight and told him no, that she knew she belonged here. He would know, if she told him in the way she always told him everything she was sure of, that she was right.

He wanted to see the world with her because even the bits of it he’d seen would look different with her along.

His home was with her.

He was certain of this, and he knew, now, that if he stayed here, he would feel
home
—but their chances were something more than that.

He had a chance to make the kind of meaningful adult relationship with his parents that would make all of their lives fuller.

He had the chance to make things that were beautiful and good.

He had the chance with a woman who held him accountable for his percent but no more so that he had something left with which to risk.

She had a chance to take in the world.

She had the chance to really understand that the reason so many depended on her was because she could depend on herself.