THIEF: Part 6 (4 page)

              I did the only noble act of contrition I could: I gave Alex my apartment.It was close to his work, and if he decided he wanted to travel again, the lease ended in September.Just enough time for him to find out what he needed to stay, or go.

              Jane welcomed me with all-too-open arms, and Killian, probably flashing back to his days of caring for teenaged Fiona by himself, tried to evade the girl drama as best he could.Sometimes, if Jane was in my room for a long time in the evening, consoling me as I cried and bitched about the mess I’d made of my life, we’d hear a strong knock on the door, hushed and slippered footsteps, and find a tray of chocolate gelato and a bottle of wine in the hall.

              “See?” I asked Jane one evening, right after Killian’s tray arrived.Killian, amazingly quick for his age and overall roundness, somehow managed to disappear when we opened the door.“This is what I want.”

              “Gelato?”

              “Someone bringing me gelato because I’m sad, or because my niece is sad—just…someone thinking of me.”I flopped back on my bed, shoving a pillow over my face.“And the worst part is, I did have that.And I ruined it.”

              Jane laughed a little ironically, sitting beside me.She put her hand on my belly and tapped something to the baby in Morse Code.“I know it hurts, losing Alex,” she said, sighing, “but maybe Alex wasn’t meant to be your forever.”

              “What, and running away from the cops with Silas is?”

              “No,” she answered, like I was slow.She took my hand, putting it on my stomach where hers had been.“Maybe this baby is your forever.And the collateral damage will be worth it, Erin, believe me.Your mom was miserable ‘til she had you.”

              I snorted.“She still seemed miserable to me.”

              Jane did something out of character for her, although not unusual when we were having these kinds of serious talks: she grew quiet.“I know your mom made a lot of mistakes, sweetheart.A hell of a lot.Trust me, she and I had our share of fights about that, over the years.”She sipped her wine, slipping her feet in and out of her shoes.“Fact is, parents aren’t anything special.They’re human.They mess things up all the time.Sometimes they think what they’re doing really is the best option, and other times, they know it’s the worst—but if they love their kids, they do it with the hope things will be better, later on.”

              I silently cursed my hormones for the millionth time for making me such an easy cryer these days.“Right. Guess Mom thought it was ‘for the best’ when she stayed with Gordon, then, huh?”

              Jane shut her eyes, and I realized she was trying to keep from crying herself.“Erin…your mom never doubted you.She believed you when you told her Gordon…”She paused, sucking air through her teeth.“After you told her about the rape, she called me.Remember, I was dating that lawyer in Chicago?”

              I didn’t remember the lawyer—truth be told, there’d been more than one, in Jane’s dating roulette—but I nodded anyway.

              “Your mom called me for advice, so I put Louis on the phone, and he walked her through all her options to have Gordon arrested.But without physical proof, she knew he’d get one of his friends to post bail, and she was afraid of what they’d do when he was out.She had to get you out of the house.I offered to take you in, but before your mom could talk to you about it…you’d left.”

              I thought of that day.My sixteenth birthday, me standing on the porch and promising myself I’d never come back.For the next few years, I stole, lied, and charmed all my friends into letting me crash on their couches.A couple nights, I even slept on the street.

              “Your mom told me she didn’t even want to find you,” Jane continued, “because as long as she didn’t know where you were, neither would Gordon.She knew you could care for yourself, one way or another.”

              Anger flared in my chest for a second, remembering some of the “or anothers” I had to do to get by.Panhandling, which was more shameful than stealing.Eating abandoned food off of café tables and, once, an actual trash can.Giving male acquaintances from high school blow jobs just for a hot shower and place to spend the night.

              Jane didn’t know this, but she seemed to pick up on my resentment.“Now, I know that probably wasn’t the best choice.But your mama really thought it was, at least in the circumstances as she knew them.Gordon scared her.She was terrified to leave him—didn’t want him to go after you again.So she stayed with him as long as she could stand it.”Jane looked at me sideways.“She did it for you, Erin.And right or wrong…it was a sacrifice.Her way, I guess, of trying to make up for every time she’d failed you.Even though she knew it didn’t come close.”

              “I didn’t know that,” I said quietly.“I thought she just…didn’t care.”I wiped my tears away with a tissue, probably the hundredth I’d gone through in this house, then added, “I’m still angry, though.”

              “That’s all right,” Jane nodded.“I’m angry at her for a lot of stuff, too.But knowing why she did what she did helps a little, doesn’t it?And even if it doesn’t…all her mistakes aren’t for nothing, Erin.”

              I thought about Silas's mistakes.I was still angry at him, too.But Jane was right.Knowing the “why” of things helped, even it was just a little bit.

              Jane hooked her finger under my chin, making me look at her.“Good or bad, the choices your mama made turned you into who you are today.And I know you’re scared about having this baby, and maybe doing it all on your own—which you won’t be, by the way, because Killian and I are here for you, no matter what you need—but you can handle it.If nothing else, you won’t make those same mistakes she did.”

              “Already have,” I muttered, then laughed bitterly.“I’ve chased my kid’s father away.Or he’s going to be in jail.Either way, I picked something wrong.”

              Jane didn’t have a platitude or secret story to answer that.Stupid thing was, I kind of hoped for one.

Against my better judgment, I tell Silas where I am now, the next time a number from Mexico calls my phone.

              “I can’t wait to see you,” he says.“I—I really am sorry, though.About you and Alex.”

              “Me too.”I pause.“Sorry, I mean.To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about seeing you.”

              “That’s fair,” he concedes.“If it weren’t for me showing up out of the blue last time…”His voice trails, then picks up.“Do you know what you’re having yet?”

              “A boy,” I tell him, and can hear the grin in his voice, even with so much distance, even with no certainty of what will happen next.

A month later, just before August, I meet Silas at the hotel we agreed upon last time we talked.I get there before him and check into the room.

              When he arrives, hat pulled low, he asks, “Can we shut the curtains?”

              “I highly doubt anyone will see you, Silas.”

              He hesitates.“I already dropped Emma off.So…so I’m sure the police are searching.”

              I pull the curtains shut.“How did Abby react?”

              “I didn’t see much,” he admits, “just told Emma to get out and ring the doorbell while I drove away, so all I caught was Abby opening the door and realizing it was her.”He won’t look right at me, but in the dim light, I see him smile.“She screamed.Like, in this insanely happy way.I heard it from down the street.”

              I smile too.“I’m happy for you, Silas.For Emma and Abby.I know…I know that pretty much killed you, what happened to your daughter.”When I reach for the light switch, he takes my hand and swiftly moves it to my stomach, our fingers laced.

              “September, right?”

              “Yeah.”

              “This is going to sound crazy,” he says, moving our hands in slow circles, “but I really feel like he’s mine.Some part of me can tell.”The baby kicks a few times, and Silas laughs.

              “Maybe it’s just wishful thinking,” I say, half-teasing, half-gravely reminding him of the possibilities.He’s got fifty percent or less in his favor.But, then again—as Dr. Brody patronizingly reminded me when I gave him the news at my last check-up—all it takes is one night.One time.“Just because we said the drug could cause infertility,” he’d said, “didn’t mean it would.”I’d given him a glare and said, “No shit.”

              Silas leads me through the dark, towards the bed.Automatically, we undress.

              “God, I’ve missed you,” Silas whispers.I can’t see him well, but I feel his hands exploring my skin, all the ways my body’s changed.Maybe I’m imagining it, but every time I touch him, his muscles tense.He flinches when I push my fingers into his hair.

              “Is something wrong?” I ask, but my question’s answered when one of my fingernails catches on an elastic band, stretching across his head in a diagonal.

              Silas sits up.He faces away from me, until I get up and open the curtain just enough to see.When I circle around the bed, standing in front of him, I realize what I touched.Why he didn’t want the lights on.Why he tensed up so much.

              He’s wearing an eyepatch.

              “Silas,” I whisper.Tears gather across my eyes, but I blink them back and sit beside him, reaching for the patch slowly, asking his permission.

              He nods.I lift it.

              The socket’s empty and swollen, a scar above the lid, running parallel to his eyebrow.

              “I told you,” he says, his voice quiet, but strong, “I was going to do whatever I could to make Emma normal again.”

              By mid-August, Silas and Emma’s story is all over the news, even more popular than the kidnapping.At least this one has a happy ending, for the most part.

              Emma does look normal: a sweet little girl with two differently colored eyes, just a little scar tissue around her temple.Like Silas said, Dr. Ramirez even transplanted hair follicles to give her eyelashes and eyebrows again.Unless you look really closely—and the news makes sure to get plenty of zoomed-in photos and videos—you can’t tell she was ever burned, much less missing an eye.When she shuts her eyes, the damaged one stays open, just a little, and when she laughs, the corner of that eye crinkles more than a first-grader’s skin should.But in most photos, when she’s smiling or playing with her dolls, she looks normal.Happy.She’ll be able to grow up and live her life the way Silas wanted her to.

              The doctor did amazing work, and news stations everywhere are interviewing him.He has offers from hospitals all over the world, hoping he’ll head up their reconstructive surgery units.Thousands of people with deformities or loved ones with deformities—bullet wounds, car accidents, fires, birth defects—write him pleading letters and send him desperate videos, hoping he can work his miracles on them, too.

              Silas turned himself in.I knew he had to, but I still wasn’t prepared when he said it.

              “You can wait a few days,” I offered in the hotel that day, pulling his eyepatch down into place.“We’ll stay here.No one’ll know.”

              He shook his head.“I don’t want to risk anything happening to you.”

              “Why would anything happen to me?”

              Silas touched the patch nervously, glancing at me, and cleared his throat.“I kind of owe some guys money for, uh...for checking up on you, for me.While I was gone.”

              “What?”

              “Yeah,” he nodded, then forced a laugh.He stared down at his shoes—old boots, caked with red mud—and scratched his arm.“I...I kind of paid a buddy's friend to spy on you, a couple times.Not for anything sinister, I promise.Just as a way of...being near you again, without interrupting your life.”

              Suddenly, it makes sense: the car in my parking lot, the night I met Alex.The one following us to Tennessee.They hadn't been Gordon, out for revenge. one might have been—a long time ago, before I'd sold Mom's house, when Silas and I were still together. But if that dirt bag was going to do anything, he'd have done it by now.
Maybe
, I think,
he just can't find me anymore.
I've certainly moved enough, this year.

             
Maybe he's just afraid.
I knew, for all the scumbag's bravado, what a coward he was.

              “Do you hate me?” Silas asked.

              “Actually, in a weird way, I'm just relieved.”I told him about the cars, how scared I was that Gordon had tracked me down.“Harmless spies—though I will admit, it makes you look crazy as hell, hiring them to update you on my life—is a lot better than that possibility.”

              Silas nodded again.“I
was
crazy.Taking Emma to Mexico, stealing all the money, knowing what was waiting for me when I came back...it was like this weird rush, but a downward spiral, at the same time.

              “I wasn't sleeping much.Started drinking again, sometimes—you saw that.I felt like I was on autopilot while my brain just...shut down.Like the only thing I knew how to do anymore was hide and wait, while Emma had her surgeries.It was the only thing I could care about, anymore.”He paused.“Well...that, and you.Actually, that was the real reason I came back, the night Jane got married: they told me you were dating someone else already, and I...I couldn't take it.I had to see you.To know if you still loved me.”

              “I did.”

              “Did,” he echoed.His tone told me he accepted my choice of words.Maybe, in a way, he could even agree.

              “Anyway,” he continued, “Gordon's never going to bother you again.”

              I narrowed my eyes, wary.“Why's that?”

              “Let's just say the guy I hired is pretty persuasive.His main job is convincing people they'd be better off leaving town.Gordon pretty much jumped at the offer.”

              Laughing, I placed my hand on his knee.“Thank you, Si.You didn't have to do that for me.”

              “I wanted to.”

              I resisted the urge to touch the eyepatch again, out of curiosity.Instead, I touched his chest, feeling his pulse against the muscle and bone.“Please stay, Silas,” I whispered.“You don't have to leave right now.Stay.”When he looked away, I added, “Why are you in such a hurry?”

              “I don't know,” he said.“Maybe...I’m just tired of running.”He sighed, emotion strangling his words.“I’m so tired, Erin.”

              I took his face in my hands and kissed him everywhere I could, even the eyepatch, until he stopped flinching, until he relaxed under my touch and let me show him what we could have, if only for a few days more.

              “I’ve spent so long thinking of this day,” he whispered, “of when I could bring Emma home and she’d be fixed, when it would all be over and I could stop worrying and hiding and—and just praying for things to get better.For her, I mean.”He shook his head, and I saw tears filming across his eye.“Didn’t really stop to think about what would happen to me, once this day’s over.”

              “Don’t think about it,” I told him.“Just think about now.”I made him look at me.“Okay?Just think about this.”

              He stared at me, nodding, and for a moment I saw the person I'd met at the ranch, so long ago.A lifetime, pretty much.This time, instead of him taking my hand and leading me forward, it was me who showed the way things would go tonight.

              Slowly, I lowered myself to the floor.His hand trailed away from my face as he waited.All at once, I took him into my mouth, feeling his member harden and grow as I made him forget everything else, at least for now.

              “Erin,” he sighed, his fingers tangling into my hair.I looked up.In the dim light, I saw him tilt his head back, eye closed and brow furrowed, and knew he was focusing on this and nothing else.As much as he’d hurt me, he had done it for a reason: his child.I wasn’t a mom yet—I didn’t feel like one, anyway.But I could understand.And his wrongdoings would be punished enough, in the days and weeks and years to come.I wanted to give him at least one night of happiness, before it all began.

              I worked my tongue around, caressing him, and bobbed my head to the rhythm of his hands as they pushed and pulled.He came quickly, faster than either of us expected, but I drank him down without hesitation, looking up at him and catching his gaze, riveted, as the pleasure hit.His chest rose and fell heavily; he bit his lip as he finished, a soft noise escaping his throat.

              “Amazing,” he praised me, helping me to my feet.He kissed my stomach, resting his ear there for a moment, before nodding to the bed.I lay down and watched him stare, his eyes tracing every curve of my body.“I’ve never seen you so beautiful,” he said, voice low, and took his time kissing his way from my mouth to my neck, neck to breasts.He rolled one nipple between his fingers, working the other in his mouth, and I felt his erection return against my thigh.

              “God, yes…”My back arched as his hand slipped between my legs, finding my clit.He rubbed it in the same fast circle as his tongue, encircling my nipple, and I felt him smile as he brought me to orgasm.

              “One,” we both whispered, our eyes locked as he slid himself into me.He began to rock his hips slowly, still staring.

              It was as though we’d never been apart, the way he moved, the way I held his shoulders.The way we did what each other wanted, needed, without having to say it.He bit my ear lightly when I came again; I trailed my nails down his back when he came a second time.

              “Two,” we said, laughing just a little, as he pulled out and pushed his fingers inside of me.Just like last time, he found my G-spot immediately and pushed against it, over and over, but more slowly than before.He moved to the foot of the bed and flicked his tongue across my clit.

              “I’m…I’m coming,” I breathed, my hands grabbing at his hair like I wasn’t sure if I wanted to push him down or pull him back.My orgasm built gradually, so that when I finally hit the peak, all I could do was say, “Oh, God, Si…” as my back arched and my muscles froze, the core of me trembling for him.

              Before it was over, he’d moved and slid his cock back into my pussy, feeling the final pulse of pleasure.

              “Three,” he said, and rocked his hips back and forth again.

              We stopped counting after six.The afternoon had melted into night; finally, at midnight, we fell asleep.I woke up once, just before dawn, listening to his hushed breath when the air conditioner periodically stopped.It felt like there was no world outside of our room.I shut my eyes and wished, for a second, that was true.

              When I woke again, he was already gone.A note by my clothes read, “I’m sorry I couldn’t wait a few days, like you wanted.But I’m really, really happy we could have one more night, Erin.-Si.”I packed up my things and slipped into the hallway silently, as though anyone were listening.As though anyone cared.I left the note exactly where he'd put it.

              This time, I realized, he wanted to be the one who shut the door on me.

News networks confirm the rumors that Abby, thrilled with the results of Emma's surgeries, is testifying on Silas’s behalf.She’s even paying for his lawyer, and I bet she paid off his friend's buddy, too.Maybe I’m imagining things, like the soft way they say each other’s names in interviews, but part of me hopes that I’m not.

              Thankfully, for every news channel’s thorough research—from Silas and Abby being young parents, both alcoholics, to the gruesome details of Emma’s accident and how Silas worked at Fox Ridge just to be near his daughter, and the way he sacrificed his own eye, and his freedom, to give her a normal life again—none of them find out about me, the ex-girlfriend who might be pregnant with Silas’s second kid.I’m happy living in the shadows for a while, staying low.Besides, I think it would hurt Silas’s case more than help it.

              Jane and Killian surprise me with another guest room, the one next to mine.They hire a designer, against my insistence, to help Fiona and me turn it into a nursery, just in time for fall.We pick a lot of earth tones: rich browns, burnt shades of orange and red.Fitting, Fiona declares, for an autumn baby.

              On September 3rd, exactly three weeks before I’m due, Alex texts me.
Coffee?

              I hold my breath as I type,
Sure.When?

              He replies almost instantly.
Now, maybe?If you’re free.I’m already near your aunt’s place for work.

             
I can’t drive anymore
, I tell him,
so I have to wait till Jane or Killian or Fiona get back.

              There’s a slight lull this time, then a ping.

             
I’ll pick you up in ten.

“Damn, you weren’t kidding.”Alex gives a half-hearted smile as I get into his car.He stares at my stomach.“I’d have a hard time getting behind the wheel, too.”

              “Laugh it up,” I say sarcastically, but we both chuckle, for a few seconds.At the coffeehouse, he gets me a green tea and cookie, waving off my money.

              “I’ve got a rule,” he says, pulling out his wallet, “and that’s to always pay for a pregnant woman’s food.”

              “Why?”

              He shrugged, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.“Good karma, maybe?Seems chivalrous.”

              “Well, thank you,” I say, “though I think we can both admit I don’t deserve chivalry.”

              “It’s not about deserving,” he says, and leaves it at that.

              We sit outside on the patio.The sun is still out, golden and just the right intensity.It lights the ends of his hair and reflects in his glasses, but I stare through the glare, to his eyes.Despite the joking, I can tell he has something important to say.

             
Of course he does,
I tell myself.
Why else would he have texted me?

              “So,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee, “saw Silas on the news last week.Actually, every night since last Sunday, if I’m being honest.”

              I nod.“His trial started yesterday.”I pause, wondering if I should tell him what I learned this morning from Silas himself.“He and his ex-wife are back together.She’s the one who got him out on bail, hired his lawyer, all that.”

              Alex raises his eyebrows.“That’s pretty cool, I guess.That they could work things out.Kind of weird, too.But in a nice way.”He clears his throat, his ramble trailing, and doesn’t look at me when he asks, “So you and him…”