What kind of trouble had Ahanti gotten into that she was afraid of speaking freely even in her own studio? And that she’d feel the need to cut off her fiancé and me? I had to assume now that she’d done it to protect us.
Mark came back around the corner, clearly wondering where I’d disappeared to.
I spackled on a smile. No matter my suspicions about Ahanti’s situation, I wasn’t going to ruin this for Mark. We couldn’t do anything until the tour was done anyway. “There was an intersection, and I didn’t have a GPS.”
One of our running jokes was how I had a special skill for getting lost. Hopefully that’d stall him from asking more questions at least.
The look he gave me said he didn’t quite believe me, but he took my hand anyway, and we caught back up with the team leader.
The rest of the tour only solidified in my mind that Mark would be happy if he decided to take the job. I doubted that would change after he got a closer look over the next week at the research they were doing.
By the time we got lunch in the cafeteria, though, I felt like a kid at the end of a long drive.
Mark slid his tray onto the table and took the chair next to me. “You have that look on your face like you’re desperate to tell me something.”
I’d planned to at least wait until we were out of the building, but now that he’d asked, if I didn’t tell him, he’d probably worry that I was holding back something about the job. I filled him in on my revelation.
“Are you sure it’s not just wishful thinking?”
It might be, but there was only one way to find out. “I think I should talk to her.”
“You already talked to her.”
“We weren’t alone in her studio.”
Mark steepled an eyebrow. “You think she was afraid of her employee or the woman getting a tattoo?”
Not likely. Terrance had worked with Ahanti since she opened her tattoo parlor. If she’d been afraid of the woman customer, she could have waited until she left and then called me. For that matter, she could have emailed or texted me today, yesterday, or any time in the past week.
Mark was probably right. It certainly sounded more reasonable than my grasping at what could have been simply me overanalyzing Ahanti’s choice of words.
But she’d been my best friend for so long. She’d stuck by me through having my heart broken by a married man and changing careers and all manner of other things. If there was even a chance that this wasn’t what it seemed, I couldn’t abandon her. “I need to do this.”
“Not by yourself.” Mark took the final swig of his soda, then piled all his trash onto the tray. “If we’re going to do this, we need to figure out how to contact her in a way she’ll feel safe responding to.”
Good Lord, I loved this man.
We still didn’t have a plan by the time we needed to leave for dinner with my parents. Working on the assumption that she didn’t feel comfortable telling me what was going on using her phone or email or talking to me in person, it wasn’t as simple as sending her a message through one of those means.
Mark had suggested sliding a letter under her apartment door, but I knew from living there that there wasn’t a gap under the door to slide anything. If we mailed a letter, it might not reach her before we left.
“What about taping it to her door?” Mark asked. We were out of the worst of the traffic, so he’d relaxed his death grip on the wheel.
“If she’s so worried about someone intercepting her communication, I’m not comfortable being so obvious about it.”
I’d hate to cause Ahanti more trouble than she was already in if this was more than her deciding to make drastic changes in her life for the sake of change.
Mark parallel parked on the street in front of my parents’ building. My parents could have easily afforded a house, but their apartment came with a superintendent and no need to upkeep a yard—or hire someone to do it. They’d never had much patience for anything that could interfere with their work time or their very limited leisure time. Besides, you could see the Washington Monument while swimming in the rooftop pool. Very few locales could boast that kind of a view. The waiting list for an apartment in their building could be two years or more.
My mom buzzed us in, and my head felt a bit like I’d been given a dose of anesthetic—all fuzzy and disconnected. Assuming my dad spoke to me today, it’d be the first time in five months. Whether the silence was still anger-motivated or he thought he could shame me into coming back, I wasn’t sure. My mom didn’t even seem to know. According to her, my dad didn’t want to speak about me any more than he wanted to speak to me.
The elevator ride and walk down the hall to my parents’ apartment felt a bit like walking the plank. Or at least what walking the plank would have felt like if pirates had actually killed people that way. Shooting their prisoners or running them through with a sword was more efficient, granted, but if making them suffer before death had been a goal, I could see this as a good way to go.
“You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?” Mark asked. “It’d be a shame if you crushed the cheesecake after we brought it all the way here.”
Nancy, my go-to person for all things food-related, had baked and packaged the maple syrup cheesecake for me to bring to my parents. I’d wanted some way to display Sugarwood’s product, and TSA restrictions meant I couldn’t carry a bottle of maple syrup on the plane with me, and packing it in my luggage would have given me nightmares about broken bottles and ruined clothes. The cheesecake I’d been able to carry on and tuck under my seat on the plane.
I tried to move my lips into a smile for Mark’s sake, but I had a feeling it came out more like a crazed grimace. “I won’t pass out. My dad would see that as weakness.”
I did let Mark knock on the door, though. With the way my hands were shaking, I wasn’t sure I could safely hold the cheesecake in one hand or that I’d knock loud enough for them to even hear me.
Mark’s knuckles had barely hit the wood before the door swung open, almost like they’d been waiting even though we were a couple of minutes early. I wouldn’t have dared be late.
I’d seen my mom only a few weeks earlier. Today she had the worn-down look in her eyes that she only got when she was working a tough case that required too many “needless” battles for information and way too many cups of coffee. Cases usually energized my parents, but one of my mom’s pet peeves was having to fight to get information that should have been provided to her as normal operating procedure.
My dad stood slightly behind her. Same Armani suit, wrinkle-free even after a day at work, as if he’d changed it before we arrived. He actually might have. First impressions, according to my dad, were worth ten eloquent arguments. His clients didn’t set foot in the courtroom without him approving every element of their appearance.
But instead of a scowl, he wore a smile.
I blinked rapidly, but it wasn’t an illusion. The smile was still there.
He extended a hand to Mark, but I barely caught his greeting. My mom had promised to talk to him on my behalf. Maybe she’d succeeded. Maybe I’d been worried for nothing.
When he turned his gaze in my direction, it reminded me of sapphires, warm on the outside but hard to the touch.
He hadn’t forgiven me. But first impressions were everything, and this was the first time he’d met Mark—whose good reputation I was sure my mom had ensured proceeded him.
The table was already set with the food laid out. Anyone else might have been worried we’d be late and the meal would grow cold, but not my parents. Because I knew better than to be late. They’d raised me, after all.
I recognized the meal on the first bites of heirloom baby carrots and pommes aligot as coming from one of my parents’ favorite fine dining restaurants. Just like they never cleaned, and never repaired anything that broke, they also never cooked a meal. My mom had a shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen, suggesting she’d known her way around the kitchen at one time, but that time had long passed before I entered high school.
Hearing Ahanti’s name snapped me back to the conversation. It’d been a man’s voice. I couldn’t imagine Mark telling my parents that Ahanti had “dumped” me as a friend.
It sounded like my dad was telling the story of how Ahanti helped save my life when Peter tried to kill me.
My dad shifted his gaze in my direction again, and it took everything I had not to shrink under the force of it. It was the look he normally reserved for the prosecution after he finished a line of questioning with a witness. The one that said Only a fool would contradict me.
“Her mother and I understand that, after an experience like that, almost anyone would need time away. We’ve only ever wanted what’s best for her, and we’re glad you’ll be moving back to DC so she can return to her career.”
It was a statement packed with messages. The one for me said, If you come back, all will be forgiven and we’ll never speak of this again. The one for Mark was the kind of pressure my dad was so good at exerting—a subtle implication that if we didn’t come back, he’d be holding me back and sabotaging my life.
The worst of it was, my dad probably knew exactly what he was doing. My mom would have told him enough about my relationship with Mark for him to know that Mark would do much more than move partway across the country if it was what was best for me.
A little ball of heat formed in my chest. I imagined it growing until I could shoot fire like a dragon. “We haven’t decided whether we’re moving back or not. We both have careers we enjoy in Fair Haven, so it’s not a decision to be made lightly.”
“Nicole.” My mom rose to her feet. “Could you help me with the dessert?”
The expression that flickered across her face worked as well as a bucket of ice water in putting out my anger. It almost looked like sadness. I hadn’t considered before that the strained relationship I had with my dad might negatively affect my mom.
I gathered up the empty plates and followed her into the kitchen without argument.
I hadn’t been wrong in what I’d said, but I probably shouldn’t have said it. I could have told Mark later to ignore him, that it’d been my choice to move to Fair Haven, and that my career wasn’t any more or less important than his. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
My mom barely acknowledged. Apologies were another thing that weren’t done in our family.
She pulled a white paper bag from the refrigerator and tucked the leftovers back inside. As I’d expected, the logo for the upscale restaurant they liked was emblazoned across the bag. So upscale that they technically called it catering rather than takeout. My tastes had never been as fancy once I moved out on my own, even before Fair Haven. Ahanti and I used to order Chinese and sit on one of our couches to eat it straight out of the containers.
That was it!
Only the knife I held to cut the cheesecake kept me from fist pumping the air. I could go to the Chinese restaurant we always used to order from, place an order for delivery, and request to put a note inside before it went out. That’s how I could communicate with Ahanti.