Twenty-eight
You’ve checked your phone three times in the last two minutes,” Charles said. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”
Tim glanced up from his phone screen. Charles was silhouetted against Tim’s office window, the view of the docks—steel and glass, water and sky—shrouded in a veil of rain. “What’s your question?”
“That’s my fucking point. Lunch, mate. Lunch.”
Tim dragged his hand across his face. “Sorry. I’m waiting on a text. From Dee.”
“A nooner. Nice.”
“I’m supposed to take her sister to the airport,” Tim answered repressively.
If she responded to his text. If she said yes. He didn’t even know the time of Toni’s flight yet.
“Fallen for your fancy car, has she? You can at least buy me lunch first. Or after. I’m not choosy.”
The frustration pulsing behind Tim’s eyes pounded at the back of his skull. Lack of sleep, probably. The past two nights without Dee had been . . . difficult. “I can’t commit to anything right now.”
“You sound like Laura.”
“Very funny.” Tim looked at the screen again.
Charles reached across the desk and plucked the phone from his hand.
“Give it over,” Tim said.
“Nope. I want to see what’s so fascinating.” Charles turned back to the windows, scrolling up the message thread. “ ‘It’s eight o’clock. Coming downstairs?’ ” he read out loud. He glanced over his shoulder at Tim. “You do it on a schedule?”
“We watch cooking shows together on Sunday nights,” he said stiffly.
“Is that your sad, posh version of Netflix and chill?”
Tim felt heat move up his face. “She likes Great British Bake Off.”
“You’re pathetic. No wonder she blew you off.” Charles looked at the screen. “With a fucking crying emoji.”
Tim considered wresting the phone away. But the hallway windows provided a clear view of his office. He couldn’t risk his team seeing him grappling with Charles. There had been enough speculation about him and Laura already. “It was her sister’s last day.”
“So she says. Poor sod,” Charles said. “Stuck in the friend zone.”
A memory flashed. Dee on his couch—soft, pink, warm, wet. Tim didn’t say anything.
Charles raised his brows. “Or not. Good for you, mate. I wouldn’t have said she was your type.”
Tim hated this discussion.
He and Dee were friends. Exclusive friends. More than friends, on his part. It panicked him slightly to realize he had no idea if she felt the same way. She’d only recently gotten out of a relationship with that tosser from Kansas. And then there was Sam—one more unknown variable Tim didn’t control.
“It’s really none of your business,” he said.
Charles’s eyes widened. “Well, fuck me. You’re really stuck on her.”
“Give me the phone.”
“It’s okay, mate.” Charles’s genuine sympathy somehow made everything worse. “Well. Not okay. Sucks, right?”
Tim closed his eyes for a few seconds. Opened them again. “Dinner,” he said abruptly. “We’ll do dinner. Seven o’clock.”
The phone buzzed in Charles’s hand. He glanced down. “It’s your bird.”
Tim practically leaped around the desk to grab the phone.
Sorry. Just saw your message. Thnx! Would love ride. Flight at 4. 1 okay? Followed by another bubble with wavering dots. His breath stopped. If not, don’t worry, Dee added. With two pink hearts.
Tim exhaled in relief. See you at 1, he typed. xx
“I’m guessing dinner’s off now.” Charles smiled wryly. “Enjoy the ride.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Tim said firmly. “We made plans. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
He did not flake on a pal. Besides, Dee’s message had made no mention of dinner. Or after dinner. She didn’t owe him her time in return for a ride to the airport. They hadn’t been together that long, really. He wasn’t going to make assumptions simply because they’d had sex a few times. More than a few times. A week. Ten days, if he didn’t count this last miserable weekend.
But Charles . . . He’d known Charles for nine years. The man had saved his life. Even if Dee were free, Tim couldn’t blow Charles off.
Tim tucked his phone carefully away in his breast pocket.
Dee sat in the back, next to her sister.
Tim could see them in the rearview mirror, knees touching, fingers interlaced. Frankly, he was jealous. Not so much about the hand-holding but of their unthinking closeness, their ability to connect in such a direct and human way.
In the meantime, he’d been demoted from squire to chauffeur. Not part of the family. Useful but irrelevant. He parked in the drop-off zone, unloading Toni’s duffel and a new suitcase out of the back while the sisters said their good-byes at the curb.
They hugged for a long time. He had a lump in his own throat when they let go.
Growing up, he’d rather enjoyed being the sole focus of his parents’ attention. But as they aged, he wondered what it would be like to have a sibling to rely on, to share the burden of love and worry.
Toni disappeared behind the sliding doors, walking briskly. Tim opened the passenger door for Dee.
“Unless you’d rather sit in back,” he said, only half joking.
Dee managed a wan smile. “Don’t be silly. You’re not my taxi driver.”
When he slid behind the wheel, she was blotting her eyes with her fingertips. “All right?” he asked.
She nodded, averting her face.
His chest felt oddly tight. He didn’t know what to do for her.
“I need to apologize,” he said formally. “For the other night. It’s not my place to tell you how to manage your relationship with your sister.”
“No, you were right.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Toni needs to find her own way. And I need to let her go. To give her the confidence to be on her own.”
Generally, Tim liked being right. But her admission in this case didn’t make him feel any better.
At least the rain had stopped.
When he merged north on M50, Dee turned her head. “Where are we going?”
Tim cleared his throat. “I thought you could use . . .” Cheering up. A distraction. “A field trip.”
She leaned forward to read a road sign. “ ‘Malahide Castle’?”
“There’s a tour. Or we can walk around the grounds if you like. Or down to the beach.” Anything she wanted. Whatever she needed.
“It’s such a pretty day,” she said. “Let’s walk outside.”
It was, in fact, quite overcast. But trust Dee to see things in the best possible light.
They strolled up from the lot toward the castle, the round, crenelated towers rising from the green lawn and dense vines.
She turned to him, her face shining. “It’s like a fairy tale. Like ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ ”
He gestured toward her feet. “ ‘Puss in Boots.’ ”
She laughed, and his chest eased, loosening, lightening. For now, at least, he could make her feel better. She was with him now. Did it really matter why?
He bought tickets to the garden. They walked the landscaped paths, Dee smiling and exclaiming, pausing occasionally to take pictures with her phone: the drifts of daffodils under the gray-brown trunks of trees; the silvery lichen on the old stone walls; the frame of the glass conservatory, white against the bruised sky.
Children scampered past, shrieking, pursued by parents carrying coats. Couples wandered connected, arm in arm or hand in hand. Dee was still holding her phone. She bent to read an informational sign, her sweater tightening across her round bottom, and he wanted to touch her. Pat her. Right there, on the curve of her hip.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
George and Caroline Woodman were not given to public displays of affection. But once, at the holidays, Tim had walked in on his father in the library patting his mother’s bum, the gesture somehow more intimate than a kiss: familiar, natural, unthinking. Embarrassing.
“Imagine if your family lived in the same place for the past eight hundred years,” Dee said dreamily as he approached.
She wore her hair in a sort of a bun, with bits falling down. One dark strand blew across her lips. His hands clenched. “Imagine.”
She turned her head, her smile like the sun edging the clouds. “Shit. They do, don’t they?”
“Not eight hundred, no,” he said uncomfortably. “The house was built in the seventeenth century.”
“That’s so cool.”
“Drafty, at least.” He attempted a joke. “Impossible to heat, my mother says. And the chimneys smoke.”
She laughed. “But it must be nice to know where you’re from. To have that kind of family. History. Traditions.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Except it did. Or it had, to Laura. “Anyway, I’m in Ireland now.”
“Do you like it? Living here?”
“It’s not a matter of liking or not liking. After Brexit, a lot of our American clients moved their EU operations to Dublin. The firm needs me here. And it’s convenient for now. For school.” He sounded stuffy, even to himself. “I don’t think much about it, to be honest.”
Dee stopped to take a picture, a woman’s face carved from a stump and crowned with flowers. “I wondered if you missed it, that’s all.”
“England?”
“Your family. The army.”
He’d never put the two together in his mind. Not like that. But he supposed it made sense. The sense of commitment, of belonging, of being part of something larger than himself. “I don’t regret serving my country,” he said carefully. “But I was never going to make it a career like my grandfather. I was simply doing my part.” Doing what was expected.
She nodded as if satisfied.
“What about your family? Did they always live in Kansas?” he asked, turning the subject.
“Since the turn of the century, at least. They were homesteaders—four generations of farmers. My mother couldn’t wait to leave.” Dee made a little face. “Mom was not a pioneer girl.”
“On the contrary.”
Her brow pleated as she puzzled it out. “I guess . . . maybe? She was considered pretty avant-garde as an artist.” Her smile flitted across her face. “Not so advanced on the farm.”
“I meant, leaving her old life behind to seek her fortune. That’s your family tradition.”
“Like Toni.”
“And you.” She blinked. “Making a fresh start in search of a better life,” he explained.
“I am not like my mother.”
He was quiet.
“I’m not,” Dee insisted. “I hated moving around as a kid. All I ever wanted was to find a place to call home.”
“Will you go back, then? To Kansas.”
Her breath huffed. “I don’t know. If Toni isn’t there . . . I don’t know where I belong.”
With me, said an unregulated corner of his brain.
He shut it down. It was ridiculous. She was leaving in six months. She wasn’t a part of his life. He wasn’t a part of her family.
But he couldn’t be silent. “Maybe it’s not anyplace you’ve been,” he offered. “Maybe it’s somewhere you’re going.”
She looked at him then, her eyes wide, her lips parted.
And he kissed her.
They wandered without speaking until the grounds closed at four thirty.
Dee stopped him on the path as they walked out. “We need a selfie.”
He took it because, she said, his arms were longer. He turned her phone so she could see. “All right?”
She smiled.
It made him happy to see them like that, their heads close together with the castle behind them. “Send it to me.”
Her cheeks were pink. “Yeah. Sure.”
He took her hand on the way back to the car. The sky was still light as they drove home.
“You’re not coming in?” she asked when they got to their building. She sounded surprised. Maybe even disappointed.
“I’m having dinner with Charles.”
“Oh. Well, that’s okay.” She looked up at him through her lashes. “I have plans anyway.”
He was not going to ask if she was meeting Sam. The bastard.
“I have to turn in something to my writing group,” she said.
His jaw relaxed. “Good luck with that.”
“Thanks. Text me when you get in?” she asked, a hint of mischief in her voice. “So I know you’re home safely.”
He heard the echo of his own words and something in his chest expanded, his lungs or his heart. “Are you offering me a pity shag?”
She lifted her chin at an angle, not giving ground. He liked that so much. “I could be.”
“No dessert with Charles, then.” A smile, wide and unfamiliar, stretched his face. “I’ll save it for you.”