Divided in Death

Chapter 11

Roarke and Feeney stood contemplating a mixed-metal figure in the garden of the house in Queens.

“What do you think it is?” Feeney asked at length.

“I think it’s female. It may be partially reptilian. It may be partially arachnid. It seems to have been built out of copper and brass and steel. Bits of iron and perhaps tin.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s a question, isn’t it? I imagine it’s symbolic of how woman can be as sly as a snake, as cruel as a spider or some such bullshit. I believe it’s unflattering to the female sex, and know it’s ugly.”

“I got that part, the ugly part.” Feeney scratched his chin, then took out his bag of candied almonds. After dipping a hand in, he held it out for Roarke.

So they munched nuts and studied the sculpture.

“And people pay large bucks for this shit?” Feeney asked.

“They do. Indeed they do.”

“I don’t get that. Of course I don’t know nothing about art.”

“Hmm.” Roarke circled the piece. “Sometimes it speaks to them on an emotional level, or an intellectual one. Whatever. That’s when the piece has found the appropriate home. Other times, more often than not, the money’s spent simply because the buyer feels it should speak to him, and is too idiotic or proud or afraid to admit the thing he’s just paid for speaks to no one because it’s, essentially, an insulting piece of crap.”

Feeney pursed his lips, nodded. “I like pictures, the kind that look like what they’re supposed to be. A building, a tree, a bowl of fucking fruit. Looks to me like my grandson could’ve put this together.”

“Strangely enough, I believe it takes considerable skill and talent and vision, however odd, to create something like this.”

“You say so.” Feeney shrugged, but was far from convinced.

“Canny way to conceal observation devices, if that’s what it’s about.”

“Dallas thinks so.”

“And she generally knows what she’s about.” Roarke opened the remote scanner he and Feeney had configured. “You want to run this, or shall I?”

“Your tool.” Feeney cleared his throat. “Yeah, she knows what she’s about, like you said. A little nervy right now.”

“Is she?”

“Hit the jammer on that thing for a minute.”

Roarke lifted a brow, but complied. “Are we about to have a private conversation?”

“Yeah.” And Feeney didn’t relish it. “I said Dallas was a little nervy right now. About what you might do.”

Roarke continued to set the gauges on the scanner. “About what?”

“About the file on her father, about what the HSO pus buckets let happen to her back in Dallas.”

Roarke looked over now and saw Feeney’s face was tight. Rage, he thought, and embarrassment. “She spoke to you?”

“She circled around it some. She doesn’t know how much I know about it. Doesn’t want to. It’s not something I want to talk to her about either, if it comes to that. Since she feels the same, I didn’t have to say that you’d told me.”

“The two of you amaze me,” Roarke replied. “You’re aware of what happened to her, and with her instincts she’d know you are. But the two of you can’t say the words to each other. You can’t say them, though you’re her father, more than that son of Satan ever was.”

Feeney hunched his shoulders and stared at the mixed media ugliness of a squat toad-like creature several feet away. “Maybe that’s why, and it’s not the point. If she’s worried enough about you going after some asshole spook, then she’s plenty worried. You’re not fixing anything if you twist her up.”

Roarke set the scanner to analyze the dimensions, weight, and chemical contents of the sculpture. “I don’t hear you saying I’m wrong to go after him. That he, or his superiors, don’t deserve to pay for standing back while a child was raped, beaten, and brutalized.”

“No, I’m not going to say it.” Feeney folded his mouth firm, then met Roarke’s eyes. “First, it’d be a fucking lie, the sort that’d burn my tongue clean off because there’s part of me that’d like to give you a hand with it.”

Feeney stuffed the bag back in his sagging pocket, then kicked the base of the sculpture. The gesture was so like Eve, Roarke felt a smile tug at his mouth.

“And second?”

“Second, you wouldn’t give a good goddamn about the right or wrong of it. But you give one about Dallas. You give one about how she feels, about what she needs from you.” His color came up as he spoke, staining his cheeks with embarrassment. “I don’t want to get into that whole thing. Makes me feel like an asshole. But I’m saying you should think, you should think long and hard about what it’d do to her before you do anything.”

“I am. And I will.”

“Okay. Then let’s just move on.”

Though he was both touched and amused, Roarke nodded. “Moving on, then.” He disengaged the jammer, then studied the readout from the scan. “I’m getting the expected metals, solvents, finishes, and sealants. That’s using the strongest setting corporations and facilities would use in high-risk or sensitive areas.”

“Bump it up. Let’s see what it’ll do with the bells and whistles we added.”

“Best move aside,” Roarke warned. “The beam may not be friendly to cloth and flesh.”

Feeney stepped back from the sculpture, then decided the best place was behind the scanner.

The red beam shot out with an insect-like hum. As it struck the metal, the entire sculpture seemed to shimmer.

“Shit. Shit! If we set it too high it might melt that crap down to a puddle.”

“It’s not too high,” Roarke responded. “It may soften a few joints, but other than that…” Still he pushed it, upping the speed so the beam scanned the piece faster than he’d planned. Even from behind the unit, he could feel the heat and smell the electric buzz in the air.

When he shut down, Feeney gave a whistling breath. “That is some son of a bitch! Some son of a bitch. I’m doing the next one.”

“Might be wise to wear goggles next run.” Roarke blinked. “I’ve dots in front of my eyes.” But he was grinning, as Feeney was. “Nice rush, wasn’t it?”

“You got that right. And look here.” Feeney slapped Roarke on the back as he leaned over to scan the readout. “I’m seeing chips, and I’m seeing fiber optics, and some goddamn silicon.”

“Bugs.”

Feeney straightened, flexed his fingers. “Bugs. Give the girl the brass ring.”

When Eve walked back into her office, she wasn’t particularly surprised to see on-air reporter Nadine Furst sitting in her visitor’s chair and carefully redoing her lip dye.

She fluttered her long, silky lashes and turned that freshly tinted mouth up into a smile. “Cookies,” Nadine said with a gesture toward the little bag on Eve’s desk. “I culled six for you before bribing your men.”

Eve poked into the box, and came out with chocolate chip. “There’s an oatmeal cookie in there. I see no reason for the existence of oatmeal, particularly in cookies.”

“So noted. Why don’t you give it back to me, then it won’t offend your sensibilities?”

Eve pulled out the fat round cookie, handed it over before closing her door. The closed door had Nadine lifting her perfectly arched brows before nibbling on the cookie.

“Is that so you can yell at me for being in your office, or is it so we can exchange juicy girl secrets.”

“I don’t have any juicy girl secrets.”

“You’re married to Roarke. You’d have the juiciest on or off planet.”

Eve sat, rested her boots on the desk. “Have I ever told you what he can do to the female body with a single fingertip?”

Nadine leaned forward. “No.”

“Good. Just wanted to be sure.”

“Bitch,” Nadine said with a laugh. “Now about this double homicide, and Reva Ewing.”

“The charges about Ewing are about to be dropped.”

“Dropped.” Nadine all but jumped out of the chair. “Let me get my camera, set up an on-the-spot. Take me less than-”

“Sit down, Nadine.”

“Dallas, Ewing’s huge. The former American hero gone bad and now about to be exonerated? Add in the handsome artist and gorgeous socialite, the sex, the passion.”

“It’s bigger than Ewing, and it’s not about sex and passion.”

Nadine sat again. “What could be bigger than that?”

“I’m going to tell you what you can go on-air with, and what you can’t.”

Nadine’s expression went sharp as a blade. “Wait just a minute.”

“Or I’m going to tell you nothing.”

“You know, Dallas, one of these days you’re going to trust me to know what can go on-air and what can’t.”

“If I didn’t trust you, you and your cookies wouldn’t be here.” She rose as she spoke, and took the scanner EDD had provided her-one Roarke and Feeney had upgraded-to check the office space for any new electronics.

“What are you doing with that?”

“Just being anal. But as I was saying,” she continued, when she was satisfied the room was clean, “the fact is, if you hadn’t been sitting here playing with your pretty face when I walked in, I was going to contact you. I’ve got reasons for wanting some of this to go public, Nadine, and they’re not all professional.”

“I’m listening.”

Eve shook her head. “I have to clear every word of the story, and any follow-ups, before you go out with them. I need your word on it. I trust your word, but I have to have it. You have to say it.”

Nadine’s fingers itched for her recorder, but she curled them into her palm. “This must be big. You’ve got my word, on all of it.”

“Bissel and Kade were HSO.”

“You are shitting me.”

“This information comes from an unnamed source, and it’s gold. Bissel’s marriage to Ewing was part of an op, and it was without her knowledge or consent. She was used and was framed for the murder of Bissel and Kade to cover up the op, and potentially more.”

“Something this hot from an unnamed-gold or not-I need hard facts.”

“I’m going to give them to you. No recorder,” she said and dug into her desk drawers until she unearthed a stingy pad of recycled paper and an ancient pencil. “Write it down, and keep it and any transcribed discs from your notes in a secure location until you’re cleared to air.”

Nadine made a few testing squiggles with the pencil. “Let’s see how much of that shorthand my mother made me learn is still in my head. Go.”

It took an hour, then Nadine flew out of the office to lock herself in at Channel 75 to write the story.

It would explode, Eve knew, even when the initial pieces she cleared hit the airwaves. It deserved to explode. Innocent lives taken or ruined in the name of what? Global security? The sexiness of espionage?

It didn’t matter, not when those lives, those innocent lives, looked to her.

Eve finished up most of the grunt work she’d once dumped on Peabody. She had to admit, having an aide the last year or so had come in handy.

Not that she’d gotten spoiled, she assured herself.

She could, of course, pull rank, and continue to dump most of the grunt work on Peabody. And really, it was a learning experience. In the long run, she’d be doing Peabody a favor.

She checked the time and decided to close up shop for the day. She could get considerably more work done at home. With the remaining cookies safe in her jacket pocket, she headed out.

She squeezed into an overburdened elevator, which reminded her why she rarely left at change of shifts. Before the door closed, a hand shot through, yanking it open again to a chorus of groans and nasty curses from the occupants.

“Always room for one more.” Detective Baxter elbowed his way on. “You never call, you never write,” he said to Eve.

“If you can leave on the dot of COS, you must not have enough paperwork.”

“I got a trainee.” He flashed his grin. “Trueheart likes paperwork, and it’s good for him.”

Since she’d had the same thoughts about Peabody, it was hard to argue.

“We got a manual strangulation, Upper East Side,” he told her. “Corpse had enough money to choke a herd of wild horses.”

“Do horses come in herds or packs?”

“I don’t know, but I think herds. Anyway, she had a miserable disposition, a mile-wide mean streak, and a dozen heirs who are all glad to see her dead. I’m letting Trueheart act as primary.”

“He ready for it?”

“It’s a good time to find out. I’m staying close. I told him I thought the butler did it, and he just nodded, all serious, and said he’d do a probability. Christ, he’s a sweet kid.”

Cops popped out like corks on every level. There was almost breathable air by the time the elevator reached the garage.

“Heard you had to spring the prime suspect on the double homicide. That’s gotta sting.”

“It only stings if she did it.” She paused by Baxter’s shiny sports car. “How do you afford this ride?”

“It’s not about afford, it’s about the deft juggling of numbers.” He looked over to where her pitiful police issue sat dolefully in its slot. “Me, I wouldn’t be caught driving that heap if I was wearing a toe tag. You’ve got rank enough to pull better.”

“Maintenance and Requisitions both hate me. Besides, it gets me where I’m going.”

“But not in style.” He slid into his car, gunned the engine so it roared like a mad bull, then, with another wide grin, zoomed off.

“What is it about guys and cars?” she wondered. “I just don’t get how their dicks are attached to cars.”

With a shake of her head, she started across the garage.

“Lieutenant Dallas.”

Instinctively, her hand slipped inside her jacket and onto the butt of her weapon. She held it there as she pivoted, and studied the man who stepped out from between parked cars.

“This garage facility is NYPSD property, for authorized personnel only.”

“Quinn Sparrow, Assistant Director, Data Resources, HSO.” He held up his right hand. “I’m going to reach, with my offhand, for my identification.”

“Reach slow, AD Sparrow.”

He did, drawing out the flip case with two fingers. He held it up, waiting for her to approach. Eve studied the ID, then his face.

He looked young for any real juice in the HSO, but then she had no idea how early they recruited. He might’ve been forty, she supposed, but calculated he was missing a few years from that date. But he wasn’t green. His calm demeanor told her he’d had some seasoning.

His body had the compact, ready look under its black, government employee suit that made her think boxer or ballplayer. His voice had no discernible accent, and he waited, without movement or word, until she’d finished summing him up.

“What do you want, Sparrow?”

“I’m told you want a conversation. Why don’t we have one. My car’s beside yours.”

She glanced over at the black sedan. “I don’t think so. Let’s take a walk instead.”

“No problem.” He started to dip a hand in his right pocket. She had her weapon out and at his throat. She heard him suck in air, let it out. She saw the quick flicker of surprise and alarm on his face before it settled into passive lines again.

“Keep your hands where I can see them.”

“That’s no problem either.” He held them out, and up. “You’re jumpy, Lieutenant.”

“I’ve got reason, Assistant Director. Let’s walk.” Rather than holstering her weapon, she slid it inside her jacket as they walked toward the garage exit. “What makes you think I want a conversation?”

“Reva Ewing spoke with a mutual contact in the Secret Service. Given the current situation, I was assigned to come over from the New York base and speak with you.”

“What’s your function?”

“Data cruncher, primarily. Administrative area.”

“You knew Bissel?”

“Not personally, no.”

She turned, moved briskly down the sidewalk. “I assume this conversation is being recorded.”

He gave her a very easy, very pleasant smile. “Is there something you don’t want on record?”

“I bet there’s a lot you don’t.” She swung into a bar and grill, largely patronized by cops. Because it was change of shift, it was packed with them. Eve moved to a high-top where two detectives from her division were sharing beer and shop talk.

“I got a meet here.” She dug out credits, laid them down. “Do me a favor and let me have the table. Beer’s on me.”

There was some grumbling, but the credits were scooped up, and the detectives moved off. Eve chose a stool that kept her back to the wall.

“Felicity Kade recruited Blair Bissel for the HSO,” Eve began.

“How did you come by that information?”

“Subsequently,” she went on, “he functioned as a data liaison-data’s your territory, right?-transporting same to and from sources, and using his profession as a cover. Was he ordered to marry Reva Ewing, or was that his own suggestion?”

Sparrow’s face had gone to stone. “I’m not authorized to discuss-”

“Then just listen. He and Kade targeted Ewing due to her contacts with government officials, and her position in the private sector at Securecomp. She was, without her knowledge, injected with an internal observation device-”

“You’re going to wait a minute.” He laid a hand on the table. “You’re going to wait a damn minute. Your data’s incorrect, and if you put this sort of skewed information in your reports, it’s going to cause trouble for you. I want your source.”

“You’re not getting my source, and my data is on the mark. The device was removed from Ewing today. You’re finished using her. You shouldn’t have set her up on my watch, Sparrow. You want to take out a couple of your own, that’s your business, but you don’t set up civilians to take the fall for murder.”

“We didn’t set her up.”

“Is that the company line?”

“There was no hit ordered or sanctioned by the HSO.”

“You lied when you said you didn’t know Blair Bissel. You’re the AD, you damn well knew him.”

Sparrow’s gaze never flickered, and Eve decided she’d been right about the seasoning. “I said I didn’t know him personally. I didn’t say I didn’t know him professionally.”

“Being slippery, Sparrow, isn’t making me like you any better.”

“Look, Lieutenant, I’m doing my job here. The incident involving him and Kade is being investigated, internally. It’s believed that the hit was carried out by a cell of the Doomsday Group.”

“And why would a group of techno-terrorists bother to build a frame around Ewing?”

“It’s being investigated. This is a global security matter, Lieutenant.” His voice was very low now, and very cold. “The termination of two operatives is an HSO matter. You’re required to step back.”

“I’m required to do my job. Another of Bissel’s side dishes is dead. This one was a twenty-one-year-old girl, still wet enough behind the ears to believe in true love.”

His jaw clenched, visibly. “We’re aware of the disposal. We-”

“Disposal? Fuck you, Sparrow.”

“It didn’t come from us.”

“You know everything that goes on inside your organization?”

He opened his mouth, then seemed to check whatever he was going to say. “I’ve been thoroughly briefed on these matters. This conversation is a courtesy, due to Ewing’s exemplary service to her country, and the desire of HSO to cooperate, as much as possible, with local authorities. However, it’s only a courtesy. There are details of these matters you are not cleared to know. The charges against Ewing have been dropped.”

“And that smooths it all out? You think you can look and listen and sit back, playing with people, nudging them around like pawns in a chess game?”

She recognized the pressure on her chest, knew she’d need to gulp for air if she let it take over. If she let herself think about that room in Dallas.

So she blocked it out, slammed it down, and thought of a young woman in a frilly bedroom with a purple stuffed bear and a pink rosebud.

“A few get broken along the way, well, that’s a shame. Chloe McCoy is dead. You got a way to smooth that out?”

His tone never changed. “It’s being investigated, Lieutenant. It will be resolved. Responsible parties will be dealt with as appropriate. You need to back off.”

“The way you people backed off in Dallas?” It was out before she could stop it. “The way you sat on your asses gathering intel no matter what the cost to the innocent.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dallas isn’t a factor in this matter.”

“You look like a smart guy, Assistant Director Sparrow. Look it up, put it together.” She slid off the stool. “And hear this: I don’t back off. Ewing’s not only going to be sprung, she’s going to be publicly exonerated, with or without your cooperation. And whoever killed Chloe McCoy will be dealt with, as the law deems appropriate, not your gang of spooks.”

She didn’t shout, but neither did she trouble to keep her voice low. A few heads turned-and, she knew, more than a few cops’ ears tuned in.

“This time there’s going to be payment. You and your listening posts put that into your data banks and analyze it. You approach me again, be ready to deal. Or we have nothing to say.”

She strode out of the bar. Her breath was starting to come too fast, and her head was going light. She had to bear down. She wasn’t going to think about what had been done to her, but about what she was going to do.

There would be payment, she promised herself. She couldn’t get it for the battered, terrified child in Dallas, she would do everything in her power to ensure Roarke didn’t, but she would, she damn well would get it for Reva Ewing and Chloe McCoy.

She ignored the tension at the base of her skull as she drove out of the garage. She resigned herself to the iron grip of it as she battled traffic.

Ad blimps blasted out their evening siren song of SALES, SALES, SALES. Fall blow-out in EVERY store at The Sky Mall. One hundred lucky customers would receive an In-Touch palm ‘link ABSOLUTELY FREE. While supplies lasted.

The noise of it rolled down over her, punctuated by the whispering clack of traffic copter blades, horns blasting against the pollution codes.

The tension began to sneak its way up, squeeze around her temples. When the headache kicked in full, she knew it would be a bitch.

All through the noise of New York, the throb of its violent heart, she heard the cool, composed voice of Sparrow speaking of disposal.

We are not disposable, she told herself when her hands gripped the wheel like iron. No matter how many bodies she’d stood over, no matter how many she’d ordered bagged, none of them, none of them, none of them were disposable.

She punched through the open gates of home, and prayed for ten minutes of silence, for ten minutes without the noise screaming in her head.

She rushed into the house, hoping to circumvent her nightly confrontation with Summerset, and was halfway up the stairs when she heard her name called.

She looked around and saw Mavis at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey. Didn’t know you were here.” Absently, she rubbed at the ache in her temple. “I was bolting, hoping to miss my nightly treat of Ugly Guy.”

“I told Summerset I wanted a few minutes. You look like you’re pretty busy, and tired. It’s probably a bad time.”

“No, that’s okay.” A dose of Mavis was a better cure than any blocker.

Just one more reminder of who she was, Eve thought. Of who she was now.

She assumed Mavis was in a conservative mood, as she was wearing nothing that glowed. The fact was, she didn’t know the last time she’d seen Mavis in something as ordinary as jeans and a T-shirt. Even if the T-shirt stopped a couple inches above the waist and was covered with red and yellow fringe, it was pretty tame on the Mavis Freestone scale of fashion.

Her hair was quietly brown, with only one red and yellow tuft poofed at the crown to liven it up.

She looked a little pale, Eve noticed as she started down, then realized Mavis was wearing no lip dye or eye enhancements.

“You been to church or something?” Eve asked.

“No.”

With a frown, Eve took another survey. “Wow, you’re sort of starting to poke out. I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks, and-”

She broke off in horror when Mavis burst into tears.

“Oh shit. Oh damn. What did I say? Am I not supposed to say you’re poking out?” Frantic, she patted Mavis’s shoulder. “I thought you wanted to poke out with the baby and all. Oh boy.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Is something wrong with the… thing? The baby?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s wrong,” she wailed. “Nothing. Everything. Dallas.” On a pathetic sob, she threw herself into Eve’s arms. “I’m so scared.”

“We should call a doctor.” She looked desperately around the foyer as if a medic would magically appear. In her panic, she actually wished, fiercely, for Summerset. “Or something.”

“No, no, no, no, no.” Mavis wept on Eve’s shoulder in great, gulping sobs. “I don’t need a doctor.”

“Sitting down’s good. You should sit down.” Lie down? Eve wondered. Be sedated? Oh, help me. “Maybe I should see if Roarke’s back yet.”

“I don’t want Roarke. I don’t want a man. I want you.”

“Okay, okay.” She eased Mavis onto a couch, tried not to be freaked when her friend all but crawled into her lap. “You’ve got me. Um… I was thinking about you today.”

“You were?”

“I had lunch at the Blue Squirrel, and… Oh, Mother of God,” she muttered when Mavis’s sobs increased. “Give me a hint, give me a clue. I don’t know what to do if I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I’m so scared.”

“I got that part. Why? Of what? Is somebody bothering you? You got a crazed fan or something?”

“No, the fans are great.” Her shoulders shook as she burrowed into Eve.

“Ah… you and Leonardo have a fight?”

Now her head shook. “No. He’s the most wonderful man in the world. The most perfect human being in the universe. I don’t deserve him.”

“Oh, that’s just crap.”

“It’s not crap. I don’t.” Mavis jerked back, turned her tear-ravaged face up to Eve’s. “I’m stupid.”

“No, you’re not. It’s stupid to say you’re stupid.”

“I never even finished school. I ran away when I was fourteen, and I wasn’t even worth looking for.”

“If your parents were stupid, Mavis, it doesn’t mean you are.”

If mine were monsters, it doesn’t mean I am.

“What was I when you busted me? On the grift. That’s all I knew, cons-short cons, long cons, lifting wallets or playing the beard for some other grifter.”

“Look at you now. You’ve got the most perfect human being in the universe crazy about you, you’ve got a mag career, and this baby thing going. Oh God, oh God, please don’t cry like that anymore,” she begged when Mavis dissolved again.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Yeah, you do. You know… stuff. Music stuff.” Such as it was. “Fashion stuff. And you know about people. Maybe you learned it on the grift, Mavis, but you know about people. How to make them feel good about themselves.”

“Dallas.” Mavis swiped her hands over her face. “I don’t know anything about babies.”

“Oh. Ah… but you’re listening to all those discs, right? And didn’t you say you were going to go to some class about it? Something?”

Not my area, she thought frantically. Definitely out of my orbit. Why the hell had she sent Peabody to Jamaica?

“What good’s any of that?” Exhausted from the crying jag, Mavis flopped back, resting her head on the pillows on the end of the couch. “All that’s just how to feed a baby, or change one, or pick them up so you don’t break them. Like that. How to do things. They can’t tell you how to know, how to feel. They can’t tell you how to be a mom, Dallas. I don’t know how to do it.”

“Maybe it just comes to you. You know, when you finally push it out, it just happens. And you know.”

“I’m scared I’m going to mess it up. That I’m not going to be able to do it right. Leonardo’s so happy and excited. He wants this so much.”

“Mavis, if you don’t-”

“I do. I want it more than anything in the world and beyond. That’s what’s so scary. Dallas, I don’t think I could stand it if I messed this up. If I have this baby and I don’t feel what I’m supposed to, don’t know what it needs-the real needs, not the food and the diapers. How will I know how to love it when nobody ever loved me?”

“I love you, Mavis.”

Mavis’s eyes filled again. “I know you do. And Leonardo. But it’s not the same. This…” She laid a hand on her belly. “It’s supposed to be different. I know it is, but I just don’t know how. I guess I panicked,” she said on a long sigh. “I couldn’t talk about it to Leonardo. I just needed you.”

She reached for Eve’s hand. “Some stuff you can only tell your best pal. I’m better now. Probably just hormones weirding me out.”

“You’re the first real friend I ever had,” Eve said slowly. “You had it stuck in your head to get close to me, and I just couldn’t shake you off. Before I knew it, there we were. We’ve seen each other through some rough spots.”

“Yeah.” Mavis sniffed, and the first hint of a watery smile touched her lips. “We have.”

“And because you’re my first real friend, I’d tell you if you were stupid. I’d tell you if I thought you’d make a crappy mother. I’d tell you if I thought you were making a mistake having the baby.”

“You would? Really?” Mavis clutched Eve’s hand, stared hard at her face. “Swear to God?”

“Swear to God.”

“That makes me feel better. It really does.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “Oh boy, it really does. Could I hang for a while? Maybe call Leonardo and tell him to-Oh God. Oh my God.”

Eve popped up as Mavis’s teary eyes went wide, as she sat straight up, pressing a hand to her belly. “What? Are you going to get sick or something?”

“It moved. I felt it move.”

“What moved?”

“The baby.” She looked up at Eve, and now her face glowed, as if someone had flicked a switch under her skin. “My baby moved. Like… like little wings fluttering.”

Eve felt her own color drain, right down to the bone. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“Uh-huh. My baby moved, Dallas. Inside me. It’s really real.”

“Maybe it’s trying to tell you not to worry so much.”

“Yeah.” Mavis wiped away fresh tears and smiled beautifully through them. “We’re going to be fine. Better than best. I’m glad you were here when it happened. When I felt it. I’m glad it was just you and me and the baby, this one time. I’m not going to screw it up.”

“No, you’re not.”

“And I’ll know what to do.”

“Mavis.” Eve sat beside her again. “Looks to me like you already do.”