“She’s sixteen. She’s been in a little trouble. She vanished four weeks ago. Maybe she just ran away. No one seems to know or care.”
“But the woman who called you cares.”
“Yeah.” I wiggle my legs against his thighs, looking for attention, and he obliges by settling his hands on my skin. “I guess Joylene cares. But the state doesn’t care, and the cops don’t care, and neither do her parents.”
“Jesus, they sound just like your parents.”
“Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and all that. And that place is a whole goddamn orchard.”
“Do you think she ran away?” he presses.
I shrug. “I don’t know. If I ever met her, she was a baby at the time. I guess I did meet her, but I don’t remember. Still . . .” I glance at him under my lashes, studying his open face. “Apparently she’s a lot like me. That’s what Joylene said. Everyone says she’s like me.”
“Oh. How so?”
“You know. She acts like me. And if that part is true, she’s logical and straightforward, so she’s probably fine.”
He squeezes my calf, his hand a warm anchor for my body. “That’s not true at all. Didn’t you need help when you were a little girl?”
I shrug.
“You did. Someone should have helped you, Jane.”
No. Not really. I didn’t need help by the time I was sixteen. I needed help when I was a neglected, needy seven-year-old, and I didn’t get it, so I learned to help myself. No one can go back in time and rescue Baby Kayla any more than they can rescue stupid Baby Jane. What’s done is done.
“Anyway, she asked me to help.”
“You should!” he says immediately.
“How? I’d have to go down there. There’s nothing I can do from here.” As soon as I say it, I realize I want to. I want to get out of my office and stir up trouble and track down this girl who might be like me. I’m bored. And let’s face it, I don’t want to deal with Luke and his ridiculous fantasies about what our life could be like together. I want to get away from here.
“You can get some time off, can’t you? This is an emergency.”
“Yes,” I answer. It’s almost inevitable now. This is how I make decisions. I think of something, and if I like the idea, I do it. Trying to deny myself just makes me cranky and delays the outcome. “God. If only my family were from Southern California. I really don’t want to waste vacation days in the middle of nowhere.”
“Family leave?”
Hmm. I don’t know the ins and outs, as I don’t have that kind of family, and I’m certainly not any kind of caretaker at all. “I’ll check into it. But maybe they’ll be sympathetic.”
“Your niece is missing! Of course they’ll be sympathetic.”
That’s news to me. Girls are thrown away all the time in our world. The only thing going for her is that she’s a white girl, but even that advantage was pretty much lost once she started shoplifting. And if she’s not a virgin, forget it. She’s worthless trash at this point! Not that I’ll let the firm know that.
“You really think I should go?” I ask, not to reassure myself but because I want him to think he helped decide to give me a break from relationship talk for a while.
“Definitely. You’re smart as hell and you’re an attorney. At the very least, you can light a fire under someone’s ass and see what’s really going on. And, at best, maybe you’ll find this girl.”
“Perhaps. But there’s a better-than-even chance she’s just staying with some inappropriately aged boyfriend.”
“Still not good.”
I shrug and pick up the book I’m almost done with. My cat bounces up from the floor and lands silently on the coffee table before stepping onto the couch. She considers me a moment, then climbs between my calves to settle onto Luke’s lap. I roll my eyes at her betrayal, but I’d pick Luke for warmth too. She’s rewarded for her superior choice when he absentmindedly strokes between her ears, and I watch her eyes narrow in satisfaction. Those are my moments of affection she’s stealing, but I’ll let her have him for a little while.
“And . . . ,” he ventures quietly. I hear what I don’t want to hear in his voice and I tense. “Maybe this could be a good time for you to think about us.”
“‘Us’?” I snap.
“Whether you want this to evolve or not.”
“What does ‘or not’ mean? You’re presenting this as some kind of choice, but it reads more like an ultimatum.”
Luke rolls his shoulders before slumping into the couch. “It’s really not. But if I buy a house, we might not see each other as often. Right now you’re only ten minutes away from my place and my job. I don’t want to spring this change on you. I’m trying to involve you in the decision.”
“This hardly seems like the time.” I pull my legs back, hoping to stop this now. “My niece is missing.”
He’s a good guy. A genuinely good guy, so I know mentioning my niece will make him feel guilty. I see his mouth twist with it. But he still doesn’t stop talking. “I know, but this might be just the break we need to think it through.”
“Now it’s a break. I see. You need to come right out and say it. You’re breaking up with me.”
“No, I’m not. Not at all. I love you. I want a future with you. I’m just not sure you’re determined to have a future with me.” He snags my hand and looks me straight in the face. “Are you?”
No, I’m definitely not determined, because it’s not possible. I’m not normal. I’m not a wife and mother and soft place to fall. There are new studies that claim sociopaths can feel something like love, but it’s our own kind of attachment, shallow and selfish. Or even more shallow and selfish than most people’s claims of love are.
I loved Meg. I know I did. But that wasn’t the same as romantic love. It wasn’t commitment and fidelity and promises. It was friendship. This is something tighter. Something strangling.
Every once in a while, like right here in this moment, I want to be what other people are and I hate who I am. I hate what my parents made me with their terrible combination of emotional abuse and their genetic predisposition.
I wanted to kill them many times when I was Kayla’s age. I wanted to burn down that trailer with them in it, blame it on a cigarette or a space heater or nothing at all. But luckily my own self-interest won out against raging teen hormones. I wanted to punish my family, but I did not want to go to prison and struggle for money and social standing for the rest of my life. I wanted more and better. So I let them be.
And most days I truly like what I am. It makes me strong. I saw how the world destroyed my best friend, using her own feelings to grind her into nothing. She killed herself to escape from that. To finally make it stop. She died and left me alone, and now Luke is all I have, and that can’t last forever. It can’t. I don’t have enough emotion inside me to cloud out the stark reality of our chances.
“This obviously isn’t going to work out,” I mutter.
“Why would you say that? Jane, come on. We get along great. We get along so damn well, I want to spend more time with you. Why does that scare you?”