The Love Scam - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,34
a password representing something she didn’t have to think about. Hmm. And the safe combo. Something else quick and easy. “Delaney? Remember?”
“Mostly, I remember your relentless whining about the cost of cell phones in this day and age,” she replied, grinning.
“Tim Cook and his corporate thugs should be ashamed of themselves. But I meant after that. Dammit! I mean I don’t whine. And after. In your sleep. You—”
She was waiting for him to finish, and hadn’t realized there was jam in the corner of her mouth that he definitely didn’t want to kiss away. She wasn’t tense, or embarrassed. Just patiently curious. Curiously patient? “I what, Rake?”
You walked and talked in your sleep. You were afraid. You didn’t know where you were, and when I said you were free to come and go, you were so happy. And who didn’t help you when it wasn’t Christmas, Delaney? Why do you hate careless, maybe twice-a-year charitable donations? What’s in the spreadsheets you won’t let anyone see?
“You— It’s no big deal.” He hadn’t thought of this, and he should have. He’d expected heated denial or embarrassment, not amnesia. “You talked in your sleep is all.”
“Oh yeah?” Still totally unconcerned. “What’d I say?”
“‘Go, Packers.’”
She laughed. “Now I know you’re lying. I don’t like football, but if I did, I’d never root for the Packers. That’s practically a violation of state law.”
Christ, she has no idea.
“Well, you mumbled something, I didn’t quite catch it, I was supertired because you’re such a goddamned slave driver.” He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t telling her everything. He didn’t want to embarrass her, that was part of it, but he also had the uneasy feeling that the Delaney who walked in her sleep wasn’t this Delaney, the confident young woman who walked right up to a dripping, livid man who’d just been fished out of the canal, who’d tossed a kid into his life, ruthlessly put him to work to earn a cell phone, frequently told him to shut up already, stole the last piece of toast off his plate, and laughed when he complained.
“Sorry if I disturbed you.”
“You didn’t.” Lie. “It was no biggie.” Lie.
“All righty.” She’d finished her oatmeal, waved at a couple of the others, gathered her stuff. “Ready to get back to it?”
“Not at all. Not even a little bit. I’d rather be doing almost anything else.”
“We can get your new phone tomorrow.”
“Bring me every Easter basket in this building!” he cried, jumping to his feet. “And then stand back, ladies, because you’ll see a basket-stuffing fool.”
“Or just a fool,” Teresa piped up.
“Silence, peon!”
That got Elena and Teresa and the others laughing, and he smiled at their gentle teasing, and that was good; it was always good when people were laughing because their guards went down and no one ever seemed to notice that while they laughed, he was figuring them out.
Delaney left the table and he was about to follow, when …
“She was sleepwalking, wasn’t she?”
“Gah! Jesus, Lillith. How do you do that? Only get noticed when you want to?”
“Mama taught me. She was, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Because she didn’t know what foster home she was in.”
“… Yeah.”
“It’s okay. I was surprised the first time, too. Just say nice things to her and she’ll go back to sleep.”
“Yeah.” It was low, but his options were limited. He already knew that asking Delaney for details was futile. Time to pump a kid. (Argh. Phrasing.) “So I get the feeling she had a rough childhood.”
“Yes.”
“Like your mother.”
“Yes.”
“And Sofia and Teresa and Elena.”
Lillith nodded.
“There’s a bigger picture here, isn’t there? It’s not just about finding your dad.”
She beamed. “I knew you were going to get it. Y’know, eventually. They’ve been saving for the Big Pipe Dream for years. That’s why they need us.”
“Wait, ‘need’? Us? How do—”
“C’mon, Rake and Lillith.” Delaney was standing in the front of the restaurant, beckoning them forward. “And the rest of you lazy bums, too. Back at it.”
“Fanculo questo,” Eleana replied cheerfully.
Exactly. Fanculo questo. Times ten.
Twenty-two
His Stockholm syndrome was coming along nicely. After lunch (still mindful of the toxins swimming in his system, Rake stuck to bruschetta with most of the tomatoes scraped off—so, stale bread), he and Delaney and Lillith got into a plush Peep free-for-all and at one point he was dodging several bright yellow marshmallowy missiles. Her speed was scary, her aim devastating. And Delaney wasn’t bad, either. “Not the face, not the face!”
Elena, Teresa, and Sofia came back to the room to find them whipping small foil-wrapped eggs at one