cheap filter of hindsight that gave everything a sinister foreshadowing loom. Worse: I’d been so focused on that hope that I’d forgotten to consider what it would do to me, hearing about that night. It felt like they were talking about someone else, someone I had been close to a long time ago; a favorite brother maybe, cocky and laughing and innocent enough to break your heart, at ease with all the world and his place in it, and now lost. The longing to have him back was like a physical force sucking my guts out, leaving me hollow.
The thing that saved me was, weirdly, the fact that I had brought it on myself. The vortexing sensation was as strong and as hideous as ever, but for the first time, it hadn’t been slammed into me out of nowhere; I was using it, riding it, for my own reasons. The Leon revelation might not be enough but it was something, a start, and I had pried it out myself. I was running this evening, and it felt good. It had been a long time since I had felt capable of running anything more complex than the microwave.
“So then we poured Dec into a taxi,” Sean said. “Before he could start telling us he loved us.”
“In your dreams. I’ll do it at your wedding, how’s that? Just so all your new in-laws can see you welling up like a great big—”
“Who says you’re invited?”
“We’re your best men, you tool. You want me to do it by Skype?”
“I do, yeah, that’d be great—”
“Did you guys go to Thailand, in the end?” I asked. “Or Fiji?”
“Nah,” Dec said. “This big sap”—a nod at Sean—“wanted to wait for you. I was all on for leaving your sorry arse behind, only—”
“He said he didn’t have the dosh,” Sean told me. “Meaning he wanted to wait for you, only he didn’t have the balls to say it. We’ll go next year.”
“If Audrey lets you out of the gaff,” Dec said.
“She’ll be delighted to see the back of him by then,” I said. “Probably push him out the door.” I had had a fair bit to drink, what with the wine and the Armagnac. That and the candlelight wrapped the two of them in a deep golden glow, like heroes out of legend, timeless and steadfast. I wanted to reach out across the table and grip their arms, feel the warmth and solidity of them. “Cheers, guys,” I said instead, raising my glass. “Thanks. For everything.”
“Ah, Jaysus,” Dec said in disgust. “Not you too.”
* * *
“It was good to see them,” Melissa said, when Sean and Dec had left and we were tidying up. It was late, candles burned down to stalagmite stubs, old crooner radio station playing low enough that we would hear Hugo if he called. An unsettled wind was moving around the garden. “Wasn’t it?”
“Huh?” I had been loading the dishwasher, humming along to the music—I should have been fading from booze and fatigue, but instead I felt like I was speeding. Half my mind was working on how to get Leon over to the Ivy House, and what to say to him once I had him. If he was somehow behind all this, a part of me was almost impressed: I wouldn’t have thought he had the organizational drive to mastermind something that elaborate. The part I couldn’t work out was the timing on the break-in. If he had been after the camera, why not tell his scumbag pals to go in during the day, when I would be out at work and they could hunt for it in peace? Unless the nighttime part had been their own addition, easier to walk out with a big flat-screen in the middle of the night—or unless Leon had actually wanted me to run into them, wanted me shaken up, even beaten up: some bitchy poetic-justice thing, see how you like it— “Oh. Yeah. It was great.”
“Sean’s so excited about the wedding, isn’t he? He was trying to act all blasé about it, but it’s lovely. And Dec’s in better form than I thought he’d be, after Jenna.” Melissa had tried very hard to be friends with Jenna, but even she had her limits.
“He’s way better off. He knows that, deep down.”
Melissa swept crumbs off the tablecloth into her hand. “And you had a good time?”
That was twice she’d asked. “Oh yeah,” I said cheerfully. And when I caught her quick glance: “What, did it not