Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,125
her clothing. Looking from Evan to Andre, she fastened a sash around her waist, settled into the calm of a person who’d known trauma well enough to persist lucidly in the face of it.
Evan’s good arm was hooked around Andre’s shoulder, but he was doing his best not to make him bear too much of his weight. Andre’s gaze darted around at the water feature of the foyer floor, the high ceiling, the yippy dogs. Evan could only imagine what the house felt like to him.
Veronica stepped in to help Evan, Andre slumping his shoulder to slide him off for the transfer. The scent of lilac emanated from her. She led them back, vast rooms opening one after another like chambers in a castle. Andre kept the trauma backpack on and his eyes wide.
Veronica deposited them at a kitchen table the size of a barn door, banished the dogs up a hall, and returned. They sat around the table like a normal family were it not for the combat knife rammed through Evan’s forearm.
He unwound the bandages, which peeled free with a wet crackle. When the gauze lifted from the incision, he finally felt the full measure of pain, a deep throbbing in the flesh.
Thanks to the sharpness of the combat knife, the wound was exceedingly neat, two inches on either side with minimal tearing. He set his arm on the table before him, centered like a meal. The intersecting blade looked ridiculous, a comedic prop. If it had split the radius and ulna, there’d be nerve and tendon damage aplenty, so he took a moment to be grateful for small mercies.
The surgical stapler, preloaded with thirty-five staples, came sealed in a plastic pouch. It was office-supply white and looked like a robotic garden-hose nozzle. There was a bottle of alcohol.
This was going to suck.
Before he could brace himself, Andre stood up suddenly, wobbled a bit on his feet. “I don’t … I’m not sure I can watch this.”
“Go into the other room,” Veronica said. “The last thing we need is you fainting and splitting your head open. I can help him.”
Andre hesitated, taking in the sunken living room as if it frightened him. Maybe it did.
Evan looked at Veronica. “If you don’t tell him, I will.”
Her eyes flared, big behind her painted lashes. On the inhale the cords of her neck came clear. But she didn’t flinch. She looked right back at Evan, and he could see in her face that she knew he was right, that it had to be dragged into the open.
“Tell me what?” Andre said.
But Veronica kept her eyes on Evan. For a final instant, they were sharing this, their secret, and something about that felt oddly intimate.
She tipped her head to Evan deferentially.
He cleared his throat. Blinked against the pain. “We’re…” He couldn’t say brothers. “We have the same mom.”
“What?” Andre said lightly. And then, “What? Wait, who?”
No sound but the hum of electricity feeding the oven.
“Me,” Veronica said.
Andre coughed out a laugh. Eyes rolling and a touch wild. “Ms. Le—Veronica? Veronica is my mother?” A ragged inhalation. “And yours, too?”
Evan couldn’t bring himself to say yes, so he nodded.
“Huh,” Andre said. “Ain’t that some shit. Ain’t that some real…” And then it began to sink in, and he pawed at his mouth, eyes welling, and walked quietly into the next room.
Veronica and Evan sat in the silence, bound by this confusing bit of drama, a shared allegiance of some kind. It felt like closeness. Was this another facet of what it was to be family?
He felt a sudden rush of regard for Veronica. She’d calmly accepted the situation, unrattled and unflappable. She’d asked no questions, focused only on Evan’s well-being. She’d passed no judgment on what had been brought to her door and seemed instead to be receptive, even appreciative for who Evan was in the face of what she’d launched him into. In her composure he felt a sort of acceptance that he hadn’t known himself to crave. But he let her gaze warm him now.
And thought of the man in the other room, his half brother by blood.
Veronica’s gaze moved to the doorway through which Andre had vanished.
He said, “Go.”
“Your arm.”
He looked down at the crosshatched handle scales of the knife. All he had to do was grip and extract. “I’ve managed worse. This is just pain. What he’s feeling is something deeper.”
“How do you know?”
“Because,” he said, his voice threatening to crack, “I’ve felt it.”