Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,73

your father.” I left an accusing beat. “Now I do.”

He sighed like I had guilted him into talking, which was fine, since that had been my intention. “My mother was an artist who had an affair with Devlin Maguire just long enough to find out he was married and to get pregnant with me. Not in that order. She raised me on her own until she was killed during a home invasion when I was sixteen, and Maguire adopted me so I’d have his name. I’m his only son.”

The way he stripped all emotion off those facts somehow made them more appalling. “Maguire simply showed up, all ‘Luke, I am your father,’ and adopted you? Just like that? The family court judge didn’t give you a choice?”

“Maguire speaks softly and carries a big wallet.” Carson shrugged. “My mother had never accepted any child support from him, but apparently he could prove he’d tried or something. Anyway, except for the name change, I didn’t mind. Mom never said a bad word about my father—she never said anything at all, really. And then he shows up, filthy rich, larger than life, and paying for college, promising me a job in the family business. And there were the cars … They’re not all Ford Tauruses.”

I studied him over the rim of my Pepsi can, not believing for an instant it was that simple. “So it’s all about the money and the cars? That’s why you’re sticking around?”

“Of course.” He kept a straight face except for one raised eyebrow. “What would Freud say about that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure it would have something to do with tailpipes.”

He choked on his soda and grabbed for his napkin as Pepsi came out his nose.

Score.

He mopped at the drink, but he was a lost cause, really. Before we got to the train station, he’d turned his shirt inside out to hide the bloodstains. (I’d ditched my top layer and borrowed his jacket and hoped my jeans just looked tie-dyed.) There were dark circles under his eyes and an unshaven shadow on his jaw, in addition to all the cuts and bruises.

Why was there no remnant of his mother nearby to fuss over him, especially while he was wounded? That was exactly when mothers like to check in on their kids. I remembered him asking me, on the dark road the night before, about remnants, if I saw anything around him. Had he known somehow that she wasn’t around?

I wanted to reach across the table, to take his hand and lace our fingers together the way our lives seemed to have become laced. I didn’t, but I gave in to the impulse to share something else that linked us.

“My parents were killed, too. By Dad’s business partner. Nothing like your dad’s business. Computer parts. But it was over greed and a bigger market share. Would you believe he cut the lines to the brakes on their car? One steep Hill Country embankment and—” I made a fatal arc with my hand. Very dramatic.

My emotions weren’t in the words. They colored outside the lines of the story, and he watched me as I told it, reading my feelings like I read spirits.

“How do you grow up with that,” he asked, “and not be all …”

I raised a brow, mirroring one of his favorite expressions. “Jaded and bitter?”

He acknowledged my point with a tip of his head, then turned the mirror back on me. “You pretend to be jaded. But you have this glow of … decency about you—”

“Now you’re just being insulting.”

“—and a belief in the basic decency of others. How do you keep that, seeing what you see?”

“My aunts, of course. It’s their fault. I wanted to start an indie girl band, but I couldn’t get up the proper angst.” I sighed hugely. “Now you know my secret shame.”

He just gave me a look. “I’ve pretty much known you were an idealist from the beginning, Sunshine.”

Well, that explained the nickname, I guess.

Across the aisle, the kids were experimenting with the ripples the motion of the train made in their cups of soda. I watched them for a moment, then said, “I don’t think it’s idealism to believe the universe is a decent place, or that people are more good than bad. It doesn’t make me unaware of the bad in the world, just more determined to add to the good.”

I glanced back to find him watching me with an enigmatic expression. I’d gotten better at