him. Just this one thing, he’d said. You could really help me out.
I swallowed and decided to take the delicate approach to digging deeper into the subject she’d lightly brushed aside the night before. “Derek seems to really want you to go back to Canada. Is everything okay with your parents?”
She darted me a look before beginning to fiddle with her phone again. “I guess they’re fine. He didn’t tell me much.”
We drove another block before the next question formed in my mind and I’d figured out how to reword it in an unthreatening manner. “Is there anything I should know? For example, why you left Canada?”
She turned her head and looked at me, then spoke in a flat voice. “I left because Mia was sick. My best friend needed me.”
I’d heard about that before so it wasn’t a surprise that she’d repeat it. “Is that the entire reason?”
She blinked and gripped her phone tight. “Why are you asking me all this?”
“Because I need to know. It’s occurred to you that immigration does a background check on you with your home country, right? If there’s anything…”
She frowned. “I got the background check and submitted it. I’m clear. I’m not some secret felon if that’s what you’re asking.”
I rolled my eyes as I hit the blinker to turn into the parking lot of Draco. Max barked excitedly. He adored coming to work with me because that meant he got spoiled.
“I know you’re not a felon. I just—I just want to say I’m here for you if you want to talk. About your brother or anything else.”
She smiled faintly. “Thanks.”
I frowned, mulling over the past two days as I got out of the car, grabbed my bag and the dog leash and locked up. I watched Kat’s bright hair swing across her back as I followed her into the main entry of the building.
There was something up and weird going on with her family—and not just the shitty behavior I’d seen Derek show his sister. There was something about the parents. It seemed like Derek ruled the roost there, including the parents. That must have been shit to grow up with.
Of course, who was I to talk? My parents had been so busy wrapped up in their own lives and image. And they were obsessed with how their two children fit like accessories into that overall image. I doubted they’d ever seen us as real people at all.
Yeah, the trap I’d wiggled myself out of while practically having to chew my own arm off to get free had not started with the doomed marriage to Claire. My feet had been clamped inside those steel jaws long before that.
That same old oppressive gloom weighed down on me just to think about it and I had to remind myself that those things were in the past. Hopefully, soon, the distant past.
At lunch, Warren approached me with a slap on the back. “You musta tried another one on her last night. I saw her neck, bruh. Way to go.” He held out his fist for me to bump. I just looked at it, gave him a grouchy sneer and he retracted it. “Tap the Maple, eh? Man, to be able to have sex with a hot girl whenever you want. It must be great to be married.”
Yeah, whenever I want. Sure. ‘Cause that’s what marriage was all about.
“Go back to your bugs, Warren,” I growled, “before I move up your deadlines.”
I ran into Kat only a few times. She was weird today, distant and a little distracted. And she’d been keeping her distance.
I couldn’t tell whether it was because of our talk this morning, because of what her brother had said to her or because of my questions about it. Part of me was determined to get the story behind what was going on there. But if I dug deep into her life, and she into mine, it might make it all the more difficult to pull things apart again.
As I reminded myself practically daily, this marriage had an expiration date on it. Better to keep my distance and emerge unscathed. After all, I knew I could do that well—be emotionally distant. It might make for a shitty husband—and I knew I had been one the first time around—but hopefully it would make us great exes.
I found an empty conference room to spread out my concept notes and rudimentary sketches on the VR game when Kat slid in to find me at around five. She