Page 10 of Hold You Close
She looks over at me. “It was just a question, Ian. I thought maybe your sister had talked to you about it.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
“Maybe if you spent a little less time partying at the club and more time with your family, she would have.”
There’s the London I know. Maybe she wants a fight too. Happy to oblige, sweetheart.
“It’s my fucking job, London. I’m working, not partying.” We reach the car and I unlock it with the fob in my pocket before opening the passenger door for her.
She pauses, looks at my hand on the door and then up at me. “Only you could be a dick and a gentleman at the same time.”
“It’s a gift,” I tell her. “Now get in. I’ve got things to do today.”
With a roll of her eyes, she gets into my car and I shut the door after her. As I walk around to the driver’s side, I wipe the sweat from my forehead. It’s warm for April, almost ninety today, and I wish more than anything I could spend the afternoon at the pool in my backyard, a cold beer in my hand and a sexy blonde in the chair next to me. Maybe two blondes. One on either side.
I wish I could blow off work and drink all day and play loud music and mess around with the blondes in full view of London, and she’d call me to complain I was being completely obnoxious, but I’d ignore her, so she’d call my sister and bitch about my disgusting behavior and my complete disregard for my neighbors’ Sunday peace and quiet. My sister would text me to please quit being a jerk and consider other people’s feelings, by which she’d mean London’s feelings, and I’d say it wasn’t my fa
ult London was a crusty old maid with only her cat for company, and maybe if she wasn’t such a bitter, puritanical goody-goody, she’d come over and join the fun instead of stewing about it from her deck and tattling on me.
I wish a lot of things.
I wish I could change the past. I wish my sister was still alive. I wish her kids still had a mother and father. I wish I knew how to answer questions about their future and how any of us are supposed to move on.
“I saw Jolene,” London says, probably just to annoy me. Which it does.
I pull onto the highway, grunting in response. I saw my ex among the crowd, wearing a ridiculous hat and crying fake tears, but I didn’t speak to her.
“It was nice of her to come, don’t you think?”
Nothing my ex-wife does is charitable or kind. She’s a snake, filled with venom and ready to strike at the first thing she can stick her fangs into. Usually it’s me. And speaking of fake—London doesn’t like Jolene any better than I do. “No. I don’t.”
London rolls the window down and grumbles under her breath. “Whatever.”
I roll up London’s window and turn up the A/C, just to piss her off. “She didn’t come to be nice, London. She came to gawk and get gossip so she can be the center of attention at work tomorrow. It’s not as if she even liked Sabrina.”
“Everybody liked Sabrina.” Now it’s London whose voice has an edge.
“You know what I mean.”
She turns toward the passenger window, giving me the cold shoulder for the rest of the ride.
Fine with me.
But it’s true, what she said. Everybody did like my sister. Sabrina didn’t have a mean bone in her body, and she always had a smile and something nice to say to anyone, even my shrew of an ex-wife. Sweet was a word I heard over and over again today as her friends and family mourned her. Kind-hearted. Generous. Thoughtful.
Did you know she volunteered at the Humane Society?
When my mom passed, she brought dinner over every night for a week.
I can’t tell you how much we’re going to miss her at work—she was the hardest working nurse on the floor.
I might have had the better grades, higher SAT scores, and more trophies on the shelf, but I’m positive no one ever called Sabrina an asshole, or punched her in the face, or told her she had the emotional sensitivity of a wood chip. She knew how to make people feel good about themselves. She made the world a better place.
Me? I know how to run a club and have a good time. What I make is money.
Which is why I’m stunned half an hour later when the lawyer reads Sabrina’s will, in which she’s left her children to me.
Three
