Page 56 of Thicker Than Water
She nods and shrugs at the same time. “Yeah. Well. That’s why Jason hates Gavin.”
My skin buds with goose bumps—that word again:hate.
“He doesn’t trust him. He hates how he talks about women during sales meetings. He hates what he said to me in the warehouse. And I don’t know what he thinks about it now, but for a while after the holiday party, he was genuinely worried Gavin did something to me.”
With each reason Maeve gives, my heart thumps—a persistent knock that feels like a warning. Once again, I don’t recognize this man she’s talking about, the one who’s obsessed with his boss, who despises him. Jason’s feelings toward Gavin are just another thing he never told me.
“But still,” she adds, “why would Jason leave my house last Friday and go straight to Gavin’s, over something that happened—that probablydidn’thappen—months ago?”
“I don’t know,” I say again, and beneath the table, my fingers tremble. “I don’t know.”
Chapter SixteenSIENNA
As I park my car at the police station, I search the lot for Wyatt’s Nissan. I’m relieved not to see it anywhere, not to recognize his bumper with a heart-shaped dent—damage I caused one day when I hit it in his driveway. It’s been years since that minor collision, and he’s never had the dent fixed. I reminded him, so many times, that my insurance would cover it, but he liked to joke that it was a “love tap.”
Lately, whenever I’ve glimpsed that crumpled, plastic heart, I’ve felt a twinge behind my ribs, like my own heart is dented too.
I walk toward the double doors of the station, ignoring the thought that I don’t belong here, that I’m trespassing on my past: times I brought Wyatt takeout for dinner during a twelve-hour shift, times I dropped him off at work—because he wouldn’t get the dent in his bumper fixed, but hewouldrepair his windshield after a rock nicked the glass. And anyway, I do belong here, because as Google informed me, arrest reports are public records; all anyone has to do is make a request and it’s theirs to review.
Still, my hand lingers on the door handle. Even if I didn’t connect this building with Wyatt, I’d feel itchy to be here, the place where Detective Beck is waiting to book my brother.
When I enter the station, it’s quiet as a mausoleum. I remember this now, from my pop-in visits; it’s not the bright, bustling room of police procedural sets. Instead, it’s a brick hallway that bisects the building, the walls flanked by benches, pocked with doorways that lead to other halls, down which there are offices and workspaces, interview rooms and holding cells. If not for the woman tucked behind the glass-encased reception desk, the place would feel abandoned.
“Yes?” she says as I approach.
I speak toward the holes in the glass, patterned like a shower drain. “Hi, can I take a look at an arrest report? I’m not sure of the exact date—it would have been the week before last—but the person arrested was Henry Hendrix.”
Her gaze flicks over me, up and down. “Are you press?”
“No. Does that matter?”
She shakes her head. “You just look familiar. One moment, please.”
As she turns around to slip through a door behind her, I see her tight black bun and realize she’s familiar, too. I’ve seen that bun at the same department parties where I originally met Beck, parties where Wyatt would introduce me to his colleagues, slipping a random fact about me into each conversation:Sienna puts cinnamon on her french fries; Sienna thinks cats are reincarnated serial killers; Sienna said “Snuffleupagus” in her sleep the other night.When I asked if he was trying to make me sound unhinged, he smiled sheepishly.I’m making sure they remember you,he said,because I hope you’ll be around for a long time.
I rub my sternum, suddenly sore, and wait for the woman to return.
But it’s like he knew I was thinking about him, sensed my thoughts circling our better days, because a door pops open, and it’s Wyatt who exits, dressed in his uniform, car keys dangling from his hand.
He stops short at the sight of me. “Sienna. What are you doing here?”
“I— You’re not here,” I say.
He frowns at me, then looks down at himself, as if making sure I’m wrong. “Yes I am.”
“No, your car. Your car’s not here.”
“Oh. Yeah, I park in the back now.”
“Oh.”
He waits for me to continue, but even from a few feet away, his piney aftershave makes me woozy with memories. My eyelids flutter shut against them—mornings when he leaned toward the mirror, sliding his razor up his neck with the precision of a surgeon; nights when he shaved just minutes before our dates, his cheek soft and scented beneath the kiss I planted there.
“Si?” he says. “Is everything okay?”
I open my eyes. “No.”
I look past Wyatt, to the door that leads toward offices and cells. I picture my brother, still bruised and bandaged, led there by a guard. “No, everything’s not okay. Beck showed up to Jason’s room today. With a warrant to arrest him.”
