Chrysalis, page 15
And so we stand again, three hours before my flight is scheduled to board, inside my entryway this time, saying our goodbyes. I don’t like the déjà vu of it all. What I won’t promise her yet, but what I promise myself, is that this will be our last goodbye.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, leaning her forehead against mine.
“Don’t thank me. This week was a total disaster.” I caress her cheek. “The only good thing that came of it was seeing you.”
“And taking down a major drug operation,” she adds casually.
I smile. “Don’t forget about the part where we framed someone for murder.”
“I did the framing. You did the shutting up. He deserved it. He’s not an innocent man.” She looks at me like I’m going to object.
I laugh a little. “What? You’re not gonna hear any opposition from me.”
“Maybe it’s time we put away our masters’ degrees…Join Avi. Buy cool outfits. Spend the rest of our lives fighting crime…you know you love that vigilante justice shit.” She’s still smiling playfully, but I’m still stuck on the part where she said ‘the rest of our lives’.
“Don’t tease me…” I warn.
“I’ll come as soon as I can.”
Apparently we’re deeply in love and getting married in June.
I hear the chime of the text come in over the sound of my music and nearly fall off of my treadmill when I read it. The Stop button decelerates my pace too quickly and it nearly causes me to wipe out. Heart racing, and not just from my run, I rip my earbuds out and begin toweling off my face. I look back at the text, blinking hard, and wonder what the hell Darby is talking about.
A second later, a photo comes through. I can see her slender hand on the edge of the newspaper, holding up a section that contains the picture she wants me to see. It’s an article on Page Six, the salacious and obviously speculative gossip column in the Daily News, and we are the feature. Another text comes in. This time she’s quoting something.
“Despite earlier claims that they were just friends, Darby Christensen and Michael Blaine confirmed suspicions that they are a couple when Blaine, a partner at Dewey and Rowe and a current resident of Sydney, Australia, appeared at her side on Thursday to escort her to the late Governor Frank Christensen’s funeral. Sources tell us that, not only have the two quietly nursed a passionate long-distance romance, but are secretly scheduled to be married in Chicago in June.”
Good Lord.
I dial her number, and don’t wait for her to talk before she speaks.
“You’d better avoid baggy clothes. Next thing we know you’ll be pregnant and it’ll be spun as a shotgun wedding.”
“Shit. I guess I ought to throw out that muumuu I was going to wear tomorrow. As big as that thing, is, they’d probably say we were having twins.”
“And you’d better get some diamonds on your finger—at least five carats, or I’m the cheap bastard who didn’t get you a decent ring. They’ll rip me apart for that.”
“I can’t wear the ring, Michael. I’m already super-bloated from the pregnancy. Or wasn’t that obvious from the pictures?”
I relax a little, relieved that my levity worked, or at least that she doesn’t seem unhinged by the situation. I, however, am unhinged, though I hope I’m doing a fine job of hiding it.
“So I guess this means the paps aren’t off your back?”
“Not even close. But I guess I shouldn’t complain. Dodging questions about this is better than dodging questions about Frank’s murder…”
I cringe. “How are they treating you at work?”
“They’re handling me with kid gloves,” she admits. “They think I’ve been busy mourning.”
“Do you feel any differently? Now that it’s been a few days?”
I’m hesitant to mention again that she hasn’t shown any outward signs of actual mourning. I know she is convinced that she’s done with grieving, but I also know that it could take her months, if not years, to fully process what has happened. She thinks her tumultuous relationship with Frank will make it easier, but I think that, in the long run, it will make things harder.
Darby sighs and I feel a little guilty. I don’t want to push her too far.
“You’re 10,000 miles away. You know I worry about you. I know you think it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid—it’s sweet.” She’s defending me now.
“Well, whatever you’re thinking about Frank, it’s not stupid either, so tell me, okay?”
“Okay,” she acquiesces. “You’re a pain in the ass,” she grouses a second later.
“Not as big of a pain as you. Any news from the detectives?”
“No,” she replies.
“What do you think happened?” Our theory about the Russians has been a dead end, and we’ve all been rethinking the possibilities.
“I dunno. Maybe one of the other cartels? Either way, I think he messed with the wrong person. And he got what he had coming.”
Charlie Sweeney has been arrested for my father’s murder.
I feel the text come in on the phone in my pocket. In meetings, I have it on Do Not Disturb mode. It’s set to notify me in the event that only five people reach out. The most important is Darby—even if she only wants to reach me for something trivial, I want to know right away. The other four are Bex, Alex, Ella’s school, and Dale.
But this isn’t trivial. They’ve found Charlie. The man Darby tried to frame. The man who had been on the run.
Where’d they find him?
They didn’t have to. He turned himself in, and confessed to the whole thing this morning.
I excuse myself from the meeting. It’s bad form. The client is here, and as Managing Partner, I’m expected to lend my attention. But my woman’s in trouble and I couldn’t care less.
“Tell me,” I say, not waiting for her to speak when she picks up. My heart breaks a little when I realize she’s been crying.
“I saw his confession,” she says. “The detectives called me in. Charlie told them about the contracts and admitted that they were both involved in reselling the confiscated drugs—he said they argued about what to do when they started receiving threats from the mob, and that when they did, Frank pulled out a gun. He said that Frank’s death was accidental.”
“He’s going for manslaughter,” I conclude.
“That’s Plan B,” she says. “Plan A is to make a deal. I’m betting he wants to trade information about other crimes for a lesser sentence—maybe just racketeering. He knows every skeleton in Frank’s closet. They need me to cooperate by giving them access to information about the illegitimate businesses I inherited.”
I sigh.
“What do you think?”, I ask her.
“He was definitely there. He gave them details about the crime that checked out—where it happened, where on his body Frank was shot…”
“But you don’t think he did it.”
“No.”
I think about this. About why he would turn himself in. If he was resourceful about it, a man of his means and shady connections could have disappeared.
“Why?”
“If he can see his way into a white collar prison instead of maximum security, he’ll be safer in there than out here.”
And now I get it. She thinks the mob is after him. That Sweeney is afraid they’ll do the same thing to him as they did to Frank. And that making a deal is a better option to getting killed.
“Is that enough for you?” She knows what I’m asking. She cares more about justice than she cares about truth. And we share the opinion that Charlie Sweeney deserves to be locked up for the rest of his life.
“He’ll get off, Michael.” And I hear the bitterness in her voice. “ Reduced charges will have him out in five years. But now that he’s close to being punished for at least some of his crimes…I don’t want to see him win.”
“You shouldn’t be alone. I’m coming,” I say with determination.
I’m already back at my desk and I begin to log onto my computer. I can’t remember whether Kate was at her desk when I passed just seconds ago. I’ll find her, wherever she is, and have her book the next ticket.
“No,” Darby protests immediately. “It hit the press an hour ago. The paparazzi will be relentless. Please…let me come there. You were right before. I need to get out of this place.”
My fingers still. Thank fuck. “I’ll book you on the next flight.”
She actually chuckles at that. “I think I can afford a ticket.”
“Then tell me when you’re coming. I’ll pick you up from the airport. I’ll take time off. It’ll just be you and me.”
She sniffles yet again, and her voice is weak again the next time she speaks. “Okay.”
I push the refresh button on the browser on my phone for the tenth time in so many minutes. The app keeps telling me that her flight is on time, but I’m waiting for the status to change to ‘landed’. I know the Sydney airport like the back of my hand. I know exactly where to wait for her the second she clears customs. My body hums with anticipation. I know it’s real but I can’t wrap my head around the fact that in a few minutes she’ll be in my arms. I’ve waited for this moment—for time for just the two of us—for so long.
No sooner do I see what I’ve been hoping for on my phone than do I look up to the sliding automatic doors. She’s among the flood of people emerging, and all I can think is that she’s beautiful. Seeing her in the flesh, her reddish hair forming a flowing halo around her face as she scans the crowd for me, stirs me in all the expected ways. I can see the instant she spots me, her face brightening involuntarily as her lips melt into a relieved smile. When her clear ochre eyes meet mine, it’s everything.
I begin walking toward her then, my body taking over without me making the conscious decision for it to do so. At some point, I realize that I’m smiling, too, and it feels like relief when she practically jumps into my arms. We hug for a long time, saying nothing, my fingers in her fragrant hair and my kiss returning over and over to her lips. The reunion is so fierce, so desperate, that any bystander watching would not have believed that we saw one another just two weeks before.
“Take me home,” she says in a way that feels loaded with meaning.
So I do. I carry her bags and usher her to my car. It’s an Audi Spyder convertible that I can’t wait to drive with the top down when I take her to the coast. I hold her hand every moment that I’m not shifting gears.
I can’t seem to keep my hands off of her—even in the elevator—and I press another soft kiss to her forehead as we are whisked up to my high-rise apartment. The code I use to gain entry to this penthouse is the same code I use to get into the one in Chicago. I wonder whether she’s ever caught on to the fact that 3-2-7-2-9 spells out D-A-R-B-Y.
I give her a brief tour and soon enough, we end up in my bedroom. I can see that this space is her favorite and I like the way she runs her fingers across my shirts when we enter my closet. When I set her suitcase down on my dressing bench, I am irrationally eager for her to unpack it. I don’t want her to live out of her suitcase for the next two weeks—I want any space that belongs to me to be ours.
It’s just past 11PM in Sydney, which means that it’s around 8AM in Chicago. Though she must have slept on the plane, she’s spent the past twenty-one hours traveling. What worries me more than jet lag, though is her obvious exhaustion from all she’s been through. Her father’s death, and Sweeney’s resurfacing has given her the one-two punch. And it’s clear to me now that she’s in front of me that she is completely drained.
“Tell me what sounds good,” I say, turning her around so that her back is to my chest and we’re looking at each other in the large dressing mirror in my closet. “Dinner, movie, shower or sleep?”
“I’m not really hungry,” she says, and I let my eyes scan over the reflection of her body. I noticed in Chicago that she’s looking gaunt and wondered how well she was eating. I hate when she doesn’t eat. “But a shower and a movie sounds nice.”
When I show her into my bathroom, she actually smiles, motioning toward my rainfall shower and Japanese toilet.
“Please tell me this isn’t why you picked this apartment.”
I shrug, unable to stop myself from smiling now that she has. “I had them installed.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
I let her shower then, trying not to focus on the fact that there is a naked Darby twenty-five feet away from me. While she dresses, I take off my street clothes and put on pair of pajama pants and an undershirt. I sit on my bed with my back against the headboard pretending to read the book I’ve plucked off of my bedside table. But I can’t concentrate. She’s finally here and I’m determined to comfort her, but I’m not sure yet what she needs.
My heartbeat quickens when I hear the shower shut off, and a minute later, the pad of her footsteps on my closet floor. I don’t dare look, but I know when she unzips her suitcase and rummages around. When she emerges, she’s wearing the Tufts Crew t-shirt I’d slipped into her closet before I left, and a pair of panties. Nothing more.
I would have had trouble not staring, not dwelling on this, if I hadn’t noticed something else. Tears are in her eyes and she looks like she’s going to break down. Setting my book down on the bed, I go to her, seeing that she’s trying desperately not to cry.
My arms around her is all it takes. In an instant, she’s sobbing. It is so raw, so heartbreaking, so wracking as her body shakes that it seems like she’ll never stop. But I don’t want to placate her. I want her to let it out. She can cry for days if she wants to. This isn’t only about Sweeney and she’s been holding it back for a very long time. She clings to me fiercely, as if I’m her lifeline.
“I’m so scared,” I hear her sob finally.
“I know, baby,” I soothe.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
This makes her cry some more.
“Will you hold me?” she asks finally, after she’s cried for a bit.
“I’ll hold you all night long.”
A minute later, we’re in my bed, her cheek to my chest, and my arms are around her again. She’s still sniffling, but her sobs have subsided. And so I wait, knowing that she’s gathering her courage, knowing there’s much that she has to say.
“It’s like he’s haunting me.”
I kiss her temple. I don’t know whether she’s talking about her father or Charlie Sweeney. She can’t seem to be rid of either of them.
“Why couldn’t I have had a normal father? Not even a great father. Just one who cared enough about me to leave me out of the messy parts of his life?”
There’s not a single word I can say in Frank Christensen’s defense. He’d starved her of love and kindness. He’d used her all his life. He’d left her his money, which was the one thing she didn’t care about. And, by leaving her all of his criminal enterprises, he left her with a huge mess.
I’ve never really told Darby about my father. Even now, part of me doesn’t want to compare a standard issue deadbeat dad with the epically evil Frank. Still, maybe hearing what a piece of shit my own dad was will help Darby feel less alone.
“My dad had a second family,” I reveal. “That’s why he left us. He fell in love with another woman, and she got pregnant.”
She’s quiet for a few minutes, and I’m stroking her hair and enjoying the feeling of her in my arms. I’m supposed to be comforting her, but, as always, she has a relaxing effect on me.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“He showed up at my mother’s funeral. I made sure he knew he wasn’t welcome.”
She squeezes me a little then and I kiss her hair and hold tighter to her.
“A few months after that, he sent me a graduation card right after I got my Master’s.”
She brings her hand up to my chest and tips her head up to me then. “What did it say?”
“That he was proud of me. That he remembered what a smart kid I was. That he’d always known I’d do well. That he hoped to have a chance to get to know me.”
Darby begins rubbing calming circles on my chest with her thumb. She can feel the emotion this is bringing up. I bring her fingers to my lips and kiss them to let her know that I’m okay.
“What got me was his return address. It was for a street on the Gold Coast. I looked his house up on Zillow. He lived in a million-dollar brownstone. I grew up in a tenement.” I shake my head at the memory. “I snapped. I hadn’t felt hatred like that for him since I was eight years old. But at twenty-one, I could do something about it. I was halfway across town, on my way to beat his ass, when Bex called. She knew that something was up.”
“I take it you didn’t kick his ass.”
“No. Bex wisely reminded me that starting my professional career with a felony assault charge is not recommended. She graduated from SSA the same year as me, and she got a similar card in the mail a few weeks later. So we sat down and wrote him a letter.”
“We told him off pretty good. To say that he’d always known we would do well, and to credit our success to how smart we were, without even mentioning my mother…it was just so insulting. We were middle class before he left. Because of him, we lived in poverty. A single mother raising twins on her own in a dangerous neighborhood? We told him the only card he should have ever written to any of us was a thank you card to our mother for raising his children, for doing whatever she had to, to make sure we could survive.”
When I finish, Darby is still looking at me, some mix of surprise and respect in her eyes.
“Did you ever hear back from him?”
I sigh, working to calm myself down. Darby’s in my arms and I want to focus on that feeling. “A few months after that, he sent a response letter. Neither of us wanted anything to do with it. It’s never even been opened.”
“Wow…”
“But he contacted Bex a couple months ago. He wants to be in Ella’s life.”
