Page 60 of A Favor Owed
“No! I mean, he does now, but I talked to him after you went to Aunt Marianne’s.”
She hands the wing back to me, looking less hurt. “What I want to know is why your father even agreed to help this girl, knowing who she was and what she wanted. How he could put himself and all of us in danger like that.”
I finish the wing and bite into another. “Maybe you should have asked him instead of getting on a plane,” I say, leveling a look at her. “I mean really, Ma, fly off the handle much?”
She shrugs. I know my mom. Now that she’s cooling off, she’s starting to see the extent of her overreaction. “I told you to answer your phone,” she says half-heartedly. “So, what’s the deal with the girl?”
“No deal,” I say. “Fortunately, you didn’t give anything away, and I sure as hell can’t tell her what’s going on. I did as much as I could to help Dad. Now it’s over. I’m going to finish out the semester, register for classes at Columbia, and move back home. I’ll be back in New York before Christmas.”
My mom looks warily relieved. “So it didn’t get serious with her?”
“How could it?” I ask. “I’ve been keeping a pretty big secret from her, and vice versa. She’s never even told me her real name.”
And yet when she said she was blocking my number, I felt like she’d ripped out my heart.
“I’m sorry about that, Brady. I know you don’t usually get attached to girls. You seem pretty bummed out about this one.” She sips her beer, picks at her food. “She’s definitely tall. Does she play basketball or something?”
“I don’t know.” It occurs to me, not for the first time, that I know very little about Angela Pines. This time, though, I realize with a painful stab of regret that I never will.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Angela
I have never been so humiliated in my life. First, he dumps me without a word. Then he ignores me for over a week. Then he invites me out for a drink, at which point his mom storms in and acts like he’s taken up with a drug-addicted sex worker who’s going to screw up his credit and give him an STD.Stay away from my son.Stay away from her son? What the hell did he tell his mom about me to make her act like that?
As promised, I block his number and his email address. Fortunately, being on the run means I have no social media accounts, so I don’t have to worry about blocking him from those, too. Brady does his part by completely ignoring me again.
The next week passes much the same as the last, with me buried in my books, working extra shifts, and putting in more time at Legal Aid, exhausting myself so that I can fall asleep without crying for hours. The weather is getting increasingly hot, dry, and windy. The smell of fire is always in the air, like a far-off campfire. Dust is everywhere, coating my pores and my hair and feeling like grit in my mouth. I would kill for rain or anything to change my routine up a little bit, but the work and the dry heat are equally relentless.
By Saturday night, the Diablo winds are so strong they keep me awake despite a long night at work. I lie in bed, listening to them screaming down the canyon and buffeting the garage, knocking over a planter and maybe a chair outside. That wind is the loneliest sound I’ve ever heard, and as I lie awake under my sheet feeling the garage shake slightly with each strong gust, I wish I were lying with Brady’s heavy arm anchoring me to him.
On Sunday, I wake up after just a few hours of sleep and notice two things: it’s still windy, and the campfire now smells like it’s in my backyard. I peek outside. The sky looks apocalyptic—orange and hazy with a red disk of sun. I check my weather app. Highs in the nineties, strong winds, and a wildfire raging in a canyon about five miles away. Well, that explains the sky. I pack a sweatshirt and my laptop and books and head to the library.
I’m sweating and dusty by the time I arrive, my eyes and mouth burning with the ash that’s drifting from the sky. I go in the bathroom and wipe my face down with a damp paper towel before shaking out my ashy, windblown hair and re-braiding it. I guzzle water to get the taste of ash out of my mouth.
God, this is awful. Will this weather ever let up?
The air is cool in the library, but it still smells like smoke. I finally get to work, reading and outlining the cases for tomorrow’s class. I’m two hours into it when a security guard approaches me.
“Ma’am, we’re closing down campus due to poor air quality from the fire. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”
“Oh! Sure, okay,” I say. Damn it. I turn on my phone to give Lizette a call and make sure she’s okay. But a text from her pops up as soon as my phone powers on.
We’ve been evacuated. I’m staying but you might want to get your stuff.
I instantly think of the dry pastureland behind her property. I pull up a map of the area on my phone and realize that our neighborhood is across the freeway from where the fire is raging. It couldn’t get across that huge freeway, could it? Surely we’re being evacuated just to be safe. But my books and my cash and my jewelry are in the apartment.
You’re totally overreacting, Angela, I tell myself as I quickly pack up my stuff and stow it in my backpack. I run out to the garage and hop on my bike. As I speed out onto the street, I almost collide with an SUV. A dark blue Jeep Grand Cherokee to be exact. It screeches to a halt in front of me, and I topple over. A string of profanities bubbles up inside me, but I manage to clamp my lips together.
Brady hops out of his car and runs over to me.
“Jesus Christ, Angela, are you okay?” He helps me up and holds me by the arms, looking me over.
Am Iokay? No, I’m not okay! My knee and elbow are scraped, but it’s nothing compared to the excruciating embarrassment of nearly crashing into Brady’s car.
“I’m fine,” I grumble, shaking free of him and leaning down to pick up my bike. “I have to go.”
“Where are you going? I was just coming to get you.”
