Page 103 of Mess With Me

Me, too, buddy.

Me fucking too.

* * *

When I text Lionel, he says he’s on his way to Queens and he’ll send me a pin to let me know exactly where to meet him. He loves sending fucking pins. My dad’s the same way. He sends pins when he’s at the grocery store.

I don’t like the way this makes me think of Lionel in a fatherly capacity again, though, so I remind myself about his part in putting Sasha at risk just to get my head back into the right place.

I hear the telltale ding of Lionel’s pin dropping in my GPS.

McCrae & Associates uses a military-type program that lets me do everything between apps by voice, and I tell my phone to take me there through the speaker in my helmet.

It’s not until I take the highway exit that I realize where he’s taking me.

Fucking asshole.

Fifteen minutes later, as I enter the grounds, I say it out loud.

Laura’s plot is at the top of the cemetery, down by the long stone fence running along the western slope. It’s on a small rise, and if you’re facing her marker, you get a good view of downtown Manhattan.

Lionel’s standing a few feet back, his hands clasped behind him. He’s still a big man, nearly as tall as me, but he looks older than I’ve ever seen him. His back is slightly hunched, and his hair is thin in the dull gray light of late afternoon.

I know he heard me come up—the Bonneville’s not quiet—but he doesn’t turn.

Unlike the last time I was here, when we put Laura in the ground four years ago, the pain in my chest isn’t just for me and what I lost. It’s not even that blame that still hovers in the background.

It’s for Lionel.

I wonder if meeting here is part of his plan, if he’s doing it to make me feel guilty. But as I stop beside him, I get a glimpse of his expression.

I don’t think it is. Lionel just doesn’t have anyone who knew Laura the way I did. Not even his wife, Laura’s mom. She didn’t know what we did all day. After she raised Laura, she didn’t see her even a fraction as much as her dad did.

I read the etching on the gravestone. Laura was only twenty-eight when she passed.

“I don’t fucking come out here for a reason,” I say.

“That’s why we’re here.”

“It’s not easy.”

“It’s hell, is what it is.” Lionel shifts, and I see he’s got something in his hand. It’s a trinket. A charm bracelet—the kind my sisters used to wear when they were kids.

It was Laura’s.

“Did you buy that for her?” I ask, my throat tight.

“I did. On her tenth birthday.” He holds it out. The light’s dull today, the sky an overcast white, but I picture it glittering in the sun.

“It had nothing on it at first. She wasn’t all that impressed. She didn’t get what it was. But then I got her the first charm…it was this one.” He turns the thing over until he’s holding a bell with a deliberate crack in it. “This one wasn’t far. It was where my office was back then, in Philly.”

He examines the bracelet, switching to a charm of the Eiffel Tower. “But this was the next one. I missed her Karate belt ceremony that time.”

He lowers the bracelet, still clutching it in his hand. “Her mother said I was away too much. She was right. This bracelet—it was a guilt present. But she loved it.” He gives a humorless laugh.

This was not what I was expecting when I asked to see him. I thought we’d be in his office, that I’d tell him I wanted desk work through to the new year, and if he wouldn’t give it to me? Well, I knew he’d give it to me. He always said I could take that whenever I wasn’t feeling sharp in the field.

But this? I didn’t come here to talk about Laura. I buried Laura.

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