Page 85 of The Librarians
“Why are you in Austin?”
“Because she’s getting old.”
“She doesn’t have other kids or grandkids who are closer?”
“She does, but none of them are heiresses who have no other obligations in life.”
He is silent, a thorny silence, as if she drew lipstick hearts on her final exam in lieu of supplying actual answers. Then he tilts back his glass and downs its entire contents.
As he swallows, her eyes fasten to the column of his throat. She wants to rip the wineglass from his fingers, throw it aside, and kiss him again. She wants to be in Nainai’s car, speeding away. She wants him to have the decency to keep her in the dark forever and ever, because he knows something she doesn’t and she is afraid of it.
Their gazes meet. Eight feet of air separate them, but they might as well be nose to nose.
She drains her own glass, pushes it away on the bench cushion, and sticks the empty magazine into the Glock she took from him. “You think I’m hiding something from you.”
He picks up his cartridge and holds it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “You aren’t?”
There is an edge to his voice. It isn’t a question but a jab. She gapes athim, trying to make sense of his provocation. “No, I’m not. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
There is information asymmetry here, but not in the way he imagines.
“You’re sure about that?”
He is…mocking her. But there’s something fatalistic to his tone, a bitterness that is nevertheless not directed at her. Or not directedonlyat her.
“I am sure about it, but you seem convinced otherwise. Why do you think I’m withholding something?Whatdo you think I’m withholding?”
“Tell me again why you’re here tonight.”
She would like to throw her Glock through the glass wall of the alcove. “My colleague Astrid is currently, as far as I can tell, the only lead the police have on Perry’s death. But I found out about your connections to him. And I wanted to know more before I make up my mind as to whether to mention you to the police.”
“Why do you care?” he asks coolly. Coldly. “You should have passed my information directly to the police.”
Why does she care?
Hazel rarely gives in to anger, and she tries to remain calm, but some banshee inside her howls and shrieks.Why do I care? Do you, of all people, not have a fucking clue why I fucking care?
“When I was engaged, I wondered obsessively what I would do if you were to suddenly reappear in my life. And when you didn’t—”
She drags in a ragged breath. She should stop right here—this needs to go no further. But she can’t. Her self-control has undergone a rapid unplanned disassembly and is streaking through the atmosphere in hundreds of fiery fragments.
“Let’s just say, when reality failed to validate my wishful thinking, what I experienced was not a profound sense of relief. To this day, I carry no small amount of guilt toward my husband, because I would have ditched him at the altar if you’d only shown up.”
He rises to his feet and looms above her, his expression unreadable.
“You don’t need to be so alarmed.” She speaks through clenched teeth. “I know very well that the person I’d have left my then-fiancé for isn’t you but a construct of my own making. All the same, there isn’t a single day inthe last twelve years when I haven’t thought about you. And there isn’t a single time I think about you that I haven’t regretted letting go of your number. Not because I lost a soul mate but because in the vacuum created by your absence you became untouchably perfect. You became whatever my psyche and my neuroses needed you to be.”
Maybe he’s standing because she has pointed the Glock at him, as if with a pull of the trigger she can destroy the illusion. She tosses the unloaded firearm aside, this thing that is as useless as her willpower.
“The kind of weight and relevance I’ve poured into the idea of you does not dissipate in a few days.”
The opposite.
She’s learned to live with her yearning and her regrets. And she’s come to believe that they have not only collected as sediments but cemented into stone—after all, twelve years is a geological era. And she, an occasional visitor to the depths of her own heart, would run her fingers over fossilized memories caught in those prehistorical strata.
His reappearance overturned that tidy fantasy. Her yearning and her regrets have been locked away, yes, but like those children of the Khaleesi forced into the dungeon, they emerged instead as full-grown beasts, ravenous and more feral than ever.
“And when I was faced with the possibility that you might have something to do with Perry’s death…”
