Chapter 45

She stared at me and crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing them as if she were cold. She appeared to calm down enough to keep her tears in check. “Good. Thank you.”

“Are you okay? I mean, really okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said after a moment. “The last couple of years have just been hard. Since Nate, I don’t…” She looked down at the floor. “I don’t think Jim realized what fatherhood was going to be. I don’t think he likes it very much. I don’t think he likes us very much.”

I had no freaking idea of what to do for this woman. I was about to walk out of this building for the last time, and she was starting to give me the impression that I was the closest thing she had to a friend. “Do you need a place to stay?”

Phoebe shook her head. “No. I’m not in any real danger. I just… I just wanted to apologize for Jim’s behavior and say thank you.” She tittered and swiped at her cheek as another wayward tear fell. “I guess I just got a little carried away.”

“No. That’s okay,” I said. “Look, if you say you’re fine, then I believe you, but if you need anything at all, please give me a call. You’re losing me as a neighbor… not as a friend.”

A single sob burst from her and she contained the rest as her face contorted in another fit of crying. I stepped toward her and hugged her close again, stroking her red-brown hair as she pressed her face into my chest once more. “I mean it. If you need anything at all, I’m just a phone call away.”

Phoebe nodded into my chest and we stayed like that for another minute before she pulled away. She looked up at me again with those big, liquid eyes, and I thought she might try to kiss me again. Eventually, she did lift herself on her toes, but this time it was to plant a kiss on my cheek; her lips lingered there for several long moments before she lowered herself again.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice quiet. She stepped back and looked at the garbage. “I’ve been gone too long. I need to get this downstairs. She swiped at her runny nose with the back of a hand and gave me an apologetic look. “He’s probably asleep, but I don’t want to take the chance. If he suspected I came over here…”

“Leave it,” I said. “The cleaners will take it tomorrow.” It was the least I could do.

She gave me a watery smile.

“Seriously though. If you’re in trouble or if you think you’re in danger from him. Please call me. You have a place to go if you need it.”

She nodded and said, “It won’t come to that, but thank you. I will.”

“Good.”

Heading back to her apartment, Phoebe paused at the doorway and rested her head on the frame, giving me one more look. There was a lot of that unreadable emotion in her face as we locked gazes for a prolonged moment. “Thank you,” she finally said. Then she disappeared.

I listened in silence as she murmured a greeting to someone in the hallway I couldn’t see, opened the door, and then shut it. A moment later, a dark brown head of hair peeked around the doorway. It was Emily, my sister.

“Hey M,” she said, giving me our customary greeting.

“Hey Em,” I said, staring as I reflexively returned my part of the greeting we’d used most of our lives.

I was surprised to see her appearance just as I was about to leave my apartment for the last time, but not as much as she was to see the state of my apartment. She walked the rest of the way into the room, her eyes growing wide as she looked around at the mess. It was clear to any casual passer-by that this wasn’t simply the mess of someone moving. “What the…? Marcus? What happened? Oh my god, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine. Someone broke into my house two days ago. I wasn’t here when it happened.”

“Oh my god,” Emily repeated and ran over to me, throwing her arms around my neck in a hug. I returned it, wrapping my arms tight around my older sister’s waist. “Did they take anything?” She pulled away. “What about your cat?”

I shook my head and said, “Jack’s fine, and they didn’t take anything. I think they were looking for something specific.”

Emily’s brow furrowed, “What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. Probably something to do with the money,” I said. We pulled apart from our hug. She gazed at me, concern etched across her face.

At 5’9”, Emily stood a handful of inches shorter than me. She had clear, fair skin, a beautiful Greek nose, plush lips, and startling pale grey eyes. According to dad, she inherited her father’s Northern European looks while getting her dark hair, temperament, and sharp wit from her mother.

First, I need to give you a little backstory about Emily. When she turned eighteen, she attended NYU to study theater and became a moderately successful actor. She starred regularly in commercials, did some modeling for cosmetics, and scored several roles in off-broadway productions. She had even made the final cut on Broadway but hadn’t been chosen for a part. Several people told her she would do well in California, and she considered it, but then Daniel happened.

Emily met Daniel not long after turning twenty-four. He was a relatively successful broker on Wall Street in his mid-thirties who just so happened to be attending one of her performances when they first met. It was love at first sight, and they were inseparable for the next two years, getting engaged near the end of their relationship. Unfortunately, he made one bad investment and lost everything. Emily was the one who came home to find the mess he’d left in the bathroom after eating a bullet.

It took six months for Emily to recover, then she decided she needed a change of pace. She moved to California to try a life out there, and the next two years passed with barely a word from her. Then one day she showed up at my apartment door looking thin, soaking wet, and desperate for a place to stay. She had fifty dollars in her pocket, the clothes on her back, and a broken spirit. Emily and I had always been close, so I took her in without hesitation and let her live with me in Brooklyn for the next four months.

She filled me in a little about her time in LA, but never the whole story. I learned she never found her big break in acting like she wanted and had fallen on desperate times while in Los Angeles. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and that led Emily to addiction among other things that I only suspected. My sister came back to me with a whole host of serious issues.

Neither of us could afford the rehab, but Emily was insistent that our parents not find out about her problems, so I managed to convince my mom and dad to give me a loan to buy into a start-up. I used the money to put my sister through rehab. Ashamed that I was taking such a hit for her, Emily promised she would take it seriously, and as far as I knew, she hadn’t touched alcohol or stimulants since they released her. When she finally reunited with our parents, Emily was completely clean, and I came to be known as someone with a shitty business sense. I paid back the money I’d borrowed, but unfortunately, the reputation was there to stay.

“Do Mom and Dad know about this?” Emily asked.

“Nope,” I said, “and I don’t want them to either. They would just freak out and try to do something.”

“Maybe they can do something,” she pushed back.

“Em, I have an army of lawyers. My assistant hired a private investigator to look into it, and the cops are doing everything they can. I think I have it covered. Please don’t say anything to them.”

“Of course,” Emily said. “If that’s what you really want.”

“Thanks.”

She let me go and started to do a circuit around the apartment. Her fingers traced the drywall as she said, “I’m gonna miss this place.”

“Really? That’s surprising.”

“Why?”

“Because you barely come here anymore.”

“I know,” Emily replied, and I detected a faint note of shame in her voice.

“I didn’t mean it as an accusation. I know you’re busy.”

Trying to build back up what she’d left behind in New York wasn’t an easy process, and nearly two years later, she was still struggling to get back what she left behind. She was working hard, and I was proud of her even though I did miss having her around. We had always been close, and when she returned, we fell back into our friendship as if two years hadn’t just passed us by.

“Thanks, Marcus. It’s been a lot.” She turned and leaned against the wall. “Anyway, part of me didn’t want to come back because I didn’t want to chance running into the Lucases.”

“What? Why?”

“Jim always made me feel weird,” she said, “and I seemed like Phoebe was always judging me. It felt weird between us in the hallway just now.”

“Ah. That wasn’t you. It was because of me. Jim was pretty rude to me on the way in,” I said, deciding not to share the part of the story where Phoebe had kissed me.

“Want me to kill him?” Emily asked, throwing a mock glare toward the doorway.

“Nah,” I said. “I have an assassin on retainer now. He’s scheduled to take care of him on Sunday. What are you doing here anyway?”

“I just wanted to check on you,” Emily said. “You sounded like you could use a friend when we talked the other day. Mom is still a little hurt that she had to find out about the whole money thing on the news.”

“I hope she knows how it feels.” I retorted. “I got the whole story from my lawyer.”

“Hey…”

“No. Don’t worry about it. We hashed that out on the phone already. She’ll be fine.”

Emily nodded and fell silent as she stared at me, and I simply looked back. Before it got too awkward, I decided to move things along, “How’s dad handling it all?”

“Well. He says he trusts you know what you’re doing, but that if you need to talk, you know how to find him. He also said ‘Tag. You’re it.’”

“Yeah. We keep missing each other. I should probably talk to him, seeing as this is all because of who my biological father is.”

“I don’t think that’s bothering him too much,” Emily said. “He knows who your actual dad is.” She pressed on. “He told me Richie is excited, and he won’t shut up about expecting something amazing for Christmas this year.”

That scanned. Richie was our precocious, seventeen-year-old brother and had the most potential among the kids. He was smart, charismatic, and athletic. He played baseball and basketball for his high school and was on track to get into Rhode Island on an athletic scholarship, where he planned to study biochemistry. With a little over a decade between us, we didn’t have as strong a relationship as Emily and I shared, but he was a good kid, and I was proud of him.

I laughed and said, “I’ll make sure it happens.”

“In that case, I expect it too,” Emily needled, but then quickly changed the subject. She already felt indebted to me, and it was always a sensitive subject for her. “Jacob however…”

Ah, Jacob… the black sheep of the family. The guy who had a bus-load of ambition, but almost none of the drive to make it happen. The guy who made me look like I had the business acumen of a Rockefeller. He was already married and had a kid, but couldn’t seem to hold a job for more than six months.

“What about Jacob?”

“I haven’t talked to him, but Hillary says she’s worried about him. She suspects he’s not going to work anymore and says he’s been more moody than usual… especially after he found out about your new situation.”

“Fuck… really? I thought he liked that job,” I said.

“He did for about a month, but that’s the way it goes with him.”

“He’s called me a couple of times, but I haven’t bothered calling him back. I know he’s just going to ask me for money. I’ve been called, texted, and emailed by most of the family, and that’s what most of them have at least hinted at.”

She immediately held up her hands. “Hey. That’s not me. Prospects are improving. I have an audition tomorrow.”

“Em, that’s amazing! What role?”

“Elphaba.”

“Damn! A shot at one of your favorites!”

The corners of her mouth crept up into a pleased smile and she held up crossed fingers.

“Good luck!”

“Thanks,” she said and looked around the dump she briefly called home. “I’m lucky I caught you before you left. Where are you living now?”