FORTY-THREE

“Archer.”

“Nnnnnn.”

“Archer.”

“Pigeon ate my burger.”

“Archer!” This last was hissed right into his ear, which was a tactical error as Archer mistook her for a bug and swiped at her hard enough to make her ears throb.

“Friggin’ mosquitos . . . nuh?” He rubbed his eyes hard enough to make her own water with sympathy. “Cuz, whassup?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, already regretting the insane impulse that led her here. Fortunately, Leah was still deeply asleep. Loudly, deeply asleep. My God. She sounds like a blender wrapped in a towel trying to blend a brick.

“F’r what? Y’okay?” He was trying to prop himself up on his elbows, staring at her in the low light from the partially open bedroom doorway.

“I’m fine.” Lie. “I’m just really sorry for all those times I was mean to you and said being mind-blind was like being developmentally disabled and that not remembering your past lives was like flunking a standard IQ test.”

He gawped at her and rubbed his eyes again.

She rushed on. “I know we talked all that out before you brought Leah to visit, but I’m not just apologizing for that. I’m apologizing for waiting so long to apologize.”

“If this isn’t some bizarre dream I’m going to fart on your face.”

By now she was kneeling beside the bed. “It’s because of Leah that I was so mean. Wait, I said that wrong—it wasn’t Leah’s fault I was so horrible. I was horrible because I felt inadequate beside her and took it out on you.”

“I will fart. On your face.”

“Does that make sense? How it’s about Leah but not really?”

“Hell no it doesn’t make sense.”

“Listen, this all goes back to our childhood and I know that’s a cliché and maybe not worth waking you up for—”

“You might be onto something.”

“But I have to explain why I was such a miserable, hateful bitch before— Wait a sec, was there a pastry swan on that plate?” She hadn’t noticed the telltale empty dessert plate on the nightstand before, but now her eyes had adjusted well enough to see the crumbs.

“Yeah, there was, and it was delicious, and you can have the crumbs after you go away and let me go back to sleep.” He fussed with the blankets and glared at her. Beside him, Leah murmured something, then went back to gargling gravel or whatever the hell she was doing, my God, how did he ever get a wink of sleep?

“Jack made that for her?” How does she rate? she thought but didn’t say. Nothing against Leah, but the swans were special.

“I think your little brother is in love with my fiancée, which I assumed would be the most unsettling thought I’d have tonight.”

“I’m almost done. Please be patient with me just a bit longer.” She shook his shoulder a little for emphasis. “You know I’m a fan of hers. Lots of people are, the woman has groupies, for God’s sake.”

Archer nodded in the semidarkness. “You should see some of the stuff they send her. She has a fluoroscope at work.”

“That’s . . . sad, actually, but it doesn’t surprise me. And when I found out I was an Insighter, I just knew I was going to be able to fix everything for everybody. That’s what I told myself. So I pushed it and practiced my gift on everyone who would stand still and some people who wouldn’t. But I could never see your lives. And I just couldn’t face up to that. So I figured the problem had to be you.”

“Angela.” He fumbled for her hand and patted it, yawning. “There’s no need for this. I don’t know why you’re doing this to yourself at . . .” He looked at the clock and his grip tightened. “Two-thirty in the morning?”

“Shhhhh!”

“You shhhh! And Leah doesn’t sleep, she hibernates. Jesus Christ. Now? You need to do this now?”

“Need” was exactly the right word. Because this was about making amends, sure, but it was also about learning to live with the fallout from all her mistakes. Even when I apologize, I’m selfish. Was that funny? Sad? All of the above?

“No matter what I did, I was never more than a magician doing card tricks. But Leah was already making a name for herself. She could make people appear within other people. She helped them see the dead. I could never do it so well, and—and I took that out on you.

“It drove me nuts that I couldn’t see your other selves, it just reminded me of my own failings, made my amateur status that much more obvious. And it drove me nuts that you couldn’t see them, either, couldn’t learn like the rest of us, couldn’t be enlightened like the rest of us, like I thought I was.” She could hear herself practically snarling and couldn’t stop. “I wouldn’t admit you were special, and you paid for it. When I apologized last time, I didn’t tell you the whole story. And I thought—I thought you deserved it. To know all of it.”

Silence.

“Do you promise you’re done?”

She thought it over, still kneeling beside the bed. “I . . . yes. That’s all of it.”

“Okay. My turn. Yeah, you were a jerkass, and not just when you were a kid. You were shitty to me when you were old enough to know better and that sucked, and you know it and I know it and everyone in the family knows it. But you made amends. We got right with each other. And then, mysteriously and to my intense aggravation, you were compelled to make amends again.”

Compelled. Yes. Exactly right.

“But, cuz, even if you hadn’t, your actions didn’t define me and your apologies didn’t, either. You were wrong about me. I was right about me, and that’s what mattered more to me back then. But you’re not the supervillain here. You’re the stubborn baseball manager who tells the hero—moi—that I’ll never make it in the big leagues. So I go out and work hard and make it to spite you and in the process end up rich and successful. You’re not Lex Luthor, you’re the B-villain who admits he was wrong at the end and respects the hell out of the hero. What you did, right or wrong, it helped make me a stronger person. Maybe even a better person.”

“Okay . . .” She might have to mull that one over.

He sighed, picking up on her hesitance and confusion. “In other words, I was just as self-involved as you, my ego’s just as fat as yours, we both got some things wrong about each other and some things right, I will fart on your face very soon now, the end.”

That made a little more sense. Not the farting. The rest of it. “Okay. Thanks for indulging me, I got home from Jason’s and couldn’t go to bed until I amended my earlier apology.”

Her eyes had adjusted quite well to the gloom by now; she saw him blinking at her. “So you got home from your weird date with Detective Chambers—”

“It wasn’t weird!” she hissed, still mindful of waking Leah. Then she thought it over for a second. Tombstone cleaning, prison visit, uncle dropping the C bomb and promising at least one murder, a delicious fuck, a bitchy blow-off all culminating in a bedside confession. No wonder she was exhausted. “Well, okay. It was weird.”

“And then you came up here to wake me up out of a sound sleep and remind me that you can be a self-absorbed jerkass but tonight, at least, you were an apologetic self-absorbed jerkass.”

“No, I took a shower first.”

He settled back and hauled the blankets up under his chin. “Good. Glad we got it all cleared up. But make a note, because in another ten years I want a middle-of-the-night apology for this middle-of-the-night-apology. Just make an appointment or mention it in the Christmas newsletter so I know when it’s coming.

She giggled, something she hadn’t imagined doing even once during this conversation. “Done.”

“You promise?”

“Super done.”

“Go away, you controlling, aggravating, bitchy idiot.”

She wanted to hug him, but she’d disrupted his sleep cycle enough for one night. Instead she took the plate and quietly closed the door, and wasn’t too proud to lick her finger to get every one of those delicious pastry swan crumbs.