CHAPTER ELEVEN
“SO LOOK, THE first time they start in, if they don’t stop, we’re leaving,” Rachel said right before she got out of the car.
Maybe gripped the steering wheel tighter for a moment and then forced herself to let go.
“Just go enjoy them. You know how they are.”
Rachel took Maybe’s hand. “Stop it. I couldn’t protect you when we were kids. I get it even if I do feel guilty about it. But I can now. And I will.”
“You have enough shit to shovel. It’ll be fine.”
“Didn’t I just tell you to stop that?” Annoyance colored Rachel’s tone. “We’re here because of me. Don’t think I’m unaware of that. But that means I have control and it’s high time I used it better. Don’t argue. I’m the oldest and I say so.”
With that, her smartly dressed sister got out of the car with one backward glance that told Maybe to hurry up.
Smiling, she did.
The house their parents had bought was one Maybe would have liked to have grown up in. At the top of a steep street leading down toward the water, the old-school rambler had great light and, from the front yard and living room, some fantastic views of the Olympics to the west and the Cascades to the east.
Her mother had a great touch with plants even if she didn’t so much with rebellious daughters. Even in the late fall, the hardier of the bushes and flowers still managed to bring color and cheer to the front walk.
They stood on the porch, both smiling at Rachel. They hadn’t given Maybe a second glance but she’d learned early on it was better that way because when they did pay attention it was usually to criticize.
They descended to pull Rachel into a hug, one Maybe got a pale imitation of once her sister had clawed free.
“Come inside. It’s chilly out here,” their mother said.
Maybe followed them into the large living room. It flowed into the dining room and the kitchen just beyond.
If she’d grown up in this house would she have been a different person?
The house she’d grown up in had been full of walls and corners. Places that seemed to fill up with dread the older she got.
In her father’s household there was plenty of order but those corners continued to fill.
“Gladys, why are you hanging back and being awkward?” her mother called over a shoulder.
“Maybe. Mom, it’s Maybe,” Rachel said before Maybe could.
“I certainly did not name that child Maybe like some sort of hippie.”
“It’s too early to start a fight,” Maybe said, snapping her protective mask into place. She’d simply not let it bother her. She’d inhabit the body of a person who was beyond whatever her parents thought.
“You’re right.” Rachel turned to take up at Maybe’s side. Something their mother was busily adding to her list of crimes Maybe was responsible for. “I think it’s really silly to have this same exact argument every single time you see her. She’s called Maybe. She has been since I gave her that name. It’s better than Gladys anyway. Who names a sweet tiny baby Gladys?”
Rachel was certainly sassy that day. It cheered Maybe to see her sister with so much spirit.
“It was good enough for her great-great-grandmother,” their father began but Maybe sighed.
“Oh for God’s sake! Why does it matter? Please call me Maybe. It’s not complicated. I’m asking nicely. No offense to great-great-grandma Gladys or anything. But I don’t like it. It doesn’t fit me and so for twenty-four years I’ve gone by Maybe. It seems to me if you can call Dad Richie instead of Dick, you can call me the name I prefer.”
Rachel practically beamed at her. “Yes! Very good points. Now that we all understand each other, let’s have a good Thanksgiving with our family,” she told their parents as she kept an arm around Maybe.
“All I wanted to know was why the girl was hanging back as if she were on the way to the gallows,” their mother muttered as she turned and headed toward the kitchen.
Richard Dolan stared his youngest daughter down. Or he tried to but Maybe was just as stubborn as he was and was better at the no-blinking game.
“Aunt Robbie says Maybe would have been a fantastic cop with her stare,” Rachel said as she poured a glass of wine for each of them.
Their father winced at the very thought. Maybe echoed it for her own reasons.
“I thought you couldn’t mix alcohol with your medications?” Their mother gave Maybe a glare though the question was for Rachel.
“I can’t. Not within hours of taking them. It’s two. I’ve got time.” Rachel sipped.
“You’re supposed to be monitoring her for this stuff,” their father said to Maybe.
“She told you she’s fine. She just explained her medication situation like an adult. I don’t need to answer questions people ask of her. Not like this.”
“She could die! In your care look at what’s happened to her already!”
“If you two don’t back off and stop this, Maybe and I are leaving,” Rachel told them.
Their mother clamped her lips shut and turned back to the fridge. Their father harrumphed and headed over to the table, where he sat, waiting to be served.
“What can we do to help with dinner?” Maybe asked, hoping to get past this excruciating moment.
Her mother gave her a look that said how dubious she was of Maybe’s use, but she shook her head and then sighed.
“The table has been set but if the two of you could bring out the bowls there on the counter, that would be good.”
Rachel rolled her eyes, but she and Maybe got to work and before long they were all sitting together at the table.
Not that she was hungry. But she did manage to enjoy the turkey and mashed potatoes. Her mom was a pretty good cook and she always outdid herself on the holidays when their house had typically been more full with extended family and friends who worked with their dad.
She supposed they held the smaller gathering against her along with everything else. Well, she knew they had when her father had transferred to a new station house when she’d been younger and they’d had to make new friends there. And in a way they were right this time. When they’d moved, they’d left behind an established life and a lot of family to be near Rachel.
“We got a new bed. For your room, Rachel,” their mother said with a smile.
“I have a bed in my room. All our friends complained when I made them move the mattress up the steps. Gosh, whiners, it was four steps.” Rachel rolled her eyes, clearly distrusting of things like basic human strength limitations.
“Perhaps if you hadn’t been glowering at them while shouting out useful critique about their form.” Maybe lifted a shoulder.
“Some people cry too easy. That’s all I’m saying.” Rachel could be like a drill sergeant sometimes.
Caren broke in again. “Your room here. In our house. It’s got controls so you can get out of bed easier. We can take you to the doctor too. No need to ride the bus.”
Maybe and Rachel gave one another a look before Rachel spoke. “I don’t need to ride the bus to work. I just do it because I like to. I don’t have a room here. I have a house just half an hour away with my own room and my own bed I don’t have any trouble getting in and out of.”
“You had one at the hospital!” their mother exclaimed. “So if you needed it there, you need it now. There’s no reason not to have all the best while you recover.”
“I needed a painkiller drip at one time in the hospital too. And then there was that whole coma business. I don’t need that now. I’m not having any trouble with my mobility and I haven’t for at least the last year.”
Rachel had worked her ass off to get as far as she had. A stubborn streak and a high pain tolerance meant she’d been a favorite down at physical therapy.
“Don’t speak to your mother in that tone,” their father said as he put some more turkey on his plate.
“Don’t talk about me like I’m a kid,” Rachel shot back. “Stop trying to manipulate me into moving in here. I have a house. One I chose myself. Because I’m not incapable of being an adult and making adult choices. I appreciate that you care enough to want me to move in and all. But I don’t need that.”
“If you lived here, you wouldn’t have to worry about paying bills so you could focus on getting the training you need to get back into law enforcement,” their dad said.
“I’m not going back into law enforcement.” Rachel’s tone had gone hard and flat. It was a near-perfect imitation of how their father spoke to Maybe most of the time.
“You can’t be a tattoo artist, for God’s sake!” he thundered after pounding the table with a meaty fist.
“But I can. I am! And I’m good at it,” Rachel told him with a calm that brought the vein in his temple out.
Maybe hadn’t taken a drink of her wine at all because she had the feeling they might need to bolt at any time. Rachel had clearly had enough and she wasn’t holding back. Not anymore.
Her instinct was to step in and shield her sister. But it was time for Rachel to stand up for herself more firmly. She’d been strong in all the ways she’d needed most to heal and now that her physical healing had been completed, she’d need to keep up her emotional healing.
She used to be fearless and in charge. Rachel would never be the same, but she could be her own kind of badass. And was. It gave her control.
It had been a long time coming and Maybe needed to let her sister speak and act for herself unless it appeared she needed the backup.
“This is all your fault.” He turned to Maybe. “You and your little friends have encouraged this...this flighty bullshit. She’s good and you hate that. She’s talented and you resent that. She’s everything we ever wanted and you can’t stand it.” His tone had slipped, gone dark with a spiteful edge. He rarely let Rachel see this side of himself.
“That’s enough!” Rachel didn’t yell, but her quiet order sliced through the hum of tension enough to have their father snap his jaw shut.
He looked a lot like a turtle in that moment.
With that picture firmly in her head, she shoved the hurt and anger away. It didn’t matter.
“You’re right.” Maybe looked him square in the eyes. “She is good. At everything pretty much. I have encouraged her to follow her heart and her gut when it comes to what she wants at this stage in her life. Because she deserves to have the choice. If that makes me at fault in your eyes, I guess that’s how it has to be.”
She clenched her hands together under the table. Not allowing any of her anxiety to show.
Maybe didn’t need to refute his accusation that she hated her sister’s successes. She and Rachel knew the truth.
“You were an all-star at Quantico. You were and could still be on a track to a stellar career. You don’t have to go back to the BAU. I spoke with Gerry a few weeks back, he said they’d tuck you in elsewhere in CID. They can always use a brain like yours. That’s what he said.”
The BAU was where Rachel had worked with the team who took down serial killers. As a profiler, she regularly got into the heads and lives of some pretty disgusting humans.
“You just happened to bump into Assistant Director Gerry Cardenas at the grocery store?” Rachel’s eyes had gone as hard and flat as her tone.
Yeah, they were going to be out of there before pie. No doubt about it.
“Since your sister was encouraging you to turn your back on what you were meant to do, yes, I touch base with him from time to time.”
Maybe allowed an eye roll, which pushed his buttons.
“Don’t you roll your eyes at me!”
“You’re being ridiculous. It’s roll my eyes or laugh in your face. Why are you trying to start a fight all the time? Can’t you just be happy she’s here, even if you have to deal with me too? Back off. She’s asked you over and over. She’s telling you now. Let it go and enjoy Thanksgiving.” Maybe pointed to the table.
“You’ve never had any respect. Before you took over her life she had a career. She was engaged to be married. Now look at what two years in your presence has done to her. She’s a GD tattoo artist who has thrown away a fiancé, a beautiful town house and a career path that would have led her to a high-profile job with a pension. Because of you.” The fist he’d slammed on the table clenched so hard his knuckles had gone white.
It was the venom in the last sentence that brought the unwilling wince. The nausea at the gleam of pleasure on his features when he’d noted it brought beads of sweat to her upper lip.
He transported her back to a more vulnerable Maybe. One who’d finally had enough and ran as far as she could.
It was the humiliation that crawled through her belly, the jitters of fear of him that enabled Maybe to get herself under control once more.
Pale, Rachel stood, her chair scooting over the hardwood floor. “I don’t know how you two can handle the fact that you treat one of your kids this way on a routine basis. I’m here and alive because of Maybe. Maybe who has done nothing but see the good in me. She came here, knowing this could happen. And did so because she wanted me to have time with you two. You guys are the worst. Come on, Maybe, let’s get a pizza.”
Both their parents spoke at the same time in a mixture of more blame on Maybe, apologies for upsetting Rachel—no such claims for Maybe—and orders not to leave.
She began to walk away before she paused at the entrance to the living room, where Maybe put on her coat and grabbed their bags.
“Don’t call my old boss anymore. You aren’t friends and I’m not going back to the FBI. Even to ride a desk,” Rachel told them. “I’m not going to be taking calls from you and neither is Maybe. I need a few weeks and you guys need some time to figure out how to be better at parenting your youngest child.”
Their mother began to cry as their dad continued to yell as they beat a retreat to the car parked at the curb out front.
“Jesus on a pogo stick,” Rachel muttered as they drove away.
“Someone’s feeling awfully saucy today.” Maybe laughed, the sound edged by a repressed sob.
“Oh my God, don’t laugh. For so long you’ve dealt with that. Jesus.” Rachel scrubbed her hands over her face, smearing her eye makeup a little. “I’m sorry.” Rachel turned to face her. “I never should have gone over there today. I just had hoped if we gave in they’d back off on the constant bid to get me to move. It just kept getting worse. Has it always been this bad and I just only noticed the severity now? I keep telling myself I can’t have missed this much.”
“Since the hospital, things have been getting more and more tense. Today was as bad as he’s been since I left home the first time.”
Rachel slumped back into her seat with a sigh. “He feels threatened.”
“By me?” He was half a foot taller and had sixty or seventy pounds on her.
“No. Though that’s there too. But by my direction. If I’m doing ink, I’ve rejected what he stands for. He doesn’t understand my new world and my new life. To be honest, he didn’t understand my old life either. But he got the gun and the badge.”
“Now you’re like me.” And they sure didn’t like that.
Rachel snickered. “I’m still me. Just with a different direction than I’ve had before.”
Maybe heard the last bit, though Rachel hadn’t said it aloud. Her sister needed them to see her and accept her as she was now, not who she’d been before. But Maybe wasn’t so sure their parents ever could.
After they’d eaten their pizza back home, Rachel got up to get some work done. Before leaving the room, she cocked her head and took Maybe in. “I can’t let you get in between me and them anymore. I see it now more clearly than I ever have. Which I’m also sorry about. But you’ve taken more than enough crap from them on my behalf. No more. I mean it. I’ll handle them from now on. He doesn’t hate you. He’s afraid of you because you burn so bright. Aunt Robbie told me that once.”
Their aunt was their father’s only sister. She also had a kiln and a small studio in the backyard, where she painted and threw pots. That she also carried a badge like their grandfather, father and uncles did, was part of her complexity.
Neat. Tidy. Ruthlessly organized when it came to her job and her household, her art was messy and loud, like her opinions. Like the way she loved people. She and her husband had seen the parts of Maybe her father had hated, and her aunt had loved them instead.
* * *
THE QUIET OF the house after Rachel went to her room drove Maybe out to the back porch to sit in her coat and watch the clouds as they moved across the sky. It was dark enough that she saw them only as a clear spot opened for the moon to shine through and backlight them.
“I had a feeling you’d be back home by now,” Alexsei said as he took the steps to the porch to join her.
“We’ve been home for four hours. We weren’t even there long enough for pie.”
He gave her a very close look. “It was bad.”
“Pretty bad. They were on Rachel, on me. It was no fun. After though, we had pizza and beer and that was better.” Once she started to tell him, thinking it would just be a few details, she didn’t stop until she got to the part where they’d driven off from their parents’ front curb.
“I would very much like to punch your father’s face. He is irresponsible to waste you.”
Heaven knew she shouldn’t react, it would only encourage him. But she couldn’t help it.
* * *
TURNING HER BODY into his, she snuggled in as he held her a little tighter, kissing the top of her head.
“Why do you go if they treat you so poorly?” It burned in his gut.
She pushed back to look at him as she spoke. “Because it’s what you do! Right? You had dinner with your mother even though she made pretty much everyone in your family feel bad, didn’t you?”
“She lives on another continent and was visiting mine,” he replied. “My mother has her flaws, as you know. But she’s not your parents. She’s overly critical. Obsessed with material things and position. She’s a product of her environment. But she loves me. She loves Cristian. She does what she can with what she has. Your father, he’s got two amazing daughters and to throw one away is outrageous. That he says these things—thinks them—is despicable.”
“There’s nothing else to do. It’s either go and keep trying or let go entirely,” she said, but he knew why she’d done it.
“But you can’t let go. Because of Rachel. You think she needs them so you take this abuse.”
“It’s not that simple,” she mumbled.
He snorted. “Nothing is simple, zajka. But some things are true. He’s careless and cruel when it comes to you. That makes me want to do violence to him.”
“I should be so embarrassed you want to beat someone up for me. But it’s nice. Don’t let that go to your head though.”
He pulled her close to him once more. So fragile and resilient. In those moments when she let herself be vulnerable, he saw to the heart of her. “It’s one of my charms.
“I don’t know Rachel as well as you do. Which might be why we see this differently. But I don’t think she’d want you hurt like this. She can see them without you.”
It wasn’t tenable that she continued to talk herself into letting them treat her this way because she thought it was best for someone else.
“They circle her like vultures,” she said. “If I’m not there who’ll defend her?”
“She’s entirely capable of defending herself. Did you always set yourself up as her protector?”
“No.” Maybe scoffed at the idea. “Before...before she was taken, she was a formidable character. I mean, she still is, don’t get me wrong. But she’s always been the type who took care of her own shit. She lived in Maryland so they didn’t harass her the way they do now. Plus she was doing exactly what they wanted her to do so they had no reason to pester her. Hell, they didn’t even bug her for grandkids. Not yet anyway.”
“So why do you insist on taking hits if she can handle that herself? I don’t understand why she’d allow it. She should protect you.”
Defensive, Maybe reared back. “She does! I told you, she’s the one who got up to leave when it was clear they weren’t going to stop. She’s the one who spoke up first to tell them to leave me alone.”
“But she went over there, just like you did, knowing they might be awful. To you. I can’t agree with that choice. Not as a big brother.”
“She needs them.”
Alexsei stopped frowning for a moment and then sighed.
“I just want to be there for her. I know I’m fucking it up. And I hate them so much sometimes. But she was the golden girl, you know? The dutiful daughter who called to check in once a week. She had a great job, one my dad had secretly always wanted himself. They were so proud of her and everything she represented. They cheered her on.” Maybe held a hand up to keep him from speaking. “She had that support system. Relied on it in ways she doesn’t allow herself to think about too much. I can’t just walk away and leave her at their mercy. I just can’t. She needs them,” Maybe repeated. “She needs me to be stable and reliable.”
“What about your needs, eh?” He hadn’t blurted it all sharp and hard. This time he’d gone tender and sweet because she needed that. And because she was stable and reliable and it broke his heart that she doubted it.
“I have my aunt and uncle. Rachel is close with them, but it’s not the same. I have someone I can go to now. How can I begrudge her for needing the same?”
He growled. “Why at your expense? They’re not the only ones who love her. And there are those who do so without abusing you.”
She took his cheeks in her hands, trying not to tear up, and that made him love her so much it nearly hurt. “I’m okay.”
“You’re precious and I don’t like it when people act otherwise.”
“Thank you,” she said before kissing him.
“What are you doing over here anyway? I thought the whole family was with some third cousins in Kirkland all day.”
She needed to talk about something else and he let her. Sort of. “Forty-two people showed up. It was loud with a great deal of food. I escaped an hour or so ago. I came here because I was worried and I wanted to see you.” He’d hoped for a better outcome, but had been concerned this would be what he found when he arrived so he’d made his excuses and came to her. “Next time, if you insist on this foolish plan to continue to be with them on the holidays, I will come too.”
“I’ll give you forty-eight hours to back out on that promise. You’re only making it in the heat of the moment.”
He growled again, hauling her into his lap. “I know what I’m saying. If you go to protect Rachel, I will go to protect you.”
“Well, I don’t think I’ll be hearing from them any time soon, much less get an invite to dinner.” She paused there and said very softly, “It’s nice knowing you would go just the same.”
“I will come for you,” he repeated, pulling her closer.