Lisa Unger - Smoke

“Drop it, Samuels. Right now,” yelled one of the plainclothes officers, edging closer.

But Mickey lifted the gun to his temple quickly and pulled the trigger. Lily wasn’t sure what was louder, the blast of the gun or the sound of her wailing her brother’s name.

He reclined on the pool chaise, a nice fruity Merlot in one hand, a fat Cuban in the other. The sun was red and bloated, low in the sky. He waited for the cheers that would rise up from the bar overlooking the ocean when the sun dipped below the horizon. He’d never understood this, why the tourists cheered for the setting sun. To cheer the end of a day, the inevitable approach of death seemed so stupid to him. But then people were stupid. He’d made a fortune off that stupidity and he figured he shouldn’t knock it but be grateful for it instead.

The bar was far below his balcony on the edge of the cliff and by the time the cheers reached him, they’d be almost indistinguishable from the cries of the gulls floating over the blue-green waters of the Caribbean. He closed his eyes and lifted the cigar to his lips, let the last rays of the day touch the skin on his face. In the palm tree across the bluff some wild parrots bickered with each other. The smell of his cigar and the salt air mingled oddly but not unpleasantly. Then it grew dark too quickly.

He opened his eyes and a bulky shadow stood before him, muscle clad in black. The sun behind him, his face was shaded in darkness. But Trevor Rhames didn’t need to see his face to recognize the man before him.

“Hello, mate.” The thick Australian accent drew out the last syllable and Rhames could hear the smile in his voice. “Grimm sends his regards.”

The sun sunk below the horizon line then and the cheering of the crowd below rose up into the air.

Lydia knew from her father’s letters that Estrellita Tavernier, called Este by her family and friends, thought about being a writer when she was young but decided that she wanted to teach elementary school instead. She had the same blue-black hair that Lydia had-which was odd since their father had been fair. But her dark hair was the only thing she and Lydia shared. Este’s face was soft and round, a light happiness and mischief dancing in her dark brown eyes. Her skin was a soft café au lait; she was petite but round about the bottom and chest. The effect was a robust and feminine prettiness, a youthful aura. There was none of the hardness to her features or to her aura that Lydia knew herself to possess. All her hardness, she guessed, had come from her mother.

Lydia watched her like a stalker from the corner, as Este corralled a group of bundled-up little munchkins on an East Village schoolyard. Lydia wore black jeans and a three-quarter-length leather jacket, belted at the waist, a newspaper tucked under her arm. She leaned against a lamppost and felt the cold metal seep through the thin layers she wore. Her bare hands and cheeks were pink and painful from the cold. She thought about leaving. She wasn’t sure what she could say to Este; she wasn’t sure if she had anything to say at all.

For three years, Lydia’s half-sister had been teaching second grade about ten minutes from the Great Jones Street loft. The thought of this filled her with a kind of longing regret. It was a feeling that had settled in her bloodstream since the opening of the box left to her by her father and the letters her grandmother had kept shut in a drawer for most of Lydia’s life.

Lydia walked up to the chain-link fence and laced her fingers through the links. She stood waiting for Este to notice her and finally she did. She looked at Lydia lightly, with an uncertain half-smile. Lydia had the idea that Este would know her and after a moment of blankness, recognition warmed her features. She walked slowly toward the fence, then did something that made Lydia’s heart jump. She laced her fingers over Lydia’s through the fence. Lydia could smell the peppermint on her breath, the light floral scent of her perfume.

It was in that moment that Lydia felt a wave of grief for Arthur James Tavernier and the little girl who’d grown up without him. She felt grief, too, for the smiling, joyous woman Lydia saw in the photographs her father had left her, a woman Lydia recognized as her mother but whom she’d never known.

“I’m sorry,” Lydia said, looking down at the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it. It wasn’t an apology; more an expression of regret for the way things were.

“No,” said Este, softly. “Let’s not be sorry for all the things neither of us can change. We’ll just go forward from here.”

She looked into the warmth of Este’s eyes. In the bright, cold day with the sound of children and the promise of snow in the air, Lydia believed they could.

Come on, Mom. Let’s go.”

She rested her hand on Ben’s head for a second and then put the last of her stuff in the suitcase. “Get your dad,” she said. “I can’t close this with one arm.”

“I can do it,” he said. He reached up onto the bed, closed the top and easily closed the zipper, pulled it down onto the floor. “Let’s go.”

She smiled at him; he seemed to have grown two inches in the three weeks she’d been in the hospital. “You’re such a big boy.”

He rolled his eyes. “Mom.”

“Sorry.”

He pulled the suitcase toward the door where Dylan appeared. He reached for the suitcase and Ben reluctantly handed it over.

“I can get it,” he said sullenly.

“No doubt, champ. But I want to help Mom, too.”

“I’ll meet you guys downstairs,” she said. “I want to spend a few minutes with Mount.”

Dylan looked at her uncertainly, then nodded and took Ben by the hand.

“Hurry, Mom,” he threw over his shoulder. “You said we could have pizza. And I’m hungry.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Mount was sitting up in bed reading one of Lydia Strong’s true crime books, With a Vengeance , about the man who murdered her mother. He was very thin, gaunt about the face, his collarbone protruding through his gown. He had charcoal circles beneath his eyes. But there was more color to his cheeks than there had been in weeks. And he was sitting up. So that was something.

“She’s had a hard life,” said Jesamyn, entering the room and pulling up a chair beside him, nodding toward the paperback in his hands.

“It just made her tougher.”

“And sadder.”

“You think she’s sad?”

“Yeah, I think she’s a little sad inside.”

“Hey. Who isn’t?”

She nodded and gave him a smile. “You a little sad, Mount?”

He gave her a wide warm smile that she didn’t expect. “Not today,” he said. “Looks like you’re going home. So I won’t have you breathing down my neck every minute, nagging me during rehab, ‘That all you got, girly man?’ ” He finished the sentence with an unflattering mimic of her taunts in the hospital gym.

“I’ll be back for rehab, Princess. Don’t you worry.”

He reached for her hand. “Seriously, partner, I wouldn’t have wanted to be laid up here with anyone else.”

“Don’t get all mushy,” she said, giving his big hand a squeeze. “We’ll be back on the job in six months tops.”

She wasn’t sure of that and she could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t either but somehow he looked happier than she’d seen him… well, ever.

“What’s going on?” she asked with a smile and a cock of her head.

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. Then he changed the subject.

“Hey, did you hear they picked up Michele LaForge in Vegas? Speeding in a brand-new Testarosa.”