Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

“Thanks, Livvy-girl.”

I was smiling when he caught my attention. I sucked in a surprised gasp. The man stood between the building and sidewalk, too still. At least, I thought, my smile fading, I knew now why I’d felt followed.

“Hey, Cher,” I said quietly. “I’ll be right back.”

Her head popped up halfway. Barbie-Kilroy. “Who’s that?”

“A cop.”

Cher squealed and ducked.

It took both forever and not long enough to reach Ben’s side.

So much to say, yet no words would ever be enough. So I said the simplest, truest thing that came to mind. “God, Ben. You look like shit.”

His half laugh came out strangled, like he hadn’t used it in a very long time. “And you look beautiful. As usual.”

He’d always been rugged, even as a boy, but now there was more sadness than toughness lining his face, and his penchant for imagining and brooding lived too close to the surface of his eyes. I sucked in a breath of salty sorrow. “I know you’re undercover, but do they really let you go into work like that?”

He glanced down, shrugged. “I’m kinda taking some time off.”

“How much time?”

“Just a bit. Just until I get my head together. I don’t know.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet. “How have you been, Olivia?”

Olivia. Be Olivia . I took a deep breath. “Uh…not quite myself, actually.”

“I know what you mean.” He ran a palm over the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

I wanted to say it’d been his loss too, but the words backed up in my throat. “How long have you been following me?”

“Just today. Well, yesterday too. I had some sort of misguided notion you needed protecting, but that’s probably just my own guilty conscience at work.” He laughed again, but it was too bitter to be funny. “I was going to help you with those guys back there, but you seemed to take care of them too. You must get that all the time.”

Yeah, I’d taken care of them, all right. I looked at my shoes, flecks of cement on the bright red bottoms, and felt my own guilty conscience spring to life. “Did you need something, Ben?”

“I did…do, actually.” He reached for his back pocket. “Can you tell me anything about this picture?”

I knew what he was going to show me even before he pulled out the photo. The mug shot must’ve been taken the night Ajax attacked me in Valhalla. I recognized the suit hanging slack on his body. I’d given him the injury that lay bandaged on his neck. Shit, I could practically smell the rot through the photo paper.

I swallowed hard and handed the mug shot back. “Terrible lighting. But at least he doesn’t have his chin resting on his fist. I hate that pose.”

“It’s a mug shot, Olivia,” Ben said through gritted teeth. “You’ve never seen this guy before? Sure you don’t know him?”

“Oh my God!” I said in mock alarm. Ben straightened expectantly. “Puh-lease don’t tell me this is one of those guys from that blind dating reality show. I knew I shouldn’t have given them my number.”

“Never mind,” he said, sighing, and I could practically see him deflate. After a long silence he said, “I know it probably doesn’t matter now, but what about that night? Do you remember anything at all about…anything at all?”

“I’m, uh, still working through all that.” I looked away like I didn’t want to talk about it—and I didn’t—but I wasn’t fast enough to miss the way his lips thinned in frustration. Ben had never looked at me that way before. Like he was disgusted. Like I was weak.

Then he sighed heavily…and I didn’t like that at all.

“Look, Traina, don’t get all huffy and impatient on me, okay?” I said, my high voice rising even higher with indignation. “I’ve had some memory loss. There’s a lot I can’t recall.”

“I’m sorry, of course.” His face softened. “But if there’s anything you can remember about Jo, about that night, anything…you’ll call, right?”

I nodded, a soundless lie.

“I don’t know—” he began to say, then stopped before trying again. “I don’t know if she told you about our date, or if she got the chance, or—”

He swallowed hard, and I watched his throat work. The throat I’d kissed and nuzzled just weeks earlier. I knew what it smelled and tasted like, and suddenly I knew the words that were going to come from it. “Olivia, forgive me for dredging up the past, but there’s something I’ve wanted to say for a long time now.”

I shook my head, felt the mass of blond hair bounce. “Ben—”

“Please, let me say it. I should have said it to Joanna, but I didn’t, and now—” He broke off, face crumbling.

I bit my lip, nodded once, and braced myself for what I was sure would be a heartbreaking speech.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Genuinely surprised, I drew back. “For what?”

“Being weak. For not standing by your sister when she needed me. I caused you both pain.” His voice broke again, and the words I’d been expecting came through in that awful sound.

Tears welled in my own throat and eyes. “She never blamed you, Ben.”

“I know. I hated myself enough for the both of us.” He ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up further in wild, curly tufts. “God, I think I was afraid she’d end up like my mother, just this shell who’d once been vibrant and beautiful and solid but who’d let one man change her, and hollow her out.”

Ben never talked about his parents. I was so surprised he was doing so now, with Olivia, that I remained silent.

“He told me it was my fault, you know. He said that’s what happened when a man couldn’t take care of his woman, and as much as I know he was just saying it to hurt me, I think a part of it sunk in. Not here, but here.” He pointed to his head, then his heart.

“Your father was an ass, Ben.” I didn’t care if it sounded like Olivia. It was something he needed to know.

“I know.” He nodded. “But those words stayed with me. I let them torture me, just like my mother let his words destroy her, and I lost out on the chance to know who Joanna had become—lost a whole fucking decade—just so I could imagine her as she was.”

“You were young.” A tear slid down my cheek, and I brushed it away, hoping he hadn’t seen.

“She was younger,” he said vehemently. “So were you.”

“What happened that night made us all who we are today,” I said, trying to calm him. “And Jo…Jo liked who she was.”

He nodded after a bit. “I liked who she was too.”

He’d stopped ranting, but the sorrow rising off him was twined with such guilt and fury and denial that the sickly combination, oily and raw, would eventually eat him alive. “Ben, please,” I said softly, moving closer. “You have to let her go.”

“She did not come back into my life in the eleventh hour just to let me know what I was missing!” The words burst from him so fiercely, it was as if they’d been gathered on the tip of his tongue, waiting for a lit fuse to ignite them.

“Shh.” Jesus, I thought, stepping back. “Okay, Ben. It’s okay.”

But that was a lie, and he shook his head violently, knowing it. “And there’s more to this whole thing than a botched break-in and two people falling to their deaths. I know it!”

“How do you know?” I said quietly. “You weren’t there.”

“I know because I know Jo!”

What could I say to that? A part of me thrilled to hear those words. But if he didn’t leave this one alone, he was putting us both in danger again. I hardened myself to his sorrow. “This isn’t one of your mysteries that need to be solved, Ben. You can’t put a happy ending on this one.”