Jennifer Greene - Secretive Stranger

That’s what she thought would happen. Yet, after a rapid round of hellos-and the women all inviting Cord to stay and share some pizza, as if this were their apartment-Cord put up a hand. “I don’t want to interrupt. Unless you specifically want some help, Soph, I’ll be next door. And I’ll catch up with you whenever you have a chance.”

When he disappeared across the hall, the women spun around to examine Sophie as if she’d suddenly grown two heads. “What?” she demanded.

“I saw the way he looked at you,” Penelope said. “You’ve been holding out on us, girl. Let’s hear it.”

“Hear what?”

Hillary’s jaw dropped. “You got involved with him? I can’t believe it!”

“Wait, wait…” Sophie put her hands on her head. Only near Washington could the whisper of a rumor get out of control so fast. “Are you guys crazy? Why would someone like Cord look at anyone like me? The only reason we’ve talked is because of his brother. It’s nothing personal.”

Twenty minutes later the women left, carrying bags with leftover pizza and soda and anything else Sophie could force in their hands for a thank-you. In the sudden silence after their departure, she called for Caviar. The place looked almost like normal. The landlord would have to decide what he wanted to fix or replace, but her stuff was livable again. Almost every sign of the break-in had been whisked away

She felt safe again-life safe. Heart safe was a different story entirely, but she figured the only way to resolve that was to face it head-on.

Seconds later, Caviar next to her, she rapped on Cord’s door.

He opened it as if he’d been waiting just on the other side. “I was hoping you’d have a chance to pop in. Nice of your friends to come over and help. Do you still have stuff you need doing?” He looked at her, then at the cat streaking past his legs. “Where’s he going?”

“It’s in pretty good shape. The girls were whirlwinds. And you’ve got enough on your plate without adding my messes to it. As far as where Caviar’s going…my guess is, to the litter box.”

“Why mine instead of yours?” he asked mournfully, clearly hoping to elicit a chuckle, but right off the bat, she could see he was distracted. “I told you I was taking that money to the authorities, which I did. I just wanted to fill you in on how that went, but…”

“What?” Maybe she’d come over because she’d promised to help with his brother’s stuff. Maybe she just wanted to prove to herself that she could reduce the chemical pull around Cord by just behaving sisterlike with him. One millisecond, and that plan got jettisoned. Something was wrong. Not the wrongs of last week. A new wrong. She could see it in his face.

“I found some more stuff. In fact, I figured out-just in the last few minutes-exactly how my brother was making a living.”

“So spill.”

Sophie automatically pushed off her shoes at the door, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Forget risk. Forget what she shouldn’t be feeling. Cord had been fine when he stopped by, yet now he gave off tension, as if he’d been slapped with a live electric wire. She glanced around, trying to pick up clues about what he’d been doing.

Apparently, he’d been sitting on the carpet in the living room. A tall glass sat on the coffee table, still loaded with melted ice cubes, nothing but a leftover acrid aroma to tattletale the scotch he’d been drinking. She suspected he’d chugged it, or the cubes wouldn’t still be there. A dozen CDs were strewn in front of the flat-screen monitor, but just then, the screen was black.

Instinctively, she aimed for the mess on the floor and crouched down. “Okay, what are these CDs?” she asked.

He didn’t directly answer, just hustled to push the CDs into a box behind him before dropping to the carpet next to her. And then he started talking, but not totally making sense. Man, he was wiped, she thought. Heart wiped. Soul wiped.

“My parents,” he started, and then just heaved out a gruff sigh. “I can’t say enough about them. They were both so…decent. So totally good people. They believed in crappy old-fashioned ideals, like integrity and honor and loyalty. In their lives, certain things were automatic…like shoveling out their neighbor’s drive after a snowstorm, and church on Sunday, and taking a neighbor food when they were sick. Growing up, I never thought about any of that. It’s just how it was, how they were. We weren’t fancy people. Just good. All the way to the bone.”

She waited. He scrubbed his forehead like he was trying to erase strain lines etched in ink. “I left. I mean, for God’s sake, I was grown-up. It was time I made my own way. But I admit, I couldn’t wait to get out of town, make a life of my own. I did the military thing, then to the State Department-was overseas for long months at a time. I didn’t get home often. Just couldn’t. When you’re young and dumb and busy saving the world, you assume everything’ll be the same when you get back. They knew I loved them. I knew they loved me. All that crap.” He looked up suddenly. “Hell, I’m going on like a runaway train. Didn’t even offer you a dri…Oh. Well, maybe best not to offer you liquor, huh, Big Drinker?”

She liked the teasing. Maybe too much. “Shut up, Cord. And no, I don’t need anything, alcoholic or otherwise. But you want another?” She motioned to his glass.

“No.”

He couldn’t seem to get talking again, so she pushed. “What’s on the CDs?”

And that set him off again, although not directly answering her question. “My mom got cancer. I came home. Pretty sure I told you that before. All along, they hadn’t told me what trouble Jon had been, what trouble he was into. I mean, Jon was born a handful, but I didn’t know how bad things had gotten until I got home, and then I could see my parents were…gray. Gray with worry, gray with fear. Not drugs. That was one thing they didn’t seem to be afraid he was doing. But Jon…He was so good-looking, so full of charm that he always seemed to squeeze out of trouble. He never wanted to think he was like everyone else. He didn’t want to work. He didn’t want responsibility. Yet he wanted something all the time. As if some kind of hunger was eating him up from the inside. Nothing respectable ever seemed to ring his chimes.”

When Cord again fell silent, Sophie figured the elephant in the room had been ignored for long enough. “So it’s porn on the CDs?”

The way he looked at her was answer enough. And then he sprang to his feet as if he couldn’t sit still any longer. Caviar ambled in and crouched down by the fireplace, his eyes at a lazy half-mast, but Sophie thought the old tom had adopted Cord. Or maybe battered males just tended to stick together, who knew?

Cord prowled the room like a scarred-up old cougar, punching a button here, a switch there…a mistake to do in his brother’s living room, where out of nowhere firelight or sexy music or sexy dim lights could suddenly change the landscape.

He switched off whatever he switched on, but it was obvious he wasn’t paying attention. And though Sophie listened to his words, she paid the most attention to his body language and expressions. He hated it, she thought. Pride was the problem. He hated talking about issues that shamed him, that ripped open his sense of honor-at least as he saw it.

“You know, I wouldn’t give a damn if it were just porn. The first CD I came across, I just thought the film was, you know, lovers, playing games, filming each other. Lovers do such things. Not up to me to be their judge and jury. Only, damn it, this wasn’t about lovers. Because each CD has a different name or initial on it. There’s ‘HS’ and ‘Janella.’ ‘MM.’ ‘AFB,’ ‘Penny, Bel.’ I stopped counting, but there have to be twelve different names. None of the CDs are dated, so I don’t know how old these are, what year, any information like that. The first one I saw, though-I recognized her from the news, she’s one of the local anchors in the morning. Damn it, she’s got two young kids.”