J. Wachowski - In Plain View

“Shit.”

“Pretty much.” Curzon flicked at the edge of the foil tablet packaging with his thumb, an angry, nervous gesture that reminded me of someone playing with a cigarette lighter. “In the letter, the guy apologized to the entire universe. Then he warned the chief they’d need someone to cover his shift days from now on.”

A tired sigh deflated me. “No way.”

“There are some things I will never understand.” Curzon tossed the packet into the box. He held out his empty hand.

I took it.

“There’s more to the story, isn’t there? Pat’s no evil genius. There’s no way he got into this all by himself.”

Curzon tried to stonewall but the man had just spent the last two hours eating pizza and insulting the intelligence of cartoon characters with me. The blank face no longer worked as a disguise.

“Am I wrong?”

“Press and police sit on opposite sides of the fence, O’Hara. Most of the time.” He tugged my hand and pulled me beside him on the couch. The dip in the cushion rolled me toward him. “Your sister’s death was a tragedy. The man responsible is going to jail. Don’t get focused on the wrong thing here. What happens with you and Jenny now, that’s the part you can do something about.”

I thought about the fight with Pat. Jenny’s safety, physical and mental, all that mattered. Still, “I want to know what happened. I want to know the rest of it.”

“So do I.” He said the words with quiet conviction.

I believed him. “Can I help?”

“No.”

“Can you stop me from helping?”

“No?” he replied, rhetorically, then leaned forward and oh, so gently, touched my cheek. “I haven’t done this sort of thing in a while.”

“Me neither.”

Overcome evil with good.

In Curzon’s eyes, I saw goodness. It reminded me of something I didn’t tell Ainsley. Sometimes what we see describes half-forgotten dreams of what might yet be.

“Kiss me?” he asked.

I thought of Curzon’s words and the truth he’d told me so far. This was another part that mattered, another part that I could do something about.

Slowly, I felt myself tilt toward him in a motion both grand and imperceptible as the earth shifting on its axis.

Tomorrow would be soon enough for all the unasked questions.

All the untold stories.

J. Wachowski writes stories, screenplays, school excuses and anything else that pays.

She lives with her family on the midwestern edge of civilization, but is often sighted lurking at jwachowski.com.