King of Her Desire

59

"Plan kinda backfired, huh?"

"That kid has no idea what he's walking away from!"

"Walking away from you, mostly. I mean, you left him twisting in the wind, man. Trying to cover your own ass."

"I needed him to feel it. To face the reality of it."

"Oh, so you always knew how it would go?"

"I always knew there'd be a way to go. Might not have been the way we wanted to go, not at first—"

"Did you offer that kid something? The one who slipped him that shit?"

"You have to be kidding me! He's batshit that Toby kid!"

"So you told him you could do something, right? Find him some kind of work if he played along?"

"Wow."

"Did you?"

"No!"

"You did something."

"You want me to fall on my sword? Okay! The CPS thing—when our lawyers started calling, the case workers got the idea that he might run. That, I'll cop to. We made 'em suspicious, they got the court order..."

"Did you want them to be suspicious? Somewhere deep down in that hard little heart of yours? To make it an even bigger deal when you rode in like the cavalry—"

"He didn't understand. You were there, you know what was going on here—they're shitting bricks, Abra! They can't lose this guy! And alla agencies are gonna eat us alive, okay? You're in touch, right? You can—"

"Why am I even talking to you?" she said, hitting the little phone icon with a smirk.

"He really is fucked, though," Aaron said.

"He was fucked before this," Ben said. "He's been screwing up a lot lately. Screwing other people at the agency, sniffin' around trying to woo away their clients. Lost a coupla big accounts playing mind games like that. I had no idea what a schmuck he'd become. For that, I'm truly sorry, kiddo."

"I just want to talk to Elliott," I said. "Is that even possible yet?"

Carol smiled over at me, swishing her Bloody Mary around in a glass.

"She was awake this morning. A little goofy, but awake. We'll call her from the train. They're moving her to therapy today."

"She's gonna be there a while, huh?" Ben asked.

"Well, it's hard to say. It'll take some time, though, yeah. That left side..."

I was about to ask for more when Sochi came out with two big pitchers of Jamaica and set them on one of the umbrella tables. She'd kept busy from the moment we got there. In fact, she'd sat with the kids on the way home, too. I hadn't had a chance to talk to her at all.

And when Ben said, "There's the woman of the hour—sit, for Chrissake," I said, "Over here. I never even got to thank you or anything."

She flushed a little bit as she came and sat by Cody. And then she leaned back to stare into his angry eyes and said, "You are happy to be home?"

He grunted, "I guess so." And she hugged him anyway.

And then Ben said, "I got somethin'll put a smile on that sour puss!"

"Here we go," Aaron said. Only he was laughing. That little moment at the meeting had flipped some kind of switch in his brain, I think.

And Ben said, "Well, they've been through hell, these ones! So I thought, why not?!"