You've Got Male (25 page)

“Dixon?” she said as he opened the bedroom door.

He turned, looking surprised that she’d called out to him. “Yeah?”

She hesitated only a moment before asking, “Do I really have to meet him? Can’t I just set something up and let you guys do the rest?”

He studied her in silence for a moment, but she didn’t think it was because he was trying to make a decision. He knew as well as she did that she was going to have to go through with it. The big muckety-muck at OPUS that first night had made that clear. She wasn’t even sure why she’d asked about it.

“I wish I could tell you that would be okay,” he said. “But Adrian knows what you look like. Once he sets up a meeting, he’s not going to come out of hiding until he sees you there. So, yeah. You have to do it.”

She nodded, since that was the answer she had expected. But she still didn’t know how she was going to go through with it. True, she hadn’t suffered a full-fledged panic attack since that close call the night of her arrival. She supposed that was because the house was familiar enough to her subconscious that it didn’t feel endangered here. But she didn’t kid herself that she’d seen the last of them. She’d gone months between them before, had even had times where she thought they were behind her. Then something would happen or she’d have to go outside for some reason, and they’d start up again.

Safety was the key. Security. That was what really made the attacks stop. Feeling safe. Knowing she was secure. Being familiar enough with her surroundings and the people within them that she didn’t fear reprisal or abandonment should an attack occur. Despite the presence of OPUS agents nearby, she knew she’d be meeting Adrian alone when the time came. She would have only herself to count on. That was what scared her most of all. Because these days, the last person on earth Avery could count on was herself.

O
NLY WHEN THE SUN CRESTED
over the trees outside did Avery realize it was almost bedtime. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing in front of the arched window in the living room—the floor-to-ceiling window, the biggest window in the house—but it had been full dark when she’d entered still troubled by thoughts of having to meet Adrian Padgett. When she’d first moved to the window, the grounds behind the house hadn’t been visible beyond the dimly lit patio outside. Her stomach had clenched at even that scant view, but she’d forced herself to stay where she was. Little by little the sun had crept over the earth, bringing more and more of the yard into view. And with each new scrap revealed, Avery had had to battle another flare of panic, until she’d been so focused on fighting her anxiety that she’d stopped noticing the dawning day.

Now she saw the sun hanging over the trees, bathing acre after acre in mellow morning light. A fine mist rose from the grass, giving the yard a shimmery, otherwordly appearance. It was radiant and delicate and ephemeral against the sharply defined backdrop of black, sullen, winter-set trees looking wholly out of place yet completely a part of the environment. Funny, she thought, how something so fragile and fleeting could make an otherwise stark setting so beautiful.

A small sound from behind her made her spin around quickly, and so preoccupied had she become with her thoughts that it took her a moment to remember where she was. When she saw her father standing at the entry, she remembered. Remembered more than she wanted to, really, but that had been something of a problem since coming here.

He was dressed for work in one of his pinstriped power suits, a mug of steaming coffee in one hand, a still-folded copy of the
Wall Street Journal
in the other. She’d seen him looking like that countless times when she’d lived here, virtually every day. Never, though, had she seen him looking uncertain, the way he did now.

“I was just leaving,” she said as she started for the door. She wished there was another way out, some deus ex machina trapdoor that would swallow her whole and spit her out amid a new bit of scenery like an angry ancient god. But the angry god was barring her way, and she’d have to walk within arm’s length of him to pass. Ah, well, she thought. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had to face up to him a million times before.

But instead of stepping aside to give her a wide berth, which she had expected him to do, her father tucked his newspaper under one arm and reached out his hand, almost, almost, touching her arm. He halted just before making contact, but even that small gesture was enough to make her hesitate before pushing past him.

What made her stop completely was her father’s softly uttered, “Avery, wait.”

She closed her eyes at hearing him say her name, so infrequently had she heard it since coming back. When she opened her eyes again, her father was looking right at her, full on, as if seeing her for the first time. So. She wasn’t quite invisible after all. Still she said nothing. Mostly because she had no idea what to say.

Her father shoved his hand into his trouser pocket, but he didn’t look away. “How is this…this thing you’re doing for the government…going? Are you making any progress?”

It was the sort of thing she could see him saying to one of his vice presidents or corporate drones. In spite of that, she was able to conjure a small, almost genuine smile. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” she told him.

He nodded, a jerky, jarring motion that let her know he was every bit as uncomfortable at the moment as she was. “Of course. Your room then,” he quickly added, as if he needed to have some topic, however inconsequential, to talk about. “Are you comfortable there?”

As comfortable as a guest could be,
Avery thought. Aloud, though, she said, “Yes. It’s fine. Thanks.”

“Your mother redecorated in there,” he said unnecessarily.

This time Avery was the one to nod. “Yes, she did.”

“She wasn’t sure what to do with your old things, so she put them in storage. In the attic.”

Avery wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she only nodded again.

“You can take them home with you when you go, if you want.”

“Thanks.”

“But if you’d rather—”

He stopped speaking before completing the thought, and Avery wondered what he had been about to say. He’d probably been about to offer to ship everything to her, then reconsidered. Why go to all that trouble and expense, right? They were Avery’s things. She should be the one to cover the cost and inconvenience of moving them. Funny thing was, she wasn’t sure she really wanted her old things back. She wasn’t the young girl who had thumbtacked revolutionaries to her walls and listened to the music of anarchist bands. Extremism was for people who lacked the maturity to reason things out. Avery hadn’t been extreme for a long time. Not that she came close to sharing her parents’ views and politics. But neither did she discount them so completely as before.

Give and take. Shades of gray. More or less. The other hand. They were phrases that used to be absent from her vocabulary. Now she saw their need. She wondered if the rest of her family ever would.

“It’s okay,” she told her father. “They can stay in storage. I don’t need them anymore.”

He opened his mouth to say something, seemed to think better of it, closed his mouth again, then opened it once more. “Your mother,” he said, “she really didn’t want to make the changes. And I didn’t, either. But after a while, your room just became too much of a…”

Again he didn’t finish what he had started to say. But Avery got the gist of it.
A liability,
that’s what he had been about to call her room. Or the equivalent. Her room became too tacky for the rest of the house. It offered too many reminders of the Nesbitt black sheep and how much she had embarrassed the family. Appearances and all that. It wasn’t as though they’d actually needed another guest room.

She lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “It’s your house.”

Again her father opened his mouth and again he closed it before finishing. The exchange was growing more uncomfortable by the minute, but for the life of her Avery had no idea what to say to conclude it. She was about to just bolt without another word when her father changed the subject again.

“This man you’re working with,” he said. But he added nothing to enlighten her as to just what he wanted to know about Dixon.

“Dixon? What about him?” she asked.

“Is he…I mean, he’s not…There’s nothing…You’re not…”

“He’s fine,” she hurried to say when her father looked as if he would be slipping over into babbling. “I mean, he’s not the most gregarious guy in the world, but he’s good at what he does. His job, I mean,” she felt it necessary to clarify for some reason.

“So there’s no danger?” her father asked.

“You’re all perfectly safe,” she told him.

Her father hesitated only a moment before asking, “And you, Avery? Are you safe, too?”

Something in his tone of voice made something inside her…shift a bit. She wasn’t sure how else to describe it. Just that something inside her that had been sitting off-kilter seemed to tilt a little and fall into a more comfortable place. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I’m fine…Dad.”

And only when she said that last word did she realize she had been as guilty as her family of not naming names. She couldn’t remember the last time she had called her father
Dad,
even when speaking of him in the third person. Worse than that, she couldn’t remember the last time she had embraced him. The last time she had told him she loved him. Even when she was living at home, seeing him every day, before she fell out of his reasonably good graces, she hadn’t been able to express how she felt about him. Or her mother. Or her sister or brother. She couldn’t remember any of them hugging or expressing love for each other. Other families told each other how important they were to each other, she thought, told each other how they felt about each other. The good feelings, she meant, along with the bad. But the Nesbitts had never seemed comfortable expressing affection. Anger, sure. Jealousy, you bet. Resentment, no problem. But love? It wasn’t a language any of them spoke.

Including Avery.

“Dad, I—”

“Avery, I—”

They spoke as one and halted as one, and this time neither of them seemed inclined to finish whatever they’d wanted to say. Avery, for one, wasn’t even exactly sure what she’d wanted to tell him. And now suddenly she just wanted to be alone.

No, not alone, she realized then. She wasn’t sure where she was supposed to be. Where she wanted to be. She still didn’t feel comfortable with her father. But she didn’t want to be by herself, either. No place felt right. Except maybe…

“I should turn in,” she said, not sure why she said that, either. “It’s been a long night.”

Her father—her dad—still seemed to want to say something, but he only nodded again, with a bit less jerk and jarring this time. “Get some rest,” he told her gently. “I’ll see you…Your mother and I will see you at dinner tonight. Desi and Jessica will be coming, too.”

The whole family, in other words, Avery thought. For the first time in years, though, the very idea didn’t generate panic.

O
NLY ONCE IN HER LIFE HAD
Avery ever asked her sister for help. She had been in the third grade at the time, struggling with a language-arts teacher Carly had had herself in the third grade, an odious Mrs. Pearson who’d adopted the elder Nesbitt daughter as her pride and joy and designated the younger as a thorn in her side and a boil on her butt. Mrs. Pearson had daily made clear her disappointment with Avery for not being as clever as her older sister or as articulate as her older sister or as talented as her older sister, until Avery had been so overcome with frustration, she’d begged Carly to help her win the woman over.

“What can I do to make Mrs. Pearson like me?” nine-year-old Avery had asked her sister when Carly came home for Thanksgiving her first year in college. “What can I say or do that will make her like me the way she liked you?”

Carly had given the question much thought that night at the dinner table, and finally she’d told Avery, “Mrs. Pearson adores peanut butter truffles. Go to the chocolate store and fill one of those gold boxes with peanut butter truffles and leave them on her desk with a note. She’ll remember you forever.”

Mrs. Pearson, thanks to a severe peanut allergy, had ended up in the hospital for nearly a week. Avery, in turn, had ended up first in the principal’s office, then in summer school, where she’d had to retake the entire semester after Mrs. Pearson threw her out of class. She’d never asked Carly for anything again.

Until now.

Because like Cinderella, Avery had nothing to wear to the ball. Or rather for the party her father was throwing at the house tonight, the party which she was expected—nay, which she’d been ordered—to attend. Her reason for coming home might not exactly be a Hallmark sentiment—unless it was for a sympathy card—but while she was living here, she was, as her father had told her, expected to behave in a fitting manner. Never mind that her behavior had been anything but fitting when she lived here for real. She wasn’t a child anymore, her father had reminded her. Not that Avery needed any reminding of that. So tonight she would attend her parents’ party as an adult woman. And she would behave as politely as any other guest.

Any other guest.
That phrase, more than anything else her father had said to her that evening at dinner, remained most fresh in Avery’s mind. He couldn’t have made it any clearer that even after ten years she was no longer welcome here. Not that that surprised her. Nor did it hurt her feelings. Not really. But only after her father had described her as a guest had she realized she had been nurturing a hope—however small—that she might be able to bridge the vast chasm that had lain between her and her family for a decade. And only then had she realized how very much she’d wanted to build such a bridge. That awkward communication with her father in the living room might be one very small, very tentative step. Maybe.

As a teenager, her father’s warning of a few nights ago would have roused her righteous indignation that she was expected to behave a certain way simply because polite society dictated such a thing. But now Avery only felt sad. She was too tired for anger. Too tired for righteous indignation. Since Dixon had jerked her out of her normal life, she’d been using all of her energy to stay focused on the assignment, to stay sane, to keep from falling apart. All she wanted was to get through the evening with as little trouble as possible. To accomplish that, she intended to be insignificant and unremarkable. She would blend. She would fade into the woodwork. Which actually wouldn’t pose much of a problem. Her family didn’t want her. Her friends didn’t remember her. Dixon didn’t like her. No one would notice her anyway. Provided, of course, she looked like everyone else.

So she would consent to her father’s edict and make an appearance at the party. And she would remember her manners—what few she’d managed to cultivate over the years—while she was there. Not because she felt she owed her father anything. But because she just didn’t have it in her anymore to make waves. She didn’t even care that she had to ask Carly for help. Whatever it took to get through the night ahead, Avery would do it.