Li looked up from her computer at 9:00 p.m., well past end of shift. “That’s it. My eyes are crossing. I’m going home to kiss my baby.” She stood, stretched. “Before he forgets what I look like and starts calling someone else Mama.”
Foster checked her watch. She hadn’t realized it was so late. She’d eaten nothing but frustration and a McDonald’s side salad all evening. “See you in the morning.”
Li slipped on her jacket. “What about you? There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”
“I won’t be much longer,” Foster said.
Li hesitated. “Okay, then. Ma?ana.”
Foster watched her go. “Right.”
CHAPTER 32
The lights were on in the loft apartment. The windows were hers. It was late but not too late. A little after ten. Why were all the lights on? Why wasn’t she asleep in bed? She was an adult, of course, no longer a child, so bedtimes were long ago a thing of the past. Still. The trees across the street provided good cover, though the bench was hard and cold on a cool, crisp night. It was easy enough to sit and wait and watch her pass back and forth in front of the windows, not knowing anyone was watching. Maybe she was expecting company? That would be interesting. Maybe she was worrying a problem and couldn’t sleep, pacing the floor hoping to find a solution.
How alive she was, how striking. An artist. Of course. The creative mind was truly a marvel. To have in one’s nature and in one’s very bones the conjurer’s art of transformation, the ability to cobble beauty from nothing or turn light to dark or the reverse.
Art was humanity in reflection. It was invention and God spark, both expression and divination. Was she thinking about these things now? Had she ever thought about the origins of her strength? About how deep the power to transform ran and how far it could go? There was an indomitability in sea change and mightiness in a creator’s hand. Did she know this yet? Sense it?
The lights flicked off. The windows went dark. Bed, or . . . ? No. Amelia emerged from the building moments later dressed in a leather moto jacket and tight jeans. Art in motion. She slid into a sleek silver convertible parked at the curb. It suited her. Like a modern-day Argo sailing off toward adventure and glory. Pleasing. Truly. She revved the engine, checked herself in the rearview, and sped away. Where was she off to, this goddess, this Diana, this originator? This learner, this tyro.
A slow whistling started, unhurried, unfazed. It echoed in the still night. Someone to watch over me. Fitting. An inside joke. There was time yet. All the pieces weren’t yet assembled but soon would be. Everything had its season. Turn, turn, turn. No need to rush.
CHAPTER 33
She’d meant to only drive around, get some air, feed her soul, but she’d somehow ended up in front of Bodie’s apartment watching the sleeping block as though it were a job she was being paid for, as though she alone were responsible for all the messed-up lives sleeping in the city, not just her brother’s. As though she alone were the sentinel, the one who kept the brakes on.
When she went out, it was to cleanse her palate, to invigorate her mind, to stimulate her so that she could paint and, by painting, move the world around. Despite what Bodie had told her, she knew that peace and quiet were not what brought him out at night. Bodie didn’t get things right. He was like a pair of mismatched shoes or a wrong-way driver on the interstate. Odd. Out of sync.
Amelia parked across the street and waited without a single guarantee that Bodie would venture out. She could just go up and ring his bell, and they could talk, but she knew Bodie would lie, and she knew she would let him because Bodie needed those lies to live.
Eleven thirty p.m. That was when he walked out of the building and turned east toward Lincoln Park. It would be empty this time of night, Amelia knew, which she supposed was why Bodie chose it. She slipped out of the car and followed at a distance, across the street, head down, collar up, with an itch of eagerness and a fair share of apprehension coursing through her.
She’d followed Bodie before. Bodie had been her job for as long as she could remember, even when he ventured far away and bounced back again, and now, after the girls, the roof, and Westhaven. After the death of that young woman on the Riverwalk.
He always headed toward the park. Some nights he stayed in, but there weren’t too many of those. Bodie was a creature of habit. He liked routine, predictability, structure, which she’d always thought made him a prime candidate for institutionalization, though once there, he rebelled against the confinement. Odd. He was like a restless cat, always caught on the wrong side of a door. Amelia chalked it up to a wide streak of Morgan disquiet, inherited from their father, a complicated man—an unsolved puzzle, she suspected, even to himself. And as far as inheritances were concerned, well, disquiet was the lesser of evils.
She lasered in on Bodie’s back as he turned onto Cannon Drive and passed under the stone arch of the Grant Monument, good old Ulysses sitting atop his horse, the moon shining down on the weathered bronze. A few late-night dog walkers passed, pulling scrawny rescues along behind them, their phones in hand, texting or watching videos, oblivious to everyone around them.
The monument was as far as she knew she could safely go. If she followed him onto the pedestrian path, he’d surely look back and see her. But she knew his route and knew he’d be back this way, so she picked a bench off the path, behind a tree, and she waited, burrowed into her jacket. The temperature was dropping, and the lake nearby smelled like a wet dog, but the gentle whoosh of the water, a dark, undulating void from where she sat, lulled her into an almost Zen-like state. Forty minutes. That was how long Bodie would take. It wasn’t the walk that worried her so much; it was what came after.
She drew back when she heard footsteps approaching from the path. It was Bodie, and it was too soon, barely a half hour since he’d disappeared down the path. She watched from behind the tree as he moved past her, then watched as he stopped in his tracks a good distance from her and just stood there, his hands in his pockets, his chin up, face toward the moon. What was he doing? It wasn’t until he began walking again that she allowed herself to breathe. Discovered? Did he somehow know she was there?
She gave him an extra-long lead, then crossed the street and followed him back, tracking him all the way to the bars along Lincoln Avenue, watching as he slipped into one under blinking neon lights. He chose a different one each night. This one was just a block north of his apartment. This was how he had gotten into trouble before. Amelia knew that he would emerge near closing with a woman on his arm. A last-call consolation who’d walk back to his place on liquored-up legs. It shouldn’t have been her business, but it was. Amelia was in no position even to judge, seeing as she and Bodie shared the same predilection.
But her brother always took things too far.
She waited across the street, keeping an eye on the door of the bar for Bodie and his date, watching the street as hip bar hoppers in their messy twenties strolled the sidewalk or swayed at the curb waiting for Ubers. Why had Bodie stopped back there on the path? He’d never done that before.
She had an hour to think about it, tucked into the littered doorway of a closed shoe-repair shop, before Bodie reappeared with a young woman, far younger, she noted, than he was. Thin, tipsy, not drunk. She flitted around him like a firefly kissing the flames of a campfire. She appeared up for a good time. A pink feather boa fluttered in the night air as she pulled her coat tight and her floppy hat down, very Janis Joplin–esque.