“I did,” I reply. I take a single deep breath. “He’d shot himself in the head.”
He stiffens. Maybe he isn’t sure if I’m making another wildly inappropriate joke. Lord knows I’ve made enough of them. I hear the air leave his chest in an audible rush. “Jesus, Drew.”
I shake my head. “I don’t really remember it,” I tell him. “A neighbor came in behind and got me out of there.” What’s left, mostly, is the feeling of being blindsided, of being stunned that he didn’t try like he said he would. He was never going to try, and I truly believed every word out of his mouth until that moment.
Josh holds me for a long time after I conclude. I’m not sure if it’s for me or for him or for us both. “I think it’s why I reacted so badly when I came to see you in Dooha,” I admit. “It just felt like it had all been a lie.” I cut him out of my life because it felt like the least painful option. Until I realized how much more painful things could be.
“I wish I could go back and fix it all for you,” he says. “What happened then. And how I acted when you came to visit.”
“I’m not sure we’d be where we are if it all hadn’t happened just the way it did,” I tell him. I close my eyes. “It’s all gonna come out now, though. Davis knows. Once he discovers I wasn’t bluffing when I fired him, he’s going to tell the whole world, and he’ll find a way to make me look bad. I think I probably need to get it out there first.”
It still terrifies me, but not the way it did before. Those hours I spent thinking Josh might be dead make any other outcome pale by contrast.
“I’ll be there with you, at the interviews, if you want me there,” he says, pressing his lips to the top of my head. “I’ve got two weeks off now, but I’m going to find a way to get out of Somalia permanently. I already put in the request but now I’m going to demand it.”
I blink up at him, my throat swelling a little. “Really? But…I thought it was impossible? What changed?”
“What changed is that I fell in love,” he says. “And I don’t ever want to spend a single night away from you again. It might take a while, but Drew, even if we’re apart, you’re not alone anymore.”
I press my face to his chest and cry. Not about my father, really, or the scare we’ve just had. But about all the lonely years that existed between those two events.
And how relieved I am to discover it’s coming to an end.
50
DREW
Nine Months Later
Our new terrace looks spectacular.
Fairy lights are strung haphazardly overhead. The long plank table is laid out with ten place settings punctuated with wine bottles and vases full of hydrangeas. And Josh stands on the other side of it, which might be the thing I like most.
He grins at me now while helping Audrey, Tali’s daughter, take uncertain, lumbering steps across the grass. Gemma, Jonathan’s oldest child, is trying to teach her somersaults, which might be a little advanced given that Audrey just started walking a month ago.
Tonight we are celebrating several things at once—our new home, the release of Tali’s book, Jonathan and his partner’s newest child.
And perhaps most of all, Ben’s first but significant victory over Davis—and therefore mine as well. It took many months to sort out all of Davis’s mismanagement. This week, he finally freed up the eleven million they owed me, and now we go after him and my former accountant for the ten million they embezzled. I don’t need the money, but I’m looking forward to ruining them both—or ruining them more, anyway.
The interviews I gave about my father’s death, with Josh by my side, highlighted Davis’s role in hiding it all, and the way it kept me silent and compliant as well. His company’s other clients fled once the stories came out, but the best part for me was simply getting out from under it. That story held a lot of power over me for a very long time, and letting it out broke the spell. If I had to continue rehashing it in interviews, I’d probably be okay, but my new publicist terrifies everyone into good behavior so it doesn’t come up.
“You did an amazing job,” says Tali, coming up beside me.
I shrug. “Thanks, but Beth did most of the planning.” She wanted me to cook for this—she keeps trying to teach me how to make Josh’s favorite foods—but my domesticity has its limits. “Have you met Ben’s date, by the way? I couldn’t get a straight answer about what she does for a living.”
Tali rolls her eyes. “I think she just goes around being hot for a living, and taking pictures of herself. Who can we set him up with? He needs to settle down.”
Ben shows no signs of wanting to settle down, but now that Tali’s happily married she’s hell-bent on marrying everyone else off too. Between her and Beth the number of daily hints I get about weddings is staggering.
“You have two sisters, right?” I ask.
“One of them is married and one of them is barely twenty,” she replies. “What about that friend who’s been helping you with the album…Juliet?”
Juliet has been a godsend now that I’m finally free of my obligation to the record label. It’s her label and producer I’m working with, and she even came in and sang backing vocals on two tracks. But I can’t see her with Ben.
“She’s hung up on someone else. And she’s more of a Six sort of gal, anyway.”
Tali’s nose wrinkles. “Ugh. Six.”
I laugh. Six has been trying to clean up his act a little these past few months, ever since he learned about Beth’s cancer. And he’s going to need people in his corner when his mom is gone. I plan to be one of them.
“He’s not so bad,” I reply. “He even played on one of my new songs since I am, and I quote, ‘about to be a member of the family’。”
Her eyes light up. “Member of the family, huh? Does he know something I don’t?”
“No,” I say firmly. “He’s just been listening to Beth, who—like you—keeps putting the cart before the horse.”
“Says the woman who claimed she and her boyfriend were going to take things slowly when he got back from Somalia then moved in with him a week later.”
I smile without a hint of shame. We did plan to go slowly, but after waiting three more months for the refugee camp to replace Josh, I was done with being away from him. Even living together, I still feel like I don’t see him enough—only Josh would move from one wildly understaffed medical facility to another. On the bright side, the fact that he is “wasting his talents” at a free clinic aggravates his father to no end, which we both enjoy.
“Oh God,” Tali says, her attention focused across the yard. “Hayes just took the baby from Jonathan. We’ve got to get over there.”
I laugh. “He’s the most overprotective father I’ve ever seen. The baby is fine.”
“Sure, the baby is fine. I’m worried about myself. If Hayes holds that kid for more than thirty seconds, he’s going to want another one.”
We cross the yard. Tali deftly “borrows” the baby from Hayes, Josh returns Audrey to her father and wraps an arm around my waist. He’s currently telling the guys about my latest foray onto Twitter, which I’ve discovered is the perfect place to mess with people who irk me. After Richard, my stepbrother, sent a text saying he wasn’t surprised I’d been “dropped” by my label, I put out a one-line tweet about the white-collar criminal he was in the process of defending, a guy he was trying to get a plea deal for.