Chapter 6: Irene
913 Words
The call is from Marco.
I answer it before I'm fully out of the room because Marco doesn't call at this hour unless something is wrong and something is always wrong with Kane right now. I pull the door behind me and I walk and I listen and I try to be the version of myself that handles things.
It's harder this morning than it usually is.
Marco talks. The Kane situation in Seattle, a third building, this time in our name, shell company three layers deep but our name is on it somewhere and someone found it. Marco wants to know how to respond. I tell him. He asks about the board meeting. I tell him that too. He gives me three more items and I work through each one and I give him answers and the whole time I am standing in my own hall fifteen feet from a door I just walked out of and I am aware of that door with every part of me that isn't currently focused on Marco.
I hang up.
I stand there.
The scent of her is still in the hall. Faint, just enough. My wolf turns toward it the way a compass turns and I turn away from it deliberately and I look at the far window and I think about Seattle and the board meeting and all the things that are waiting for me today.
I make it approximately four seconds.
Then I hear her door.
I don't turn around. I hear it open and I hear her in the doorway and I feel her the way I've been feeling her since the ravine, a pull at the center of my chest, a warmth that has no operational justification, my wolf going very still and very attentive.
I keep my eyes on the window.
I put the phone to my ear and I call New York and I talk about things that matter and I stand in my hall feeling her behind me and I think: this is what losing your mind feels like.
Mateo comes around the corner at a run.
I hear him before I see him, his footsteps are distinctive, heavier on the left than the right since he fell off the garden wall last spring, and I lower the phone before he hits my leg.
He wraps both arms around it and squeezes hard.
Something in my chest that has been wound tight all morning loosens by a degree.
I put my hand on the back of his head and he laughs at something he's already decided is funny and I look down at him and I think: whatever else is happening, this is still here.
"You're awake early," I say.
"Mrs Aldea made eggs." He pulls back and looks up at me with the expression he has when he's reporting important information. "I had three."
"Three."
"They were small eggs."
I look at him. He looks back at me without blinking.
Then his eyes move past me.
He goes still. I know without turning around. I feel her behind me the way I've been feeling her since I stepped into that room, the warmth, the pull, my wolf pushing into my ribs like something that wants out.
I watch my son's face instead.
He looks at her, then he pulls away from my leg and starts walking toward her.
I watch him cross the hall.
I watch him stop in front of her and look up at her and I watch her crouch down to his level, her back still bothering her, I can see it in the slight catch of the movement, and I watch them look at each other.
He holds out Coco.
I look at the ceiling for a moment.
Coco goes with Mateo everywhere and has done since he was eighteen months old. In six years I have watched him offer that dog to exactly nobody. Mrs Aldea once, when she had a bad day. Me, once, when things were very bad. That's the entire list.
She takes it.
Something happens in my chest that I don't have a name for.
Mateo turns and looks at me with the expression he has when he's about to say something he's been building toward.
"Papa."
I wait.
"Is she my new nanny?"
"Mateo..."
"What's her name?"
He looks at me and then he looks at her and she looks at me too, those green eyes, the question in them, waiting. She has no answer to give him. She can't even give him a name because she doesn't have one and she is looking at me like I am the only person in this hall who can help and my wolf shoves hard against my ribs and I open my mouth.
"Irene," I say.
She blinks.
Mateo turns it over. "Irene," he repeats, testing it. Then he nods, satisfied, like this confirms something he already suspected.
He looks at me.
"Is she staying?"
I look at her.
She is still crouched at his level, Coco held carefully in both hands, watching me with an expression I can't fully read, something careful in it, something that is waiting to see what I do. The bandage above her temple. The borrowed clothes. The green eyes that have been pulling at something in me since before she was even conscious.
I look back at Mateo.
"Irene," I say.
She stands and looks at me.
"Come with me," I say.
- Writer
