Breaking the Rules (39 page)

But it was possible that that was how he’d see her, even if she’d announced she was ridding herself of her worldly possessions, entering a nunnery, and devoting her life to try to out-Mother-Teresa Mother Teresa.

“You okay?” Izzy asked her now as they emerged into the courtyard. Eden was looking around to see if Neesha was there, and she realized she’d gotten too quiet.

She glanced over to find Izzy watching her with that look in his eyes that made her believe he already knew what she was thinking. Still, she nodded. Chin up. “Yeah.”

“Rough day,” he said, unwilling to just let it all go.

Eden nodded. “But Ben’s safe at the hospital,” she said. And that was the most important thing. “Right?”

Izzy smiled his reassurance. “He’s very safe,” he said. “The nursing staff’s on high alert. Even if our skinhead shooter finds out Ben’s there,
he’s not going to get anywhere near him. Not in the pediatrics ward.” He paused. “But if you want, after we finish searching for Neesha, I could go back over there. You know. Just sit with him.”

“You’d do that?” she asked, even though he was standing right there, completely bullcrap free and totally sincere in his offer.

He smiled and tried to shrug it off. “It’s not a big deal.”

But her heart was in her throat, and all of the stress and emotion of the past few days was pressing against her eyes, making them flood with tears that she had to work furiously to blink away, because Izzy was with her. She wasn’t in this alone—for at least as long as she could keep his interest up.

He’d told her, back in the car, that he’d keep on wanting her, forever. But she’d learned the hard way that forever was a myth.

“Is it okay if I come, too?” she asked him, in a voice that didn’t quite sound like her own.

Izzy continued to look at her with those eyes that could see through her. “You really going to let your brother chase you out of your own home?”

“It’s not my home,” she said. “It’s just a … temporary place to … sleep.”

Eden had to turn away, because the way he seemed to be able to see inside of her head was just too disturbing. What if he realized she’d meant what she said in the car, that she really never had stopped loving him?

But he didn’t want to hear that, didn’t want to know. He didn’t want anything from her besides really great sex.

Which was more than she’d hoped for, but at times like this, when she was tired and feeling emotionally battered? It seemed heartbreakingly inadequate.

The courtyard was empty—Neesha wasn’t waiting for them there. No one was out there—at this time of night, the building’s residents didn’t linger. Besides, it was still unnaturally hot. In the desert it was supposed to cool off at night, but tonight the air felt like an eye-melting blast from an oven, which was particularly disconcerting in the darkness.

Still, Eden started to make a quick circuit of the place, heading out toward the street so they could walk completely around the building. The streets were mostly empty, too. The few cars that went past moved purposefully down the road—people heading home after a night of work.

“You know, he doesn’t know you,” Izzy said after they’d walked for a bit in silence. “Danny. So you shouldn’t let his disapproval—”

“You don’t know me, either,” Eden cut him off. He’d said those very words to her just a short hour ago, back in the rental car, in that parking lot. “Can we just move on to a different topic? I mean, if you want, I can tell you how this one ends. You say,
yeah, well, I know you better than Dan does
, and
I
remind you that
you
thought I might’ve been hooking, too. And then we fall into an awkward silence, because you can’t deny it, so then we both feel like crap. Or at least I do.”

“When did you last have one?” he asked, apparently choosing to forgo the awkward silence and feelings of crap and move back to their previous conversation. “A home that wasn’t just a place to sleep?”

Eden had to think about it, because the first thing that popped into her head was a crystal-clear memory of cleaning his apartment, in San Diego, right before she’d left. The space was all Izzy’s and yet … She’d never felt out of place there. In an odd way, she’d belonged. But, again, she knew he didn’t want to hear that. He’d think she was manipulating or playing him or just flat-out lying. So she tried to remember and came up with …

“New Orleans,” she said. “It was … rocky at times, but Dan was already in the Navy. We moved into a new house—new for us, I mean—and it was small but nice. There was a garden and … Ivette was with Charlie—he was this great big black man with this big laugh and I think she actually might’ve really loved him.

“Sandy was just out of rehab, and when she first married Ron—she met him at AA—things were pretty good. Ron owned the store—sporting goods—and we all worked there. Even Ben and me, after school and on weekends. It was the closest thing to normal we ever had.”

They’d almost felt like a family.

But Ron was an addict, too, and he’d relapsed first, then Sandy, not long after the store suffered smoke damage, after another shop in the same building had a fire. Ron’s insurance wouldn’t cover the ruined merchandise, and things quickly went to hell in a handbasket. Sandy and Ron lost their house in the resulting fallout, and moved in with them, kids and all, as they both struggled to reclaim their sobriety and get their business back on its feet.

Then Charlie had had a heart attack and died, out on the driveway. It was right around that same time that Eden had been so sorely deceived by John Franklin, with whom she’d lost her virginity. Danny had come home for the funeral and had heard John’s bragging about what had gone down in the back of his car—and ever since then her brother had treated Eden like she was some foul-smelling dog crap that had attached itself to the bottom of his shoe.

And yet all of that had been child’s play compared to Katrina.

Izzy was thinking the same thing. “Then Katrina happened,” he said, “and the shit hit the fan.”

Another topic she didn’t want to discuss.

Except Izzy couched it in terms of Ben. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he said, “but I heard you talking to Ben and … I just, um … I get it, you know? Why we’re still out here looking for Neesha.”

“He still feels awful about not saving Deshawndra,” Eden told him, because she could talk about that part of it. “I do, too. She was this funny little black girl whose family had lived in Orleans Parish forever, and she and Ben were always trying to get me to play some stupid game with them, but I usually didn’t and I should have, because when I did, I always had fun. She lived with her grandmother, and they both died up in their attic. And Lord, when I say it like that, it sounds almost peaceful, but it wasn’t, it couldn’t have been. They made it up there so they wouldn’t drown because the water was up to the roofline, but then they were trapped. It had to be two hundred degrees up there in the days after the storm—it was a hundred in the shade. The autopsy wasn’t clear whether they cooked to death or died of thirst—either way it was painful and awful and I know Ben’s spent a lot of time thinking
about it, because I have, too. And Deshawndra’s mother—she was serving in Iraq. Can you imagine coming home to that?”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Deshawndra was smart and she was tough,” Eden said. “She wouldn’t take anyone’s crap. Never. Not even mine. And she could
sing
. She and Ben had this plan to go try out for
American Idol
as soon as she turned sixteen, and now—”

She broke off and focused on walking, on looking down the street for Neesha. But nothing moved on the sidewalks. There was no sound but the shush of the tires on the road as another car went past.

Izzy was silent, just waiting for her to continue.

So she did. “Her grandmother was a retired music teacher, and still gave clarinet and piano lessons to the neighborhood kids, including Ben. I swear, he lived in that house. After he found out they both died, he just, I don’t know. He shut down. We moved to Houston first—not by choice, but more because we ended up there. That was where Ivette met Greg—they were both in physical therapy. She broke her arm and he’d been in a car accident, and suddenly she found God—along with Greg’s big insurance settlement—and then they were married. Except, just like that, the money was gone—I still don’t know how they blew it—and the honeymoon was over, but we were moving to Las Vegas. And Ben kept everything locked up inside, partly because Greg is such a dick. Neesha’s the first friend he’s made in all those years. I think maybe he feels like … if he can help
her
, he can maybe forgive himself for not insisting Deshawndra and her grandmother get into our car when we left.”

“He was eleven,” Izzy pointed out. “Most eleven—or fifteen-year-olds, for that matter—don’t have a say in who does or doesn’t get into the car they’re riding in.”

“But he was driving,” Eden told him. “He was, then I took over, and … I should have stopped to get them. But I couldn’t. I …” She shook her head. She really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. She didn’t want to
think
about it.

“You were driving,” he repeated.

“It was Ron’s car—my brother-in-law’s.”

She and Izzy had made a complete circuit of the block and were back on the main road, where a bench sat at the deserted bus stop. She pointed to it. “Mind if we just sit for a few minutes?” she asked. “I want to give Neesha a chance to come out of hiding. You know, maybe if she’s nearby and she sees us …?”

“That’s a smart idea,” Izzy said as he sat down beside her. “So how come the two of you were driving? As if I don’t know?”

“Ron was high. Can we not talk about Katrina?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “I just … I know what it’s like to lose a friend and …”

“Frank O’Leary.” She named the SEAL who’d died in the same terrorist attack that had left those grim-looking scars on Izzy’s chest.

He looked surprised.

“You told me about him,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he said. “I just didn’t expect you to remember his name.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked.

Izzy was looking at her with an expression on his face that she absolutely couldn’t read. But then he kind of laughed. “Because we talked about him, I don’t know,
once
, a long time ago?”

Eden glanced behind her, hoping that Neesha would appear. But she didn’t. Lord, she was tired, and she didn’t want to sit here, talking about things that made her want to burst into tears and throw herself into Izzy’s arms, and say things he didn’t want to hear. So she brought them safely back to sex—where they were both in agreement. “I remember all of our conversations. Including one you’d probably prefer I forget.”

Izzy definitely laughed at that, and she knew
he
knew that she was talking about a conversation they’d had on their wedding night, after she’d gone down on him for the first time, where she’d referred to his man-parts as “Mr. Big.”

No
, Izzy had said, pulling sharply back to look at her.
Nuh-uh. No
way
are you
naming
my dick
.

Too late
, she’d teased him.

No it’s not
.

You can call him whatever you want
, she’d said,
and I’ll—

Great
, he’d interrupted her.
I’m going to get a little boring here and call
it
“my penis.” Not Mr. Penis, not mister anything. No
him,
no, thank you. With the understanding that I do appreciate the ego-stroking behind the whole
big
thing. I mean, you’re the mastermind behind
Pinkie,
so it could’ve gone in an entirely different direction. But here’s the deal, Mrs. Zanella, I have an absolute no-name policy for body parts
.

As far as nicknames went, that
Mrs. Zanella
had made them both freeze with the eye-opening reality of what they’d just done at the little Happy Ending Wedding Chapel. They were legally married. For richer or poorer, for better or worse.

Ten long months later, even after spending all that time apart, Eden was still Mrs. Zanella—at least in the eyes of the law.

And despite the fact that she’d all but promised never to utter those words again, he was still Mr. Big.

“I know what you’re thinking, smart-ass,” Izzy said. “So stop it.”

Eden had to laugh, even as she leaned slightly forward to check if that really was a shadow that moved across the street, or just her tired eyes playing tricks on her. Come on, Neesha … “Okay, Amazing Kreskin. If you’re so good at reading my mind, what am I thinking now?”

“You’re still thinking about Katrina,” he said, “because you’re still hoping Neesha will show up, and thinking about her makes you think about everything Ben lost because the levees broke, even though you hate thinking about it. Eed, I have to confess that I’ve been thinking about it, too—for a long time. Ever since I knew that you were there and lived through it. I always wondered what
you’d
lost, and now I know a little bit more. I know you lost your home.”

Eden just shook her head. She’d lost so much more than that. She’d lost everything. She’d lost her
self
, for too many long, dark years.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it right now,” Izzy said. “But if you ever do …?”

She made herself nod, okay, but she wouldn’t say anything. Not now, not ever. Because Izzy really didn’t want to know. He thought he did, but if he ever found out …?

He wouldn’t believe her. Her own
mother
hadn’t.

And there it was. It wasn’t so much that
he
didn’t want to know, but that
Eden
didn’t want to face his disbelief.

Their silence stretched on as she focused on a passing car, watching its taillights moving down the street, hoping that when it disappeared, Neesha would come out from wherever she’d been hiding.

But the car turned a distant corner and nothing moved in the shadowy stillness of the night.

And Izzy let Katrina go. He went back to their earlier conversation, pre-Mr. Big.

“You know, I’m kind of like you,” he said. “A nomad. We moved a lot when I was a kid, and because I was the youngest, I rarely got my own room. They just kind of stuck me on the couch, wherever we lived. I was a post-vasectomy surprise—I ever tell you that?”