The Fixer (9 page)

“Not horrible,” Adam said dryly. “That’s high praise.”

From me, it kind of was.

After several seconds of silence, Adam switched topics. “Theo Marquette’s funeral is tomorrow,” he said. He paused. “Your sister will want to be there.”

I wasn’t sure how he expected me to respond to that.

“Theo was a friend,” Adam continued. He measured his words, his calm, knowing eyes slanting toward mine. “Funerals are hard for Ivy.” There was something in the way Adam said my sister’s name—like things that hurt her hurt him.

I kept my eyes locked on the road. I didn’t have to ask why funerals were hard for Ivy. Ivy had been twenty-one when we lost our parents. Old enough to remember every last detail of the aftermath.

“Are you going to the funeral, too?” I asked Adam. He cared about my sister enough that he was here teaching me how to drive. He hurt when she hurt. I had no idea if there was anything more than friendship between them, but it seemed like a reasonable question.

Adam’s jaw clenched slightly. “It’s better that I sit this one out.”

He didn’t elaborate. I didn’t ask him to. For twenty minutes, the two of us rode in silence, except for the occasional admonition from Adam for me to watch out for the other guy and keep my eyes on the road. As we pulled up to Ivy’s house, I started to feel the weight of the silence.

“So what do you do when you’re not teaching random teenagers to navigate the big, bad streets of DC?” I asked.

I put the car in Park. Adam unbuckled his seat belt, squaring his shoulders slightly as he replied. “I work for the Department of Defense. Before I was assigned to the Pentagon, I flew for the Air Force.”

“Why the Pentagon?” I asked.

“That’s where I was assigned.” Adam stiffened, the muscles in his neck the only noticeable tell. His tone reminded me of the fight I’d overheard him having with Ivy.

Adam—whose father
made things happen
in DC—had gone from an assignment he enjoyed to working at the Pentagon.

“Your father wanted you in DC?” It was a stab in the dark.

“My father is very family oriented.” Adam’s voice was completely flat. He looked like a soldier standing at attention, eyes forward, never flinching. “He’s also very good at getting what he wants.”

“So is Ivy.” Those words slipped out before I’d thought them through. “Not family oriented, obviously,” I clarified. “Good at getting what she wants.”

Adam was quiet for several seconds. Finally he said, “Your sister is nothing like my father, Tess.”

I hadn’t meant to bring up Ivy.

“She would do anything for you,” Adam told me, angling his head to catch my gaze. Even blue eyes stared into mine. “You know that, right?”

“Sure.” That was what he wanted to hear.

“She won’t ask you to go to the funeral with her.” The set of Adam’s features was neutral, carefully controlled. “But I’m not going, and Bodie doesn’t do funerals. He’ll drive her there, but that’s it.” He let that sink in. “It would mean a lot if she didn’t have to go alone.”

A lot to Adam, or a lot to Ivy?

“Your father stopped by earlier this week to talk to Ivy.” I needed a subject change, and that did the trick. Adam’s jaw ticked slightly. An instant later, he wiped all trace of emotion from his face: not a hint of a smile, not a hint of a frown.

“You didn’t know,” I realized. I’d assumed that Ivy would have told him.

“Did you and my father meet?” Adam almost managed to keep his voice level, but I caught the tension underneath. He wanted me to tell him that the answer was no. He wanted me kept away from his father. I turned that over in my mind and thought of Bodie catching sight of William Keyes and ordering me to stay in the car.

“No,” I told Adam, noting the relief that flickered briefly across his face. “We didn’t.”

CHAPTER 18

The next morning, I put on a faded black dress and went downstairs to wait for Ivy.

“Going somewhere?” Bodie asked me.

I didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Justice Marquette has a grandson who goes to Hardwicke.” As far as excuses went, that was a flimsy one. “He’s a friend of a friend.”

That was stretching the truth, given that I didn’t have much in the way of friends at Hardwicke.

Bodie raised an eyebrow at me. “So you’re going to the funeral.”

“Yes.”

“For the grandfather of a friend of a friend,” Bodie reiterated.

I shrugged and headed for the car. “It feels like the right thing to do.” I wasn’t talking about my tenuous connection to Henry Marquette, and we both knew it.

Maybe Adam was right. Maybe Ivy needed me. Or maybe she didn’t. But no one should have to go to a funeral alone.

“Theodore Marquette served this country long and well.” President Peter Nolan stood at the podium. He had a weighty presence and a powerful speaking voice. As he eulogized, Ivy’s hand found its way into mine. She didn’t keep hold of it for long. But even that fleeting moment of physical contact told me that I’d been right to come.

I knew in my gut that she was thinking about our parents’ funeral. My own memories of it were fuzzy.

I remember it was summer. My dress was blue.
A pale baby blue that stuck out among a sea of black. I remembered being passed from arm to arm. I remembered eating food. I remembered being sick all over the floor.
I remember Ivy carrying me upstairs. I remember my head against her chest.

“Most of us go through the day unaware of the impact we have on each other, the mark we leave on this world—but not Theo. He felt that responsibility, on the bench and in his daily life, to leave this world a better place than he’d found it. It sounds pat to say that he was a good man, a wise man, a fair man.” The president paused for a moment. “I’m going to say it anyway. He was a good man.” The president’s voice reached every corner of the chapel. “He was a wise man. He was a fair man.”

Stained glass cast colored light onto the casket, which had been wrapped in an American flag, like the flags that flew at half-mast throughout the country in Justice Marquette’s honor.

“Theodore Marquette was a husband who’d buried his wife.” The president’s voice rolled over me. Even giving a eulogy, its tone said
trust me
,
listen to me
,
follow me
. “A father who’d buried his son. He was a fighter who never gave in to grief, to opposition, to the days and the nights and the months and the years when life was hard. He played a mean game of pool. I know from experience that the only way the man could sing ‘Happy Birthday’ was at the top of his lungs.”

There was a scattering of chuckles.

“Theo was a proud grandfather, a devoted civil servant.” The president paused and lowered his head. “He left this world a better place than he’d found it.”

There were other speakers, hymns, prayers.

I remember it was summer. My dress was blue.

The pallbearers came forward: five men, a woman, a boy. I recognized the woman and realized that she and the men were Justice Marquette’s colleagues, justices who’d sat beside him on the bench. It didn’t matter whether they’d found themselves siding with or against him in court; there was grief etched into their faces as they walked in perfect step to carry the casket down the aisle.

The last pallbearer was my age. He was biracial, with strong features made stronger by the terse set of his jaw.
The justice’s grandson
. It had to be. I watched him, his stare locked straight ahead as he and six Supreme Court justices carried his grandfather’s casket out into the sun.

“Come on, Tess,” Ivy said softly as the funeral goers began to push out of the chapel. We made our way to the end of the pew. As Ivy stepped into the aisle, someone took her arm.

Adam’s father.

I froze, but as the crowd pushed gently forward, I snapped out of it and stepped into the aisle behind them.

“William,” Ivy greeted him coolly. She didn’t attempt to pull away from his hold. As they walked side by side, I found myself wondering who was leading whom.

“Lovely service,” William Keyes commented. “Though I found the eulogy to be somewhat so-so.”

I looked around to see if anyone else had heard him, but it appeared the words had only reached Ivy’s ears—and mine. Near the front of the chapel, Georgia Nolan stood next to her husband. She caught sight of me looking at her and smiled slightly. Her eyes stopped smiling when she saw the man on Ivy’s arm.

“Have you given any thought to our little chat?” William asked Ivy as we inched toward the exit.

“You and I don’t chat.” Ivy’s voice was matter-of-fact. William held the door open for her. Once Ivy stepped through, he turned back. To me.

“After you,” he said. I recognized the chess move for what it was—a way to get under my sister’s skin. “And who is this young lady?” he asked Ivy.

I would have put money on it that he already knew the answer.

“My sister.” Ivy answered his question, her voice pleasant, her eyes glittering with warning. “Tess.”

William Keyes smiled and laid a hand on my shoulder. “It’s nice to meet you, Tess.”

I barely managed to check the urge to roll my eyes. “Right back at you.”

William was not deterred by my intentional lack of social graces. “I understand you’re a student at Hardwicke?”

I stared him directly in the eye. “Guess word around here travels fast.”

“William.” A man about the same age as William Keyes initiated a handshake with him, causing Adam’s father to remove his hand from my shoulder. “Good to see you.”

“Royce,” William returned heartily. “How’s Hannah?”

I took that as my cue to make an exit. Ivy did the same. She didn’t say a word about William Keyes, but I could tell the encounter had shaken her. That made me wonder: just how dangerous
was
Adam’s father?

As we made our way down the steps, my sister slipped into a line that had formed in front of the justice’s surviving family.

“Pam,” Ivy greeted a tall, thin African American woman, taking the woman’s hand in hers.

“Thank you for coming.”

I wondered how many times Mrs. Marquette had said those words today. I wondered if they’d started to sound like gibberish to her yet.

Ivy gave the woman’s hand a firm squeeze before letting it go. “What do you need?” she asked.

“We’re holding up.” That, too, sounded like a rote reply, recited over and over again in hopes that it might somehow become the truth.

Ivy caught the other woman’s gaze and repeated herself, her voice soft. “What do you need?”

A little girl burrowed into the woman’s side. The woman’s hand wrapped reflexively around the girl, her hand stroking the
little one’s hair. “There’s a wake,” she told Ivy. “At Theo’s house, after the burial.”

Ivy gave a slight nod. “I can head straight there.”

“You don’t have to do that,” the woman said quickly. “The burial . . .”

“I can head straight there,” Ivy reiterated. “Whatever you need, Pam, consider it done.” The woman looked like she might object. “If Theo were here, he’d have told me to skip the funeral and go straight to the house.”

Mrs. Marquette smiled wryly. Apparently, she couldn’t argue with that.

“Mother?” The justice’s grandson appeared at his mom’s side. “Everything okay here?” Henry Marquette spared half a glance for me and seemed to decide I was worth neither his interest nor his concern, before he turned piercing mint-green eyes on Ivy.

“Ms. Kendrick was just offering to help with the wake,” Mrs. Marquette told him.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” Henry’s posture was perfectly erect, his tone polished. “The arrangements have been taken care of.”

By you
, I thought. Seeing Henry Marquette standing slightly in front of his mother, like he could shield her bodily from grief, I felt a flash of recognition. I knew what it was like to be the one who took care of things. The one who had to be strong.

“Thank you for coming.” Henry gave Ivy a pointed smile that wasn’t a smile at all, then ushered his mother away.

We’d been dismissed.

CHAPTER 19

Justice Marquette’s house was on the Virginia side of DC. Bodie didn’t ask why we were going there. Ivy didn’t elaborate.

Once we arrived, it took my sister all of ten minutes to get rid of the press camped out on the street.

“How does she do that?” I asked Bodie, watching from a distance as she said something to send the last hanger-on running.

“Witchcraft,” Bodie deadpanned.

By the time the Marquettes arrived from the burial, the house was quiet, the food was warm, and a discreet security team had been established around the perimeter.

If the funeral service had been full of dignitaries and officials, the wake was a more personal affair: neighbors, family, friends. As soon as Ivy was distracted, I ducked out of the house. I didn’t belong here. This wasn’t my grief.

Outside, the air smelled like fresh-cut grass and forthcoming rain. The justice’s house was easily as large as Ivy’s, but he had
more land. Staring out at it, I tried the number Ivy had given me for my grandfather. A nurse answered and put me on with Gramps.

It wasn’t a good day.

When I eventually said good-bye and hung up, it felt like leaving him all over again. I started walking, aching with a constant, uncompromising sense of loss. I didn’t realize how far away from the house I’d wandered until I noticed that I wasn’t alone.

“Where are we going?”

I turned to see the little girl who’d been glued to Mrs. Marquette’s side at the funeral. Her dark hair had been liberated from a headband. She was wearing a black dress.

“Aren’t you supposed to be back at the house?” I asked her.

Her chin jutted out. “This is my grandpa’s house. I get to go wherever I want.”

“Fair enough.” I stared at her for a moment, then kicked off my shoes. “You want to ditch yours?”

“We can do that?” She sounded skeptical.

“It’s your grandpa’s house. You can do whatever you want.”

Accepting my logic, she sat down in the dirt and peeled off the Mary Janes.

“You’re supposed to tell me you’re sorry about my grandpa,” she told me.