Brothers and Bones by James Hankins Page B

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    My apartment wasn’t very big. I lived on Beacon Hill, a trendy, expensive neighborhood, so my money didn’t go as far as it would in some of the lower rent, higher crime, don’t-make-eye-contact-with-anyone-or-you’re-asking-for-it areas. I had a living room, a bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and, of course, a small kitchen, where Jessica had sequestered herself. I had two choices. I could have waited her out, or I could go in there and save the evening.
    I found Jessica leaning against the kitchen counter, next to the lo mein and fried dumplings. She shook her head.
    “Jessica, I didn’t hire him. He called me. I haven’t spoken to—”
    “I hope that’s true, Charlie. Because you told me you were finished with this. You told me you were moving on with your life.”
    I did say that. And I’d tried very hard to do so.
    “Jess, I can’t say it doesn’t still eat at me, but—”
    She shook her head again and brushed past me. I followed her into the living room, where she dropped onto my couch, arms crossed, looking very little like she was thinking about the Kama Sutra . Her eyes had that angry-sea-gray color.
    “Look, Jessica, I know you’re mad—”
    She interrupted me. “I’m not mad at you, Charlie. I’m mad at the jerk who left that message.”
    She reached a warm, inviting hand toward me. I grabbed it gratefully and let her guide me down onto the couch beside her. She put her head on my shoulder.
    She said, “Really, I’m not mad at you. I just hate to see people keeping your hopes alive. I don’t want to see you taken advantage of again. I love you.”
    “I love you, too.”
    We sat like that for a minute, then she sat up and saw something in my eyes that she didn’t like.
    “My God, you’re thinking about doing it now, aren’t you? Calling that guy back.”
    I hesitated a fraction of a second too long.
    She shook her head. “Can’t you see? These guys, when they call you it’s like they’re waving martinis in front of a recovering alcoholic. It’s cruel. It’s been too long. He’s been gone too long. When are you going to stop picking at your wounds?”
    “I didn’t say I was going to call him back.”
    “You’ve been doing so well, Charlie,” she said sadly. “Not long ago you said you’d consider leasing yourself a decent car and scrapping your junker. You’re finally starting to put away some savings. And you know I have plenty of money for the both of us, so it’s not about money. Or status. I wouldn’t care that you’re still driving your old Corolla and living in this shoe box if you were using your money to pay back student loans or were saving toward our house or something like that. But you aren’t. You own very little. You’ve saved very little. And why? Because for years you gave your money to scam artists who had no compunction about taking advantage of a man in pain. I hated to see it then, Charlie, and I’d hate it even more to see it now, just when you seem to finally be putting it behind you.”
    As I said, when my parents died, Jake essentially raised me with his own hard-earned money and held the insurance money in trust for me to use someday. And after he was declared legally deceased six years ago, his insurance money was added to the pot. I used this money to pay off my undergraduate and law-school student loans. In essence, my future grew from ground watered with the blood of my loved ones.
    So with my education paid for and a small trust fund to draw upon when absolutely necessary, I should have been in good shape financially. That’s not the way it worked out, though. Instead, a few months after I graduated from law school, when I was an Assistant DA, I hired a private investigator to look into Jake’s disappearance. I’d already hit a dead end myself. I figured he was missing because of something to do with his job at the newspaper, some story he was working on. I’d questioned his editor, as well as the reporters he’d worked with, and