Page 102 of Haunted

He hesitates. “And I’m not going to do anything about Rex Harlow,” he says.

“Jonny—”

“No, listen. I’ve been sitting with it for three days and I’m done.” He turns his hands over on his knees. “If he had wanted me, he had twenty-seven years and my mother’s telephone number. He didn’t want me when I was a baby. He didn’t want me when there was a boy with special needs on the news for a week. He didn’t want me last Monday when you said my name to him across a desk and told him I’d lost my whole family in that fire.”

“You could still—”

“What? Make him?” He almost laughs. “I have lived my entire life without a father and I turned out all right. I’m not starting one now because a bank statement says I should.”

He looks up at me.

“He can keep his twenty thousand dollars and I’ll keep the rest of my life. That’s the trade. I’m happy with it.”

I reach out and pull him against me. No words. Just the warmth of him, the scent of his shampoo, the roughness of his linen shirt, the feel of his muscles underneath. I hold him and he holds me and the billiard room with its green-shaded lamps and leather chairs might as well be the only room in the world. When we finally pull apart, something has shifted. The hostilities are over. A bridge has been crossed.

“This is just an anniversary argument, right?” I say, letting my voice lighten.

He blinks at me. “What?”

“If we’d been married for nine years, we would have had a lot of arguments like this. Some even worse.”

A glimmer of a smile. His head tilts in wry amusement. “Like?”

“Like that time you lost the car payment playing poker with your buddies. And the time you got drunk and threw up on our brand new sofa. You ruined that sofa.”

Jonny shakes his head. “It was orange. I hated that sofa.”

“And then there was that time in Japan—”

“We will not talk about Japan.”

“When you abandoned me in a karaoke bar for four hours.”

“That was for a good cause.”

I lace my fingers together around his hips and he puts his arms around my neck. “Honey, a zombie movie marathon is not a good cause.”

“But they were Japanese zombies,” he says. “They knew karate.”

I laugh. I actually laugh. It comes up from somewhere deep and real, and it’s the first time I’ve laughed in days, and it sounds like coming home. I step back, bow my head slightly, and put my palms together. “Shukriya,” I say.

“How did you—Yes! Well done. Aapka swagat hai. That means you’re welcome. It’s very formal.”

“Yeah, there’s no way I’m going to remember that.”

He puts his hands on either side of my prayer hands and rests his forehead against mine. His relief washes over into me. I realize, with some shock, that I’m just as glad to have said it as he was to hear it.

He stands up and palms his face clean, then grabs my hand. “Come on, then.”

He pulls me through the billiard room door and into the lobby, where the concierge scowls. Rex is crossing toward the front entrance in his golfing gear, his buddy beside him. He looks up and I see the surprise on his face at the way Jonny is holding my hand.

“Gentlemen?” Rex says. “Lance, our tee time is in five minutes.” He glances at Jonny and then pointedly dismisses him.

The old reflex fires the second Rex’s eyes find our hands—step in, introduce him, put my body between them, manage the room. I feel every word of it load. And I let it go unfired, because this shot was never mine.

Jonny doesn’t let go of my hand. “We never got a chance to be properly introduced,” he says, pleasant as spring weather. “I’m your son.” He lets it sit—one beat, in the middle of that bright, crowded room—and then he smiles. “But, don’t worry about it. I don’t claim you. I do, however, claim him because I locked myself out of our apartment and it’s definitely laundry day.” He turns and looks at Rex’s friend, who is standing, jaw hanging open. “Have a good game,” he says. “Kick his ass.”

Chapter thirty-six