When she left, she was clean. All the stress and negativity of her day had drained from her. She felt light and relaxed, happy and confident. Even though she would be two hours later getting to Benjamin, she was a better person when she got to him; not wound up from the job, not tense and snappish.
“Hey, ass-kicker.” A sexy male voice she didn’t expect surprised her when she stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Mom. You’re a badass.”
She turned to see Dylan put a hand on Benjamin’s head. “Hey, little dude, I told you no swearing around your mom.”
“No swearing, period,” she said, kneeling down and taking Benjamin into her arms. His little body always felt so good.
“But you swear all the time,” he said into her hair. He wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed.
“Never mind that,” she said, standing and taking his hand. She smiled at Dylan, hating herself for how happy she was to see him. “What are you guys doing here? I thought you were going to the movies.”
“We saw Spy Kids. Benj was so impressed that I thought he might like to see his mom in action. I can’t believe you never brought him here.”
“You were like, pow! And like, wham!” said Benjamin, imitating her techniques. He was pretty good.
“I figured I’d start him up next year. I thought he might get scared seeing me fight.”
“No way, Mom! You’re like Jackie Chan.”
Dylan shook his head but gave her a smile. You baby him too much. That’s what he was thinking but he didn’t say it. “How ’bout some pizza?” he asked.
“Sounds good. I’m starved. There’s a place around the corner on Broadway.”
They walked up the street together, Benjamin just a few feet ahead of them throwing kicks and punches with sound effects. Dylan took her hand and she didn’t pull away. Normally she didn’t like Benjamin to see them holding hands or being affectionate with each other. She’d quashed the hopes he harbored that they’d be together again, live under the same roof. She didn’t want him to be confused. But there was something about the three of them together, walking on the street. It just felt right. It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. Just that their relationship was easier; they could be together with Benjamin, be kind to each other and not fight, not get ugly with each other. It was progress. That’s all it was.
Ten
Jeffrey had taken off to go talk to Christian’s jeweler and Dax sat in a spare office among the trainees trying to find out what he could about the specialized security system installed at The New Day. Lydia did something she thought she wouldn’t do. She went into her office and closed the door, got on her computer, and entered a name into LexisNexis. Arthur James Tavernier.
Most of the listings were not related to her father. But one of the early entries was his obituary. Short and simple, it said only that he had died and when the services would be. Would she have gone if she knew? Maybe. Out of curiosity. Maybe not. It did lead her to wonder however who had held the services. She didn’t have to read far.
The next entry was a brief article on her father’s death that had run in a small local Nyack paper. He died of an apparent heart attack in his small two-bedroom home. He was found three days after the incident when neighbors complained of the smell. At the bottom of the article, which she almost skipped, there was a single sentence that felt like a blow to the solar plexus. “Arthur Tavernier is survived by his wife of fifteen years, Jaynie, and their daughter, Este, from whom he was estranged.”
She put her head in her hand and exhaled deeply. She’d always imagined him as alone in a single-room apartment, with no one in his life. But he’d had another family. And unless Este was his stepdaughter by marriage, Lydia had a sister she never knew about. She wasn’t sure what to do with that information. She searched for some kind of feeling about it, about the way her father died, about the fact that she might have a half-sister somewhere, and came up with a kind of emptiness, a numbness that she was afraid wasn’t normal. What kind of person felt nothing when faced with these types of things?
From the leather bag at her feet she fished out the business card that Patricia O’Connell had given her when she and Jeffrey picked up the box.
“Ms. O’Connell,” said Lydia when she finally got the woman on the line.
“Yes, Ms. Strong, what can I do for you?”
“I need to know, is there a way for me to get in touch with Mr. Tavernier’s wife or his daughter?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line and Lydia heard her moving papers around.
“Well,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s my place to give you their contact information. There was nothing in his final instructions to that effect.” She hesitated, then added, “As I understand it, they were also estranged from Mr. Tavernier.” She said it like a woman who had made judgments about things she didn’t understand.
“All right,” said Lydia. “Well, did they all share my father’s last name?”
Another pause. “Ms. Strong, there was nothing about them in your box?”
Now it was Lydia’s turn to go silent. She looked across the hall through the glass wall that separated her office from the hallway; she could see the entrance to Jeffrey’s office. The box was in there waiting for her to get up the courage to open it.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to go through it yet,” she said.
“Well, perhaps there’s something in there to help you find out what you want to know.”
Lydia sighed. She hated people who didn’t easily give things that were easy to give, people for whom rules and procedures were more important than other people.
“Can you do this for me?” she said, trying to keep patience in her tone. “If you have their contact information, can you please call one or both of them and tell them I’m interested in speaking with them? And then give them my name and number.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Ms. Strong,” she said vaguely. “I’ll get back to you.”
Lydia said her thanks but the lawyer had already hung up.
She felt a swell of emotion now, some combination of anger, resentment, and sadness. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want a box from her dead father waiting for her in Jeffrey’s office. She didn’t want to learn that she might have a sister somewhere. But like with all the mysteries of her life, there was this eternal flame inside of her, this burning to know. She could take that box to the Dumpster, call Patricia O’Connell back and tell her not to bother. And that would be the end of it. But she couldn’t. She just wasn’t hardwired to walk away from a question mark.
“Shit,” she said out loud to no one.
“What’s up?” Dax filled the doorway. She hated him at the moment. He had hurt her feelings. And since her feelings were so rarely exposed for the hurting, vulnerable to so few people, they were still smarting.
“Nothing,” she said flatly. “What do you want?”
He walked in and sat down, unperturbed by her mood.
“Well,” he said. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
She looked at him with an expression that she hoped would encourage him to just spit it out.
“It looks to me like the security system installed at The New Day is a custom job. We’re talking motion detectors on the exterior, roving security cameras, infrared beams in entrance hallways, security shutters over doors and windows. Retina and palm scan entries on certain areas, heat sensors on doorknobs, serious stuff. A system like the one they have would cost a hundred grand, at least. It would be nearly impossible to get in-or out-once the system is activated.”