The Brutal Heart

CHAPTER 6

That afternoon, Zack and I followed the adage that the best thing to do when confronted with a problem is to sleep on it. We took a nap, and when I awoke with his body warm against mine, and the branches of the honeysuckle outside our window tracing shadows on the bedroom ceiling, I knew we had to do whatever it took to hold on to our life together. As if he’d read my mind, Zack reached for my hand. “We can’t blow this,” he said.

I laced my fingers through his. “We did take those vows.”

“It’s your call about where we go from here,” Zack said.

“Let’s just get on with it,” I said. And so we did. We dressed and went into the kitchen. Zack made tea; I took a pan of lasagna from the freezer and put it in the oven for dinner, then like other busy couples, we sat down at the table and checked our messages.

Mine were predictable: a call from Mieka reminding me that the next day was the first anniversary of UpSlideDown and that I’d promised to have lunch there with her and the girls. The rest of my messages were from Ginny’s campaign: two from Keith asking advice about media buys; one from Milo O’Brien, whose staccato intensity as he summoned me to a breakfast rally the next day at the Pile O’ Bones Club made his invitation sound like a threat; and one from Ginny telling me she was going to the Luther game early to watch the twins warm up and she’d save seats for us.

I wrote down what I needed to remember and poured the tea. When I handed Zack his cup, he was still checking messages, and I was smug. “Beat you,” I said. “My life is more manageable than yours.”

He exhaled wearily. “You don’t know the half of it, Ms. Shreve. I have a message from the pal who referred me to Cristal. It turns out he’d recommended her to other guys, all lawyers, and all of them had very personal DVDS hand-delivered to their family mailboxes today.”

“Without explanation.”

“Right,” Zack said. “No explanations, no demands, no nothing. Just seven DVDS of married men doing what they shouldn’t have been doing with Cristal Avilia.” He rubbed his head. “You know, until now, I thought I had a pretty good idea of how that disc ended up in our mailbox.”

“You never said anything.”

“I wanted to make sure I was right. Jo, I thought Debbie Haczkewicz put it there.”

“Debbie Haczkewicz? Come on, Zack, she’s a police officer. Why would she risk her job to hand you evidence?”

“Because it wasn’t evidence. It was just something that happened to be in Cristal’s condo. Debbie knows I didn’t kill Cristal, and she knows I am married. She is also aware that Denise Kaiswatum opens and logs every piece of mail that arrives at Falconer Shreve and that much of the time I work at home. When you told me about the disc, I assumed that Debbie slipped it in our mailbox and didn’t have a chance to call and tell me it was there.”

“Why would Debbie try to protect you?”

He sipped his tea. “Because she thinks she owes me. Her son, Leo, was in an accident three years ago. He flipped his motorcycle on the Ring Road and broke his back. He’s a paraplegic. Nineteen. Not easy to be that young and know that you’re going to be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. But, like the rest of us, Leo didn’t have a choice. The doctors patched him up and packed him off to Wascana Rehab so he could ‘adapt to an altered lifestyle.’ ”

“And Leo didn’t want to adapt?”

“He wanted to die. I remember the feeling.” Zack’s lips were tight. “That’s when Debbie called and asked me to visit him.”

“What happened?”

“I introduced myself, and Leo took a swing at me. Strong kid,” Zack said admiringly.

“Did you swing back?”

“God, no. I remembered my own days in rehab. Our most potent weapon was our catheter. Disconnect one of those, aim it, and -”

I put up my hand. “I get the picture.”

Zack smiled at the memory. “Anyway, I let Leo flail away and rant about how unfair it was that he had to spend the rest of his fucking life in a fucking wheelchair. And when he was finished, I told him I’d be back the next day and I wheeled off in my fucking wheelchair.”

I shook my head. “How come you never told me this?”

“The kid deserved his privacy, and when I met him, he was not at his best. Leo was a tough case. I must have gone there every day for three solid weeks before he finally cracked.”

“You won him over with your charm,” I said.

Zack shook his head. “No, I bought him off with a T-shirt I got on the Internet. On the front there was a cartoon of a guy in a wheelchair saying, ‘I’m only in this for the parking.’ ”

“And the cartoon got through to Leo?”

“Something did. He stopped yelling, and we started talking. He turned out to be a really nice kid. We still keep in touch.”

“So where’s Leo now?”

“At U of S, majoring in English, which, as Leo points out, is a lame subject anyway, so what the hell?”

I took Zack’s hand. “We’re laughing again,” I said.

“Yep, and we can freeze the frame right here if you want. I can tell you more uproarious stories about my adventures in rehab, and we can declare the subject of Cristal off limits.”

“Except it’s always better to know than not to know,” I said. “So let’s have it. I’m assuming the fact that the DVDS went to other people besides you rules out Debbie Haczkewicz as the source.”

“Absolutely,” Zack said. “So we’re back to square one.”

“Square one times seven,” I said.

“With a couple of significant differences.” Zack ticked off the points on his fingers. “My relationship with Cristal had been over for two years when she died, and you knew that I’d been with her.”

“And the men who called this morning had wives who were still living in blissful ignorance,” I said.

Zack lowered his eyes. “Right. And, of course, these guys are terrified that now that the genie is out of the bottle, they’ll lose their families.”

“Maybe they should have thought of that sooner.”

Zack pushed his chair back. “Jo, all of Cristal’s clients, me included, took a stupid risk, but what we should have done is no longer an issue. We have to deal with the stuff that’s hitting the fan now. And I need to know where it’s coming from.”

“Talk to the other men,” I said.

“That’s not a problem for you?”

I shook my head.

“I’d like to keep this whole thing as quiet as possible. Would it be all right if we met here tonight?”

“Of course,” I said. “But, Zack, I’m assuming these are people I know.”

“Some of them are,” he said, “and if it’s going to be awkward for you, say the word.”

“It’s going to be awkward for everybody,” I said. “It might be wise to make sure Taylor and I have already left for the game when your guests arrive and that they’re gone by the time we get back.”

“Got it,” Zack said. “To be fair, Jo, most of these people are decent. They’ve done something foolish and they’ve jeopardized things that should not have been jeopardized, but they’re not beyond the pale. Try to hang on to that.”

“You think I’m being judgmental.”

Zack’s dark eyes met mine. “I think none of us knows what goes on in other people’s bedrooms.”

As soon as Taylor and I arrived at Luther, she spotted Blake Falconer’s Mercedes in the parking lot. “Hey, there’s Gracie’s dad’s car. Okay if I go in and find her?”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Gracie’s probably with her team, warming up. And there are going to be a lot of people at this game. In that new hoodie, you’re going to look like every other Luther student in the gym.”

Taylor patted the emblematic lion on her shirt. “I want to fit in.”

“Wherever you are, you fit in,” I said.

Arms outstretched, Taylor did a 360-degree twirl, taking in the campus. “Isn’t this just the greatest?” she said.

It was a green and gold evening in May. The sun was moving down in the sky and as its light hit the jets of water from the lawn sprinklers, it shattered into prisms, small rainbows blooming in the rich grass. The air was silky and filled with the sounds of spring: birdsong, young voices, and the rustle of new leaves in the wind.

I put my arm around my daughter’s waist and squeezed. “You bet,” I said. “This is the greatest.”

We didn’t need directions to the gym. It was half an hour till game time, but this game was being played for a charity and the halls were already choked with donors and students, most wearing the Luther black and gold, but many wearing the red and yellow of their rivals, the Spartans. Rowdy, animated, and flushed with excitement, the kids moved towards the gymnasium, where the hormones boiling inside them could erupt as soon as the whistle blew. The donors, many of them wearing smart scarves in the colours of their alma mater, were carried along by the crowd and by the hope that, when the whistle blew, their own hormones would kick in.

I didn’t have any trouble spotting Ginny. She was sitting in the front row of the bleachers, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a black ball cap. More than a few people glanced her way, but Ginny’s focus was her daughters, who were doing layups with the rest of their team. I sat down beside her. “Quite a crowd,” I said.

“Ranch Ehrlo’s a good cause,” she replied, but her eyes stayed on her girls. When their coach whistled the team off the court, Ginny turned to me. “I’m glad you’re here. You, too, Taylor.”

“Thanks for keeping seats for us,” Taylor said. “I hate sitting way up at the top.”

“Me too,” Ginny said. “That’s why I always made sure I was in the game.”

I laughed. “How did the door-knocking go this afternoon?”

“Not bad. No one threw stones at me and no one called me a slut. Getting custody of the girls is helping.”

“Good career move?” I said.

Ginny made a moue of mock disgust. “You’re so cynical, Joanne.”

We both laughed. “So what’s next?” I asked. “Milo called about the breakfast rally.”

“Bring yogurt,” she said. “I have to choke down all that grease, but there’s no reason you should.”

“This isn’t my first breakfast rally,” I said. “I know to bring yogurt.”

“Good. Hey, Keith tells me he’s bounced a couple of ideas off you, and you’re brilliant.”

“Keith overestimates my contribution,” I said. “They’re his ideas. I just confirm that they’re brilliant.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing, thanks. This campaign is a mess. We need all the help we can get. Speaking of help, I really appreciate Mieka letting us shoot a couple of TV spots at her business.”

“You’re taping at UpSlideDown? How did that happen?”

“Keith arranged it. He said it would be perfect. It’s in the constituency, and those yummy mummies and their toddlers will help people forget my libidinous hijinks.”

“And Mieka was all right with it?”

Ginny’s smile was puckish. “My libidinous hijinks?”

I laughed. “The TV spots. She’s not exactly right wing.”

“I might be conservative, Jo, but I’m not a dinosaur. And the TV shoot was Mieka’s idea.”

We were interrupted by a man who wanted Ginny’s autograph, then by a woman who asked Ginny if it was true she supported same-sex marriage. When Ginny said she did, the woman called her an abomination and huffed off. “I believe I just lost a vote,” Ginny said mildly.

I was reading the history of Ranch Ehrlo in the souvenir program, trying not to listen to Ginny defend her stance on Canada’s role in Afghanistan to a very angry young man, when I saw Blake Falconer. He was still wearing a suit and tie, but he looked unkempt. His eyes were red and swollen and his face was haggard. I went over and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hi there,” I said.

For a moment, it seemed he couldn’t quite place me. “Sorry,” he said. “I wandered off there for a bit.”

“Are you okay?”

He tried a smile. “Bad day. But Gracie’s playing, so here I am.”

“Why don’t you sit with us?” I said. “Ginny saved a place for Zack, but he has a meeting.”

Blake nodded. “I’m aware of the meeting.”

“Did you get a DVD?”

“No. My relationship with Cristal was… different.” His voice broke. “Jesus, the hits just keep on coming, don’t they?” He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose.

“When was the last time you got some sleep?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

I touched his arm. “Go home and go to bed,” I said. “I can bring Gracie by after the game.”

“Thanks, but she always looks for me in the stands.”

He sat beside me, head down, staring at the gleaming wood of the gym floor. Only when the teams were announced, did he raise his eyes. Gracie flushed and freckled, her explosion of red curls tamed into a ponytail, swept the stands with her eyes, found her dad, gave him the thumbs-up, and ran into place. The Brodnitz twins, sleek in the Luther black and gold, had already found their places, and they were bouncing lightly on their toes, impatient to start.

When the whistle blew, the stands erupted. At first it seemed the teams were evenly matched. Close to the half, the score was 32-26 for Luther. The fans leapt to their feet and stayed there despite the rising temperature. Taylor knew nothing about basketball, but, her face shining with excitement, she was on her feet cheering or groaning whenever everyone else wearing the black and gold cheered and groaned. Only Blake and Ginny seemed immune to the contact high. Blake watched through unseeing eyes, his face frozen in a half-smile. The noise in the gym was ear-splitting, but Ginny observed the action with professional concentration. She didn’t cheer for her daughters: her connection to their game was deeper than that. When either of them took possession of the ball, Ginny would stretch her own strong wide hands, willing them to play their best.

And after the half, their best was sensational. The coach might have been unwise in praising the Brodnitz twins so fulsomely to their teammates, but she hadn’t been inaccurate. The other young women on the team played with enthusiasm and skill; some, including Gracie Falconer, showed flashes of real ability, but Emma and Chloe Brodnitz were brilliant.

Strong, quick, and tenacious, the twins generated their own force field: creating plays, leaping, shooting, scoring. Their game had nothing to do with chalkboards and strategies, and everything to do with body wisdom. They didn’t react. They seemed to know what was going to happen next, and when it happened, the twins were already there. Luther won: 72-48. The Brodnitz twins had been responsible for fifty of those points. As the opposing teams shook hands, Ginny permitted herself a small smile. During the obligatory team hug, Chloe and Emma remained distant, and they moved away from the celebration quickly. Em glanced in our direction, saw her mother, and she and Chloe ran over to our front-row bench.

Ginny treated her daughters as peers. “Nice game,” she said. “A couple of plays that I imagine you’d like to reassess but, on the whole, great job.”

Chloe gazed at the crowd. “Is Dad here?”

“I don’t think so,” Ginny said.

Em narrowed her eyes at her sister. “Get used to it. The case is over.” Then she turned to her mother. “You can come back to the locker room if you want. A couple of the girls said they’d like to meet you.”

Ginny stood up. “My pleasure.” She turned to me. “See you at the breakfast?”

“I’ll be there,” I said. “Em and Chloe, it was a thrill watching you tonight.”

“Thank you. It was nice of you to come,” they said in unison.

Gracie, a girl as generous as she was gregarious, finally broke from her teammates and came running over to us. Damp with perspiration, she was still making connections. “Taylor, there are some girls you absolutely have to meet. I know you’ll absolutely love them, and they’ll absolutely love you.”

Taylor looked at me beseechingly. “Is it okay?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

Gracie rolled her eyes. “I overuse that word, don’t I?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But you’re so absolutely great, nobody cares. Now, I think your father and I should get out of here. This room is a steam bath. We’ll meet you outside.”

Gracie groaned and threw her arms around her father. “Dad, I didn’t even say hello to you. I am such a loser.”

Blake buried his face in his daughter’s crinkly red hair. “You’re not a loser,” he said. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

The sorrow in Blake’s voice was palpable. Gracie stepped back and gave her father a searching look. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Joanne and I will meet you out front. It really is a steam bath in here.”

Reluctant to have the evening end, students from both Sheldon and Luther were lingering in the halls, and progress was slow. When Blake and I finally made it out of the brightly lit school into the gentle half-light of gloaming, I took a deep breath. “Feel that coolness,” I said. “I’ve always loved this time of day.”

“For a lot of years now, I’ve hated it,” Blake said. “When the sun goes down, there are no more distractions – it’s time to face reality.”

“Is reality that bad?” I said.

“Tomorrow’s Cristal’s funeral,” he said. “It doesn’t get any worse than that.”

The sprinklers had been turned off, and as we walked the ground was cool and spongy beneath our feet.

“Did she mean that much to you?” I asked.

“She saved me,” he said flatly. “And if I hadn’t been such a coward I could have saved her.”

The relationship among the partners and families of Falconer Shreve was particularly intimate. We lived within blocks of one another in the city, we all owned cottages on the same bay at the lake, and the daughters of three of us were close friends.

In the year in which they articled, the members of the Winners’ Circle went their separate ways. Delia Wainberg went to the Supreme Court; Blake, Kevin, and Chris Altieri were scooped up by big-name law firms outside the province; Zack went to a small firm in Regina where he got tons of court time, very little supervision, and wasn’t the token guy in the wheelchair. All five of them had lucrative employment offers when their articling year was over. The money was tempting, but none of the members of the Winners’ Circle gave a moment’s consideration to anything other than practising law together.

There had been discussion about the order in which their names would appear on the office door and letterhead. Sensibly they headed off the problem of wounded egos by consigning the decision to fate. Delia Wainberg was a runner, so the members of the Winners’ Circle threw their names into one of her cross-trainers and the boy who delivered the pizza did the honours. No one complained. They moved into an office above a company that made dentures, painted the name Falconer Shreve Altieri Wainberg and Hynd on the door, and looked forward to a glowing future.

After twenty-five years, the glow had dimmed. Zack and Delia Wainberg were still true believers, dedicated to the law as it was practised by Falconer Shreve. Chris Altieri was dead, and after two years, his suicide was still a raw wound in the hearts of those who loved him. Kevin Hynd, having found the practice of law soul-scouring, left the firm for five years while he searched for answers; Chris’s death brought Kevin back to the firm, but he was a changed man whose New Age beliefs did not always sit well with his old partners. And Blake Falconer, the lucky guy whose name had been picked first from Delia Wainberg’s cross-trainer, had turned out to be grimly fated for tragedy.

I met Blake Falconer at the beginning of the last summer of his marriage. Despite the fact that even he had lost count of the number of times his wife had been unfaithful in their fifteen years together, Blake’s passion for Lily was still painfully intense. During the two months when the Falconer marriage ran out its last dark moments, I saw Blake almost every day, and I was struck by the gulf between his public and private lives. Professionally, he was a successful lawyer with a golden touch for real estate and development; privately, he was a driven man trying desperately to hold on to a woman determined to destroy herself. Ultimately, the demons that had driven Lily throughout her life claimed her. Until that night on the tranquil campus of Luther College, I hadn’t realized they had almost claimed Blake as well.

After we found a bench where we could sit while we waited for our daughters, Blake fell silent. I was relieved. I’d heard enough about Cristal to last me for a long while, but it turned out Blake was just gathering his thoughts. Very quickly, he made it clear he needed to talk.

“If it hadn’t been for Cristal, I think I might have killed Lily,” he said. “The first time I went to Cristal’s condo, I was so filled with rage that I could barely function. I’d never been with a prostitute, but I was crazy. Lily had taken off with somebody else – again. This time I saw her actually get into the truck with the man. He was the guy who delivered bottled water to our firm. Of course, Lily, as office manager, had chosen the company. It was called Pure.

“The man’s name was Steve and he was nineteen years old – a bodybuilder and a real smartass. Before that day, when Lily wandered, I’d always been able to force myself into some sort of perspective. I’d think about Gracie and my partners and my friends and my career. But when I saw Lily get into the truck with that cretin… something snapped. I knew I couldn’t take it any more: the humiliation, the rage, the wreckage of everything we were supposed to be to each other. I had never been unfaithful to Lily – not once – but when I thought of her spreading those beautiful legs of hers for that animal…” He swallowed hard. “I wanted her to know how it felt.”

“So you went to a prostitute.”

Blake nodded. “Cristal came highly recommended. She was safe, and she was discreet. She also turned to be my salvation. Everybody knew about Lily, of course, but I never talked to anyone about our marriage – not even Zack, and he’s the one I’m closest to. But from the moment I met Cristal, I knew I could tell her everything, and she would understand.” As he talked, Blake had kept his head down; now he turned and looked into my face. “Cristal made me understand why Lily was so determined to destroy our life together.”

“And what Cristal told you made sense?”

“Given Lily’s past, it did. Cristal said she understood women like Lily because she was like that herself. She said Lily didn’t believe she was worthy of a good life, and so she did everything she could to make sure that she got the kind of life she deserved.”

I remembered how often and how harshly I’d judged Lily. My throat tightened. “Blake, I’m so sorry.”

“You couldn’t have done anything. Lily was determined to destroy us, and she did. At least now I understand why she did it.”

I looked across the lawn. Gracie and Taylor, in their matching Luther hoodies, were running towards us. “Here come the girls.”

“Time to shape up.” He squared his shoulders and tried a smile. “Convincing?”

“You’re in luck,” I said. “It’s dark.”

He gave me a quick glance. “Jo, Zack should know this. I don’t want him thinking Cristal was just another whore.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said.

Gracie barrelled into her father. “Everybody says if it weren’t for the Miraculous Brodnitz Twins, I could have been the game all-star.”

Blake held his daughter’s shoulders. “Life is full of Brodnitz twins,” he said. “But there are rewards for the rest of us too. How about we go to the Milky Way and get some ice cream?” He glanced at me. “Joanne?”

“Why not?” I said. “But I’ll buy. We’ll have to take something for Zack, and he is not a cheap date.”

When we got home, there were two empty liquor bottles by the kitchen door, destined for the recycle, and Zack was putting drink glasses into the dishwasher.

“Looks like you had yourself quite a party,” I said.

“Nobody had any fun,” he said. He spotted the sundae Taylor was carrying. “Is that for me?”

Taylor handed it to him. “Yes, because you missed the game, but the ice cream’s melting, so you’d better eat it fast.”

“That will be no problem at all,” he said. “Thank you, ladies.”

“I’m going to have a shower,” Taylor said. “It was super hot in the gym, but it was a great game, wasn’t it, Jo?”

“It was,” I said. “Why don’t you tell Zack about it?”

Taylor grinned. “Like I know a single thing about basketball. Luther won, and I had a blast. That’s it!” She kissed us goodnight and vanished.

“Hard to believe that’s the girl who made me understand the significance of Monet’s windows,” Zack said, spooning ice cream and butterscotch sauce.

“How did the meeting go?” I asked.

“If the intent was to figure out what the hell’s going on, it was a waste of good Scotch. But you’ll be relieved to hear that our Glenfiddich smoothed the way to some serious male bonding. My group of seven has decided to stick together.”

“Like the seven dwarfs,” I said.

Zack dug into the chocolate ripple. “Are you pissed off?”

“No. Just bemused.”

“If it’s any consolation, these guys are sweating bullets. They’re all guilty as hell when it comes to fidelity to their marriage vows, but they all swear they had nothing to do with Cristal’s death. That said, they’re savvy enough to know that sooner or later the police investigation will turn up their names.”

“You’re all lawyers,” I said. “Someone must have floated the idea of going to the police before the police came to you.”

“Actually, everybody here tonight was a defence lawyer and that means they know how to play the odds. Somebody sent them DVDS of their private activities, which is weird but also legal because there was no threat and no attempt to extort. In short, there is no crime. So the consensus was that the potential loss outweighed the potential gain.”

“So everyone was cool.”

“No. They’re going through hell, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“And the other shoe would be…?”

“Blackmail – like Cristal tried with Ned.”

“But Cristal’s dead.”

“And the DVDS still arrived in our mailboxes. That’s why people are so scared. With blackmail, it’s always a plus to know the blackmailer. That’s how you reach some mutually acceptable accord. Obviously, these men knew Cristal intimately. But because she’s dead, we don’t know who’s calling the shots. I never thought I’d say this, but in a way Ned Osler was lucky. He knew exactly who and what he was dealing with.”

“Did he? Zack, did it never strike you as curious that, out of all of her clients, Cristal chose to blackmail the one who treated her well – the one who brought her books and believed she was, like Henry James’s character Isabel Archer, too good for this world?”

He nodded. “It crossed my mind, but then Cristal was dead, and there were all these other problems, so I guess I just shoved that one aside. Jo, the truth is, there’s a lot I can’t figure out about this. I listened to those guys tonight, and usually when I hear the stories, I get a feel for what’s happening, but not with this one. I’m flummoxed, Ms. Shreve.” He picked up one of Taylor’s black and gold pom-poms and twirled it. “But at least Luther won.”

“And while Luther was winning, Blake was disintegrating,” I said. “After the game, Gracie took Taylor around to introduce her to some of her friends, and Blake and I talked. He’s in terrible shape, Zack. He blames himself for not saving Cristal.”

Zack smacked the pom-pom against his hand. “Shit. Talk about a train wreck you can see coming. Cristal was Lily all over again, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “Blake knows too, but that’s not making the loss any easier. He says Cristal was the only one he could really talk to about Lily.”

“Jesus, Jo, how dumb can he be? Doesn’t he understand that Cristal’s schtick was being whatever the man wanted her to be? That’s why she was able to charge $500 an hour. Remember me telling you that when I saw the tape of Cristal with Ned, I couldn’t believe it was the same woman I’d been with? Well, that was true right across the board. Every guy here tonight talked about what Cristal had been like with him. You wouldn’t have known they were talking about the same woman. She changed her act for every customer. The first night I was with her, she poured me a drink and asked me in that little girl voice of hers what my fantasy was.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said my fantasy was to be able to get it up. She said, ‘So you’re not paying for games, just expertise.’ I agreed, and I got what I paid for. Just the way every guy here tonight got what he paid for. These were commercial transactions – nothing more.”

“Blake doesn’t see it that way. I think he loved her, Zack.”

Zack drew his hand across his eyes. “You know I don’t think I can deal with that tonight. I’m exhausted, Ms. Shreve.”

“Me too,” I said. “Boy, it wouldn’t take many days like this one to make a dozen, would it?”

Zack put his arm around me. “Nope, but at least you and I are headed for the same bed.”

“And it’s going to stay that way,” I said.