Page 40 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“He kind of did that with Coral. She moved herself into his apartment,” I said. “We leave our doors open so she can go back and forth across the hall, but she wants to be with him all the time.” Who could have blamed her?

“That sounds right. He was always the type to jump in and help. Like every ten minutes with August,” she mentioned to her sister, and Liv nodded as I frowned. “Just as long as he doesn’t let commitments to others mess up his life.”

“Ava, you’re one to talk!” Liv protested.

“I know,” she sighed. “That whole division thing is very hard. It’s a cliché but a lot of the time, I do feel like I’m shorting people.”

“Yourself,” her sister said. “You’re shorting yourself.”

“You don’t have to worry about Levi,” I reminded her. “At least you can let go of that.”

“How is his job going? How is it really going?” Liv asked. “He says, ‘Great, best thing I ever did,’ but what’s the truth?”

“He doesn’t like it much,” I confessed. “He won’t say it to me, either, but I can tell.”

“You can tell,” Ava echoed, and to my surprise, she smiled. “I’m glad that you know him so well,” she explained. “I’m glad he has you.”

He did, and I was going to figure out this issue with August, too.

It was clear from how his sisters were talking that they weren’t aware of the latest developments, even though Levi had been discussing his friend’s problems with Hunt, Liv’s husband.

That guy was keeping it to himself just as Levi wasn’t sharing his feelings about his job.

“Levi needs to do something creative,” Liv announced, and I thought about his novel.

He often worked on it—maybe not as much as he would have liked, since we were spending more time together and there was always Coral to deal with, and now the problems with his best friend.

They were in a lot more contact lately, talking and hanging out together, which was probably good for August and did make Levi feel easier about his well-being.

They’d been spending time at their old hang-out spot in the park and also at his apartment, where I had been able to hear them laughing.

Apparently, Coral was also a fan of the guy, because Levi had reported that she cuddled with him, too.

“Your brother may be too busy to work on his creative stuff, but I’m going do something about it,” I said, which couldn’t have made much sense to them. It was my responsibility, though, because he would have a lot more free time if it wasn’t for me and my cat.

It was nice to see them both and it persuaded me that Ava and I were forming good bonds.

Maybe Liv and I would be able to form some, too?

I was also glad to hear about the existing bonds that Levi had with his siblings and I wished, not for the first time, that I could have experienced that myself.

I did have the half-brothers and sisters out in Oregon, but it was possible that they didn’t even know about my existence.

Our mutual father hadn’t wanted anything to do with me or my mother, but after reading her emails to him, I didn’t blame him like I had when I was a child and alone.

She had threatened to do all kinds of things to him and to his wife—not just to expose what had happened in the hotel room (the act that had resulted in me), but also to make their lives miserable by telling his boss, his colleagues, his parents, and everyone else that he was a miserable cheater.

He’d stopped responding to her and after a while, her messages to him had petered out, too.

As far as I was aware, she hadn’t followed through on those threats to reveal their affair, but who knew what else was in those weird old computer discs and all her other piles of stuff?

Maybe there was more that didn’t fit into the narrative she’d spun in the fourth chapter of Dimidiate , which was called “Disassociation.” She’d talked about leaving the father of her child because he refused to allow her to pursue professional success, that he had tried to stifle her and her academic aspirations.

Of course, that had been a lie, as had many other of the parts of the book.

I had read chapter seven, “Dissonance,” in total disbelief.

She’d told the story of her wealthy family and their insistence on outdated gender and social norms, and how she’d left all that behind to live the life she chose despite their consistent efforts to draw her back into the fold.

Actually, I had found out about ten years before (when I’d had the wherewithal to look them up) that my grandparents were deceased and they had both worked in a factory.

“Dissonance” had been an appropriate title, but not in the way my mother had meant.

Levi came over to my house later that afternoon. “Hi,” he said as he entered, Coral trailing behind him. “I heard that lunch was good, and that you managed to talk Ava out of another volunteer job. Thank you for that.”

“Liv and I both convinced her not to be the room parent,” I said. “Jeff is going to take over until they can find a permanent replacement. And Liv bullied her into leaving a message with the orthopedist to set up another appointment about the pain in her shoulder.”

“Did you tell her to leave me alone, too? Because she texted about pulling back and letting me live a little.” He sat in my old desk chair. “What are you doing?”

“I didn’t say to leave you alone, but I described how you were succeeding on your own, without her supervision,” I said first, and then looked at the box in front of me that was the answer to his second question. “This is what’s left of my mother, all her decades of work.”

“It’s not a very big box.”

“This is all that I took out of the mess,” I explained.

There had been so much stuff that I was overwhelmed when I came home.

The whole situation had been very overwhelming.

My mother and I hadn’t been in touch very often but then my birthday had passed without a word from her.

She had always sent a letter around that time—not always relating to me, but I had been glad that she seemed to remember the date.

Then that year, I hadn’t received anything.

Coral walked over now and I looked at her in confusion as she rubbed her head against me. “What’s happening?” I whispered.

“She’s being affectionate,” Levi said. I cautiously petted her, and I heard her purr. She stayed and let me touch her for quite a while before she wandered toward the bedroom.

“What are you going to do with her stuff?” he asked, pointing to the box.

“I was just considering that. I know there’s at least one unpublished book in here because I remember when it was rejected, and there’s a lot of research into the blues singer I told you about.”

“If you’re considering the idea of giving it to that PhD candidate, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give her the time of day,” he said. “Are you sitting there getting sad?”

“Yes. I always do when I think about my mother.”

“What are you looking for right now?”

I stared at the mess in the box. What was I trying to find? “I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s in here, anyway. I wish I hadn’t seen that Pandora yesterday because she made me think about it all over again, and I don’t want to.”

Levi held out his hands. “It’s a beautiful night. We should go for a walk and talk about Hernán.”

“What about him?” I asked as he pulled me to my feet. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, but he told me some news today. He’s going out on a date with his ex-wife.”

“What?” I clutched his hands in shock.

“He didn’t mention it to you or to his daughter because he thinks you’ll be upset, but he wanted to tell someone and he wanted my perspective.”

“Is your perspective that he shouldn’t go out with her? Because that’s the only one that makes sense. His heart was broken! He told me so many stories about missing her and being sad because he was alone.”

Levi carefully fitted the collar around Coral’s neck. “How does that feel?” he asked her, and she purred. “Need your shoes?” he asked me next.

“His ex-wife was the one who was insisting that Hernán stay away when she came to visit Lucía,” I said, and I took my shoes from him. “Thank you.”

“Apparently, she wanted to avoid him because she still had feelings. They saw each other two weeks ago and sparks flew again.”

“But she left him,” I reminded Levi and Coral. They were heading out of the front door, and he was tugging me along. “He was heartbroken.”

“Remember that we were only hearing half of the story,” he told me. “Yes, Hernán was heartbroken but maybe his ex-wife was, too. He said over and over that it was his fault, and he didn’t deserve her.”

“He was only being a gentleman.”

“Maybe she was at fault but now she’s changed her mind, or maybe he really was the problem.” He grinned. “Don’t give me that look! I’m offering it as a possibility. People tend to misread and rewrite reality when they break up.”

“You’re right.”

“Am I? A first for me,” he mused.

“You were wrong.”

“I’m a walking contradiction.”

“I mean that you were correct about how people misinterpret their relationship failures,” I said, “and you were wrong about why yours didn’t work. Mary Evelyn couldn’t have thought that you were clueless—"

“Did I say that?”

“You sister did,” I answered. “But you told me yourself that Mary Evelyn didn’t love you, and both of those things are crazy. Maybe she was actually crazy, if she was cheating on you.” She must have been totally out of her mind to let him go.

“I’m a different person than I was a year ago when things were going south between us,” he said.

“I’m living on my own, I’m working at a steady job, and I’m walking a cat the size of a mountain lion on a leash.

Have you noticed the neighbors coming to their windows?

Mary Evelyn and I weren’t good together, but maybe Hernán and María del Carmen are. He sounds happy about things.”

“Well.” I thought. “Well, if he’s happy, then I guess it’s ok.”

“He asked me for advice on new dating moves.”

“What does that mean?”

“He said that he’s been out of the game for a while and he’s rusty,” Levi explained. “He wanted to know if I had any tips for wooing her.”

“What did you say?”

“Stuff like, ‘Talk over her when she’s trying to say something, especially if it’s important.

Walk in front and let doors close in her face.

Always show up late to pick her up and stay on your phone the whole time you’re out.

’ Those things always worked for me. It’s why my nickname in high school was ‘Romeo.’”

“You told me that you called your other friend ‘Godzilla’ but he was actually a weakling,” I pointed out.

“You and your damn transcripts,” he said, and laughed. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes. I still wish Pandora hadn’t shown up, though. That stuff about my mother is in the past and I don’t need to think about it.”

“Then why did you keep the box?”

I looked up at him and didn’t have an answer.

“I do one move that works,” Levi told me and pretended to yawn, holding Coral’s leash with one hand and stretching the other over his head. He then wrapped it around my waist and drew me to him. “The old ‘yawn turns into hug.’”

“You can hug me whenever, no tricks needed,” I said, and looked up at him.

“Good.” He looked back at me for a moment and then gently kissed me, too. “How about that?”

“That’s…” I had to catch my breath. “That’s also good,” I answered.

“We should do it again,” he suggested, “and give the neighbors watching at their windows something to see besides this catamount. What—shit!”

Because at that point, Coral slipped her collar and ran, and we put on a different show as we chased after her.