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  “Someone recommended this place to me,” I said and her smile was quick. A flash, like the memory of the one kiss we shared, and then it was gone. “Truth is, I’ve never had any. I mean, other than what my grandmother cooked and I imagine that was pretty tame compared to…” I gestured toward the black woman behind the cash register, who had to be ninety if she was a day.

  “Mama is the best,” Zoe said and the woman behind the cash—Mama, I deduced—broke into a wide warm smile.

  “Hi, sugar,” she said and Zoe let herself get pulled into a monstrous hug. It looked good; I couldn’t lie. I was tired and worn-out, and getting folded into that giant hug seemed like a pretty good way to spend a few seconds.

  “This is Carter,” Zoe said, turning to introduce me.

  “I know who he is,” Mama said, and as she tucked her arms up under her shelf of breasts I prepared myself for more deadbeat daddy stuff.

  “Mama,” Zoe whispered. “Carter’s not the father.”

  “Oh, any fool could see that,” Mama said. “Not sure what’s going on there, but Mr. O’Neill, you got my vote if you gonna be running for mayor. We need to be cleaning up these communities, like you been trying to do.”

  I smiled, pleased and relieved. Zoe looked stunned, as if shocked that anyone believed in my message.

  “I appreciate that, Ma’am.”

  “Call me Mama. Now, what you two having?”

  “I’ll have what she’s having,” I said.

  Zoe ordered catfish and greens, and she reached for her bag to pay, but I put down a twenty.

  “Eat with me,” I said, the words popping out of my mouth, inspired by the strain around her eyes and the weary slouch to her shoulders.

  She seemed unsure. As if saying yes might change our arrangement.

  “It’s just dinner,” I said, feeling oddly slighted.

  She shook her head. “It’s not, Carter,” she said, so forthright and honest it shook me. “Not for me. I like you. I need to go with my head on this one. And my head says dinner would be a mistake.”

  “When have you ever gone with your head, Zoe?” I didn’t know much about her, but that she lived through her heart was obvious to the world.

  “That’s the problem,” she said. “That’s always the problem.”

  “Then how about coffee,” I said. “Thursday?”

  “More reputation repair work?”

  If that’s all I could get.

  You’re pathetic, I told myself, but myself wasn’t listening.

  “Yes,” I said. “We can meet at the coffee shop outside city hall.”

  Mama slid big takeaway boxes onto the counter.

  “Here y’all are,” she said. “Have at it.”

  Zoe took her bag, swinging it up over her shoulder, and then took the food.

  “Zoe,” I said. “Let me help.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Really.”

  She wasn’t going to let me help. She wasn’t going to eat with me. She was shutting me right out.

  Just business.

  She’d told me—I shouldn’t be so hurt or surprised. But I was.

  “Well—” her smile was sharp and false, a knife through my stomach “—I guess…I’ll see you on Thursday.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  And she was gone.

  ZOE

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, I climbed the stairs to my loft, feeling harried and fat and more pregnant than any one woman should. My head hurt as though I had an emotional hangover from seeing Carter. He’d looked faded, somehow, and I’d wanted to ask him what was wrong. I wanted to ask him about his day, tell him about mine. About the two-year-old in my toddler class who’d told the whole room about peeing in the potty.

  But I’d done the right thing, saying no to dinner. I was proud of myself. If only proud gave me the same warm tingles that Carter did.

  Distracted by my mixed emotions, I nearly collided with a man standing right in front of my door.

  “Ohmygod,” I yelped, leaping back and bumping into the wall. My heart thundered so hard against my chest I saw stars. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m so sorry,” the man said, holding his hands out. He seemed contrite, but I’d been bombarded by people who weren’t what they seemed these days. “I really am, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  The guy had kind of a puppy dog face, soft cheeks and heavy eyes. Brown hair that was a little shaggy.

  The kind of guy that shocked neighbors said seemed so nice, so unassuming, after all the dead bodies were found in his apartment.

  I slipped my hand into my bag for the Mace attached to my key ring. I was a woman alone in the world—I wasn’t a fool.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Not to get sprayed with Mace,” he said, nodding down to the hand in my bag. His smile was lopsided and sweet, and it almost made me forget that he’d somehow broken into my building and had been lying in wait for me.

  He reached for his pocket and I whipped my Mace up and out of the bag. “I’m getting my ID,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “My neighbors are really nosy,” I said in warning. “One peep out of me and all these doors will open.”

  I didn’t say that all my neighbors were about eighty years old and he could overpower them with one hand.

  “I’m a reporter. My name is Jim Blackwell.”

  Now I recognized him. He was the reporter with the cell phone camera in that meeting. He was the reason I was in the papers.

  “I know who you are,” I snapped. “And if you don’t want to get maced on principle, then you’ve got about five seconds to get the hell out of here.”

  “Hear me out—”

  “Five. Four.”

  “The photographers following you have gotten out of hand,” he said. “And I’m here to give you a chance to clear the air. I swear, once you do that, the photographers will leave you alone.”

  Alone? Alone was good. Alone was heaven.

  “You stopped counting, so can I assume you’re interested?”

  “You can,” I said, lowering the Mace. “Aren’t you usually a city hall writer?” I asked. “The identity of my baby’s father seems a little beneath you. Because it’s not Carter O’Neill.”

  “I was pretty sure.” His smirk made my skin crawl.

  “So…there’s not much else to talk about.”

  “You could talk about Carter,” he said, and something in his voice, the electric expectation on his face, made me nervous.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I know you don’t have insurance and having a baby is expensive. I’d be happy to pay you—”

  “For what exactly?”

  “For…” He sighed. “I don’t know, whatever you might find out about Carter. About his family. His mother.”

  I nearly dropped my bag.

  “Are you asking me to spy for you?”

  “I’m asking you to do your civic duty.”

  I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry. But, wow, that’s…ah…that’s a stretch. Civic duty?”

  “Look, Carter O’Neill is up to no good. His whole family is involved with this gem theft—”

  “He’s a good guy,” I said, not entirely sure why I needed to defend Carter. Maybe because he defended me to the photographers the night of our date. Or maybe because he looked so alone inside Mama’s. Or maybe because I was a total sucker. “I mean as far as city officials go, he wants to help—”

  “Himself,” he said, his puppy dog eyes growing razor sharp.

  Everything in me recoiled, shrinking away from the man, and he must have sensed it because he stepped away.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said, that charming half smile back on his lips. He nodded down to the card in my fingers. “If you want all this to end, just give me a call. I’m sure you don’t want it to get worse.”

  The threat hung in the air like a bad smell and I watched him wave and walk away. That man was a
snake, and as bad as my life was right now, I wasn’t going to make it worse by lying down with snakes.

  8

  CARTER

  * * *

  “The mayor would like to see you,” Gloria, my receptionist, said as I stormed past her desk early Wednesday morning.

  “He’s in already?” I asked, wishing I’d had a bit more time for damage control this morning before meeting with Bill. On the front page of today’s paper, Jim Blackwell had done his best to make the donation from Lafayette Corp. seem like the administration was selling its soul. And I was the devil sealing the deal.

  “He’s been here since seven,” Gloria whispered. “His assistant said he’s ticked with a capital t.”

  “Great,” I muttered. I tossed my raincoat and briefcase across the small couch inside my door and headed back out toward the office at the end of the hallway.

  “Good luck,” Gloria called out after me.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. I was going to need it.

  Julie, the Mayor’s assistant, winced when she saw me. “Go on in. He’s expecting you,” she said.

  I took a deep breath outside the door, feeling as if I was about to face a firing squad.

  “Mayor?” I asked, stepping into the elegant inner office. The desk, the shelves that lined all the walls, were made of thick, polished oak and the sun bounced off them and made the whole room glow with a warm light.

  The river and the highway flowed past the windows.

  It was a beautiful room to be fired in, if it came to that.

  “Morning, Carter,” Bill said, spinning in his chair to face me. In the early-morning light, the mayor looked his age—which was closer to seventy than anyone wanted to admit.

  But his eyes were still sharp and his mind the sharpest this city had seen. He’d served as mayor for two terms in the eighties and had run again after the Marcuzzi administration, in an effort to pull the city back from the brink. Now, he was a year away from the end of his term.

  “Sir, I assume you want to talk about the article regarding the Lafayette deal.”

  Bill flipped over the front page of the paper spread across his giant desk. “Jim Blackwell is riding you hard these days, Carter.”

  “I know,” I said. “But the deal is clean. Lafayette is clean.”

  “I know, son,” he said with a sigh and a small smile. He stood, his thin body outlined by the sun like a halo. “I know. You know. Eric knows. The city knows. There are always going to be naysayers. Always going to be articles. It’s the way it is.”

  “So…?” I tried to find a point in this.

  “I’m leaving after this term. I’m done. Too old for this nonsense.”

  I’d known as much, but the words had never been said out loud. “The city will miss you,” I said, and Bill laughed.

  “You’re a politician all the way down to your underwear.” Bill eyed me shrewdly and I felt the need to tip my head back and puff out my chest like the troops in front of Patton. “I’d endorse you in a heartbeat. But you haven’t announced your position, and I’m wondering why?”

  I might not be right for the job, I thought, the words beating at my lips, words that had never seen the light of day before. And they never would have seen the light of day—ever—if it weren’t for this perfect storm of my mother being back in my life and Jim Blackwell being around to witness it.

  “Carter?” Bill asked, looking into my eyes. I found the scrutiny uncomfortable—found any scrutiny uncomfortable, and I was tired of being uncomfortable in my own skin.

  “I’m worried about my family,” I blurted.

  “Ah, yes, your disreputable family tree.”

  “Disreputable.” Understatement of the year.

  “Everyone’s got secrets, son. Hell, my father had a boyfriend, and in the eighties, that was a huge liability. But right now, your family is the least of your worries.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re good for this town,” Bill said, and the compliment filled me with pride. “No doubt about it, but right now—you’d be a shit mayor.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “The Lafayette deal is a good piece of work. And the article in the paper is just an article in the paper—there will be millions of them. But this—” he snapped open the paper to the back inside page and held it up to me “—is going to be the end of you.”

  I was sucker punched. Gut shot.

  “Holy…” I breathed, taking the paper from the mayor. Zoe stared up at me from a black-and-white picture in the local section. The sign for a free clinic was in the background—she’d clearly been ambushed coming out of her doctor’s appointment yesterday.

  The look on her face was pure panic. Pure fear.

  She was scared and it was my fault.

  “I understand that this woman was supposed to help your public image,” Bill said, “after all that Deadbeat Daddy nonsense.”

  “She was. I mean, she is.”

  “If you want to be mayor, it’s time to act like it. No comment isn’t working anymore.”

  I nodded and folded the paper, hiding Zoe’s face because I couldn’t take it.

  “I’ll take care of this,” I said.

  “When you walked into my office two years ago, I had you pegged as a fighter. But the last few months you’ve been turning yourself into a politician, which is too bad, because politicians ruined this city. We need someone who will fight for what they want and for what is right.”

  What I want, I thought. Fight for what I want. It was a foreign concept, but I was tired of lying back and waiting for my family to take away the things I wanted.

  I wanted to be mayor and I wanted Zoe.

  I was ready to fight.

  I stormed back to my office, a whirlwind of purpose finally forcing me into action. If I wanted to be mayor, I needed to fight for it.

  It was time for me to choose my own fate, stop being dictated to by my family. By the mistakes they made.

  “Everything okay?” Gloria asked, half standing from behind her desk as I strode by.

  “Great,” I said and, surprisingly, I meant it. Dormant action burned in me, waiting to get out. “Get me Lafayette Corp. on the phone.”

  “You bet.”

  I kicked the door shut behind me and checked my watch; only quarter to eight, too early to call Zoe. I didn’t want to start her day with a phone call about this garbage.

  That was assuming Zoe would even take my call. I’d been tempted to call her over a dozen times since Sunday night at Mama’s, but had resisted each time. Now, after this incident outside the doctor’s, who knew if she’d ever want to talk to me again.

  I took the folded paper out from under my arm and smoothed it out across my desk and felt my rib cage shrink.

  The fear in Zoe’s eyes made me sick to my stomach. The way she had her hands crossed across her belly as if to protect the baby made me want to murder someone.

  She looked trapped. Scared.

  There wasn’t a story attached, just a caption: Mayor Pro Tem’s Mistress Uses Free Clinic. But I knew who was behind all this continued interest in Zoe—Jim Blackwell. It had to be. No one but him would still care.

  Zoe and I were an ice-cold story.

  Suddenly, despite the fact that Zoe had been the one to stand up on that chair, I felt wholly responsible for that look on her lovely face.

  This had to change. Right now.

  The intercom buzzed and I punched the button.

  “Janet from Lafayette Corp. on line three.”

  “Got it,” I said and put the phone on speaker.

  “Hi, Janet,” I said, sitting back in my chair.

  “Well, hello there, Mr. O’Neill. What can I do for you?”

  I smiled at the woman’s Southern peach accent. Janet ran that office like it was D-day every day, but she never broke a sweat. “I need a favor.”

  “I specialize in favors.”

  I laughed, feeling better every moment. I had control again and control
felt good. Right. “I know you do. Can you send an invitation to that casino fundraiser you’re throwing on Saturday to Jim Blackwell at the Gazette?”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. O’Neill. This morning’s article in the paper didn’t make him any friends around here.”

  “Here neither, Janet, trust me. But I want his to see there’s nothing to hide. He can ask all the questions he has, make all the accusations he wants in plain view.”

  “Ah—you’re keeping your friends close but your enemies closer?”

  “Now you’re quoting The Godfather, Janet?” I asked. “Is there any way I can get you to come work for me?”

  Janet laughed. “No sir, but maybe we could get you to come work for us.”

  “Not likely, Janet. Sorry.”

  “Well, it’s worth a shot. I’ll send an invite out right now.”

  “Thank you,” I said and hung up.

  I dialed the Gazette myself and was routed by machine to Blackwell’s voice mail.

  “Stop harassing innocent women, Blackwell,” I said. “Makes you look desperate. You have questions? Want to talk? Fine. I’ll talk. Call my office.”

  I hung up, and riding a serious upswing in adrenaline, I dialed Zoe’s number.

  “Hello?” A woman answered on the second ring, but it wasn’t Zoe.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Zoe.”

  “Who is calling?”

  “Carter O’N—”

  I jerked the phone away from my ear, but I could still hear the blistering tirade loud and clear. “Ma’am,” I said when she stopped to catch her breath. “Ma’am—”

  “Don’t you ma’am me, boy,” she said and I blinked. Only Margot called me boy, and I guessed she was the only one with the right. “This is Penny, Zoe’s mother, and I have spent the last twelve hours trying to comfort a hysterical pregnant woman.”

  Guilt squeezed my brain. “I just want to talk to her.”

  “Haven’t you done enough?” she asked, and the truth felt like stepping into an ice bath.

  I’m making it right, I thought, resolve a bright light in my chest.