Page 110 of Hard to Kill
JIMMY AND ESPOSITO’S TRIP back over to McKenzie’s house turns out to be another waste of time. No Tesla. No lights on in the house. Nobody home.
“I’ll find him,” Jimmy tells me when he calls in the morning to give me the update.
“I never doubt you.”
“Never too late to start,” he says.
An hour later, I’m staring out the kitchen window at the feeder, telling myself that if I just close my eyes for a moment, when I open them at least one hummingbird will have come back.
Instead, the phone rings. Brigid is calling from Switzerland.
“Tell me you’re being released with time served and are coming home,” I say.
“Not yet.”
Her voice sounds small, flat, in a way that has nothing to do with the distance between us. I know this voice from my sister, have known it my whole life; don’t like it and never have.
“It turns out I’m not nearly as good at remission as I thought I was,” she says.
“Talk to me, sis.”
“I’m coming to the end of one last triple-shot jolt of chemo,”she says. “If it doesn’t work, they want to discuss a stem-cell transplant.”
“I’m coming over there.”
“No,” she says in her big-sister voice, “you are not.”
“Not your call.”
“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. But my body, my choice.”
I remember using the same line on Jimmy the other day, trying to be funny.
This isn’t. I don’t say anything because I’m afraid I might start crying, that’s the last thing I want her to hear, as if I’m feeling sorry formyself about my sister’s current circumstances. And making this about how I feel. People doing that has pissed me off my whole life. Martin used to do it. He’d be talking about a waitress going through a tough time and before long he’d be complaining how now he had to fire her and how badly he felt about that.
“Don’t get crazy until we see how the chemo works. I’m almost done with this cycle.”
“Isn’t it a little late in the game for you to be telling me not to be crazy?” I ask.
“It must be the drugs talking,” she says. “And how about we change the subject, and I get to ask you howyou’refeeling?”
“Nothing to see here. I’m actually feeling pretty great.”
“I don’t want to break this to you,” Brigid says. “But you were never a good liar.”
“Wait. Do you really think I got to be one of the top criminal attorneys in the country by beingtruthful?”
We both manage to laugh, even if it doesn’t last long.
“I always thought it was you who put the criminal in criminal defense attorney.”
“Only when defending one of your old boyfriends.”
“Be nice.”
“Your old boyfriend makes that extremely difficult sometimes.”
I talk about my own upcoming chemo without telling her about my fainting spell at the Bell & Anchor. Brigid knowing about that won’t make her feel any better or will only make me feel worse. Basically, I’m still playing the role I’ve always played in our family: