THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 84

He stood up when he saw me.

"Sorry for coming without calling," he said. "Henry said it was fine."

"It is fine," I said. "Sit down."

Lily came past me into the room and looked at Brandon.

"Hello Brandon," she said.

"Hey Lily," he said. He had learned over the past months exactly how to talk to Lily directly and without talking down to her. Lily responded well to that. She had no patience for people who used the voice adults sometimes used on children like they were slightly hard of hearing.

"I got a flower at the market," she said and showed him the single stem.

"Nice," he said. Genuinely.

She accepted this and went to find Mrs Park. She always knew the right time to do something and she must have sensed that it was time for me to go back to work even on a Saturday.

Brandon sat back down.

Henry excused himself quietly the way he did when he had read the room and decided his presence was not required.

I sat across from Brandon.

"What is it?" I asked.

He put his cup down on the table.

"I wanted to check in before the trial starts," he said. "About security arrangements for the days you will be at the courthouse."

"Patricia has a team," I said.

"I know," he said. "I have been in contact with them. I just want to make sure we are coordinated." He paused. "There will be press outside the courthouse every day. Significant press. Once the trial starts and the details come out it is going to get bigger before it gets smaller."

"I know," I said.

"And Daniel," he said. "He is in custody but his hearing for the assault and extortion charges is the same week as Victoria's trial. Different courthouse but same week. There may be people connected to him who are not happy about things."

"Is there a specific threat?" I asked.

"No specific threat," he said. "Just the general situation of a family whose world is falling apart and whose members have already demonstrated they are willing to do things they should not do." He looked at me directly. "I just want to be careful."

I thought about Doyle. About the woman at the school gate. About Daniel showing up at my building.

Brandon was right to be careful.

"What do you need from me?" I asked.

"Your schedule for Monday to Friday," he said. "Exact times. Routes. Who is with you."

We spent the next forty minutes going through it. Henry came back at some point with fresh tea and sat quietly making notes. Brandon was thorough in the way he had become thorough over the past months. Not showy about it. Just careful and prepared and thinking ahead.

When we finished he stood up and picked up his jacket.

"Brandon," I said.

He stopped.

"Thank you," I said. "For everything you have done this year. Not just today. All of it."

He looked at me.

There was a moment between us that had the specific quality of moments between two people who started as enemies and ended up somewhere neither of them had expected.

"You gave me something worth protecting," he said simply. "That matters."

He left.

I sat in the sitting room after he went.

Henry sat across from me.

"He has become a good man," Henry said quietly.

"He was probably always there," I said. "He just needed the right environment."

Henry looked at me. "That is true of most people," he said.

When Sunday arrived, it was like every other Sunday but not to me.

Fenwick Street.

I woke up and immediately thought about it the way I had been waking up and thinking about it every Sunday since the first time. I did not try to stop the thought anymore. I just let it be there.

I got dressed. Not in the careful way of the first time when I changed my shirt three times. Just in the ordinary way of someone getting ready to go somewhere they want to go.

Lily was at the breakfast table when I came downstairs.

She looked at me, then she looked at my shirt.

She looked at my face again but said nothing. I knew she had a lit on her mind but she just didn't know how to voice them or maybe she didn't want to.

She went back to her cereal.

Henry handed me a coffee for the road.

"The blue shirt again," he observed without looking up.

"It is a different blue shirt," I said.

"Yes," he said. "Of course it is."

I looked at Lily who made a face at me. She seemed to be trying so hard not to say anything.

“Say what you want.”

“Brother, go change that shirt.”

It was a sudden outburst but I did change the shirt to a red one which Lily still didn't like but couldn't complain about because I might change my mind and wear the blue one.

Yemi was already there when I arrived.

We sat at the same corner table near the window. She wore a dark coat and had her hair down. Cup of something hot already in her hands.

She looked up when the door opened and the specific thing happened in her face that I had been thinking about all week. That quiet settling. Like she had been slightly unfinished before I walked in and was now complete.

I sat down across from her.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," I said.

The coffee shop was warm and smelled like it always smelled. Good coffee and something baking and the particular warmth of a room full of Sunday morning people who were in no hurry to be anywhere else.

The waiter came and I ordered coffee. Yemi already had hers.

We looked at each other across the small table.

"How are you feeling about tomorrow?" she asked.

"Ready," I said. "And strange but definitely ready."

She smiled at that. "Both at the same time."

"Yes," I said. "Both at the same time."

She wrapped both hands around her cup.

___________________

"Tell me something that has nothing to do with the trial," she said.

I looked at her.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean tell me something ordinary," she said. "Something small. Something from this week that had nothing to do with Victoria or the legal case or any of it." She looked at me steadily. "I want to hear about your ordinary week before tomorrow makes everything not ordinary again."

I thought about it. I guess she was trying to make me feel comfortable and I liked that. She was thinking about my mind and well-being.

Then I told her about the market.

I told her about how Lily appeared at my bedroom door with her coat on and her boots on the wrong feet insisting she had done it on purpose. About walking through the Saturday morning market with her hand in mine while she studied ceramic animals and gave her verdict on each one. About the flower stall woman and the single extra stem she gave Lily at the end.

About Lily carrying that flower all the way home with the dignity of someone receiving a long overdue honour.

Yemi listened to all of it with her full attention. Her face was warm and open while I talked. She asked a question about the flower stall woman. She laughed about the boots.

When I finished she was quiet for a moment.

"She is extraordinary," she said. Not for the first time. But it sounded different each time she said it because each time it was in response to a different specific thing Lily had done. “She really does take care of you.”

"She is," I said. “She does. I truly love her for that.”

"She got those flowers for your mother," Yemi said.

"Yes."

"Without you asking."

"Without me asking."

Yemi was quiet.

"She carries people in her heart very completely," she said. "People she has never even met."

"Yes," I said. "She does."

We sat with that for a moment.