Verity

As I breathed out, wisps of soft, black hair flittered up and down on the back of Alek's neck. Sometime during the night, he'd rolled over and I'd nestled against his backside, his bare skin a reassuring warmth. Now, in the light of mid-morning, I had an opportunity to examine my decision and found that I had no regrets. Even if it all fell apart today, even if the conflict of what our parents had done when we were children, and the deaths that resulted from their actions made us fall back into our old patterns of distrust, last night had been a moment of peace. We'd granted each other grace, and so much more; I would never be ashamed of that decision.

We had set aside the bad and focused on the moment, letting pleasure and connection guide us. I sighed, running a finger down the center of his spine. This had been the reset that I needed.

Awakened by my actions, Alek twisted, his eyes opening and a playful smile forming. "Hi there," he said, folding me back into his arms. "How are you feeling?"

How was I feeling? I could write a song about that.

A bomb fell

Aimed at my heart

but you shielded me

The earth trembled

I was ground zero

But when the smoke cleared

I still stood

With you next to me.

"I'm still here." The temptation to unblock him from my thoughts, to let him feel what I felt, hit hard. But he didn't want that, and I wasn't sure it was the best thing either. Not yet. Some walls had come down last night, but not that one. "What about you?"

He hugged me a bit tighter. "I keep thinking. About everything. We'd found where our answers lived and now... we walked away with nothing."

I eyed the shorts I'd worn yesterday, tossed on the back of a chair on the opposite side of my bed. "Well... not exactly nothing."

Extracting myself from him elicited a groan. "Don't leave!"

"I'm not." I grabbed the intake form from my back pocket and hopped back onto the bed. "I may have stolen this yesterday."

He took the form from me and unfolded it. "Shit, here it is." He scanned through it. "You already told me about it but it's still so weird to see our names typed out."

"It's probably not very useful since it doesn't give a whole lot of details. But it's one piece of evidence they lost to us. That feels like a small victory."

"It is." He turned the form over then went back and read the front again. "What about trying to find the person who filled out this form. Maybe she would have some answers for us."

"What person?"

He pointed to the very bottom. I froze on the name, my mind taking it in but refusing to accept it. The universe really wanted to fuck with me hard lately.

Alek saw my expression. "What's wrong?"

"The name of the intake nurse."

He read it out loud. "Val Marquez. What about it?"

I hopped off the bed again and retrieved my phone, sending a text while Alek stared at me expectantly.

"Do you want to have brunch with Flora today?" I asked.

"I was kind of thinking maybe it could just be to two of us today." He patted the bed and put his dimples on display. "Maybe we wouldn't even need to leave the room."

Any other time, that would have been tempting. "Let me rephrase that. You're going to want to have brunch with Flora today."

"Why is that?"

"Because Val Marquez is the name of Flora's mother."

#

The forty-five-minute wait for a table at Dalia's was worth it. The smell of frying bacon and baked carbs made my mouth water. It had been ages since I'd indulged in bacon, but that prohibition was about to come to an end.

"Why don't you use your star power?" Alek asked. "I bet a table would miraculously materialize."

"And skip ahead of people who are waiting fairly for their turn? Is that who you think I am?"

"I didn't mean it as a negative. It's a perk of celebrity, right?"

"Sometimes it happens," I said, trying to sound nonchalant. In fact, it almost always happened. Today was more of an exception than a rule. "The hostess will recognize me despite my efforts to go incognito." I tapped my pink baseball cap and shades. "But I'm trying to check my privilege. I can wait to eat along with the rest of the peons."

"I don't know what to make of you sometimes."

"Because I'm not as horrible and vapid as you thought I was going to be?"

"Well..."

"Or because I'm not a homicidal beast whenever the moon is full?"

A couple in their sixties waiting near us turned their heads at that. Alek pulled me into a corner. "Keep your voice down or all of LA is going to find out about... you know."

Just then, the hostess called, "Luna Wolf." Alek shake his head at me.

"What? I couldn't give them my real name."

Flora showed up just after we'd been seated, bearing a bright smile and casual demeanor that was not going to last. I bit my tongue and gave her a hug. Alek and I had talked strategy beforehand. Flora may know everything or nothing. We needed to tell her what we were looking for without giving away too much.

Less than a minute after we'd been seated, before the coffee had been served, Flora looked back and forth between the two of us. "Something you want to tell me?"

We were diving right into it, then.

"Well," I said, "I don't quite know how to say this..."

"You see," Alek said at the same time, "What happened was..."

"Holy shit, you two!" Flora clasped her hands together. "Finally! You don't know how long I've been waiting for you to figure everything out."

"Wait... so you've known all this time?" I frowned. My best friend for all these years. How had she hidden this from me?

"Why do you look like that?" she asked. "Isn't this a good thing?"

"How the hell is it a good thing?"

She waggled a finger between Alek and me. "Are you saying it wasn't good? Because I don't believe it. You're both young and hot and clearly were into each other even when you refused to admit it."

I leaned back in my chair. The tension in Alek's shoulders noticeably lessoned. "I just meant..." My brain scrambled for a plausible sounding excuse, "I hate it when you figure out things before I do. Now you get to say I told you so."

Flora laughed. "For the record, I did tell you so. Several times. So, like... are you two officially together or what?"

I glanced at Alek, who didn't look like he was anymore prepared to respond to that than I was.

"We didn't actually invite you here to tell you about last night."

"Which," Alek chimed in, "For the record was amazing. Wasn't it, Verity?"

"Moving on..." I put my hand on top of his. He liked having his ego stroked, among other things, but I wasn't in the mood. "Flora, we have something more serious to bring up with you."

She straightened her back. "Okay, what is it?"

"Do you remember how we met?"

"Of course! My mom brought me to meet your mom for a playdate in the park. We both liked the swings the best."

"Right. I remember that too. But how did our moms know each other?"

Flora brought her hand to her chin and gazed at the ceiling. "I don't...I can't remember. Does it matter?"

"It might. I think I might know where they met."

"Well then, why are you asking me?"

"I want to know if I'm right or not. Do you remember where your mom worked at the time?"

Flora shrugged. "She never stayed in one place for too long back then."

"She was a nurse though, right?"

"Why all the questions?" Flora shifted in her seat, the discomfort seeping into the creases on her forehead. "This feels so random."

"But it's not," Alek said, his voice tinged with annoyance. "That's the point."

I tightened my grip on his hand. Anger wasn't going to get him anywhere, but another tactic might.

"I'm exploring the time around when my mother passed."

"Oh!" Flora nodded. "That's right, we met only a few weeks before she died. But what does my mom have to do with that."

I paused to consider my next words. For now, Alek and I had agreed to focus on my mom and leave our own involvement out of the mix. "I found out recently that she had been receiving treatments before her death from a clinic, and we think your mom worked there. That's how the two of them met."

"Your mom was my mom's patient. Are you serious?"

"Very. I'd like to talk to your mom about it. Maybe she remembers something."

"If she did work there, it wasn't for very long. She's never brought it up before."

"Sometimes people don't like to talk about painful things. If she'd become friendly with my mom, and then my mom died, for instance, while she was in your mom's care."

Flora's features turned hard again. "What are you implying?"

"She's not implying anything, Flora," Alek said. "She just wants to understand her mom's death. If you'd had a parent die, you'd understand that."

Flora looked back and forth between us, this time without the happy go lucky expression she'd borne when we first arrived. "My mom just had surgery. She's recovering at her home."

"Great, that means she'll be available for a chat."

Flora bristled. "She's not up for that."

Such defensiveness was so uncharacteristic of Flora. I could tell by the tension in Alek's hand that he'd noted the same. My phone buzzed and I let go of Alek so I could read the text.

"Maybe in a week or two," Flora said, clearly stalling for time. "When she's feeling better."

"We were thinking it should be today," Alek said.

"That's not possible."

"It's going to need to be soon, Flora," I said, waving my phone at them both, not sure whether to be happy or terrified. "That was Janene. The tour's back on." 

___

Author's Note: Those of you who have either loved Flora or questioned her loyalty before... what do you think now? Does Flora really know something, or is she just being protective of her mom?

Thank you for all of your support! I'm very behind in responding to comments. I may never fully catch up but I want you to know how much they mean to me, along with your readership. I feel so fortunate to have all of you on the pages of this story! XOXOXO