by Susan Sey
“Yeah,” Nixie said grimly. “I know.”
“Then don’t pretend to be all shocked and injured. Sloan being Sloan is the reason what we do works, and you know it. She’s like the Angelina Jolie to your Princess Diana, and people eat you guys up. Which is why you need to come home. There’s work to do and without you we’ve only got half a schtick.”
“Schtick?” Nixie slapped the spoon against her thigh. “My fifty-year-old mother screws my boyfriend on You Tube eight hundred times a day, Karl. That’s not a schtick, that’s a deeply dysfunctional family finally falling apart.”
“No, that’s Sloan burning herself to the ground in a new and novel way. Your job is to rise up from the ashes and take her with you so we can keep building hospitals and schools and orphanages. You’re named Phoenix for a reason, you know.”
“I thought it was because I was conceived at a Rolling Stones show in Arizona.”
“Cute.” Karl cleared his throat. “Come on, Nixie. You’ve been sulking for nearly two months now. Lives are at stake. It’s time to get back to work. Come home.”
Nixie squeezed her eyes shut against the rush of guilt and rage. Her suffering was so small compared to what she’d seen. But at least she could still hurt. At least she wasn’t stone-cold and numb yet, like Sloan, forced to act out more and more wildly to feel anything at all. She hadn’t lost herself entirely. Not yet.
“Come home?” Nixie laughed bitterly. “You keep saying that like I have a home to come back to, Karl.”
“We’re your home,” he said. “Me and your mom.”
Tears filled Nixie’s eyes and she brushed them away impatiently. Okay, so she was lonely. But not lonely enough to hang around while her beautiful, brittle mother destroyed herself over and over again in the name of charity.
“I’m sorry, Karl. I need more than that.”
“More? More what? Jesus, Nixie, you’re a ridiculously gifted young woman. You’re beautiful, famous, and wealthy beyond imagining.” There was a pause and Nixie closed her eyes, waiting for it. The inevitable punch line to every argument she’d ever had with Karl. “You have a responsibility toward those who haven’t been so lucky, Nixie.”
Nixie thought about the Kenyan clinic she’d built with Karl, her mom and the man who’d screwed her mother halfway across Europe after treating Nixie to an avalanche of public humiliation. She thought about the clinic’s first patient, a little girl with huge, trusting eyes in a head that was entirely too big for her withered, failing body. She’d asked if Nixie was an angel, come to take her home to God. Nixie had lied without hesitation, and been rewarded with a smile so pure it made her eyes sting even now to think of it.
“Give me one more month,” Nixie said. “One more month to be...away. I promise, if I haven’t found some way to live up to my responsibilities by then, I’ll come back to work.”
“One more month. Christ, Nixie, you’re killing me.” She could hear him scratching at his beard.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He sighed. “Okay, okay. One month, and not a day more. I’ll be coming for you.”
She smiled into the phone. “I know you will.”
“All right then.” There was an awkward pause, then Karl said, “You eating okay? I don’t like all this Chinese food I’m seeing in the papers.”
Nixie smiled, warmed by the concern in his voice. “Don’t worry about it, okay?”
“You pay me to worry. You’re a brand, Nixie. Little girls look up to you, and if you eat like crap--”
The warmth faded abruptly and Nixie cut him off. “I’m actually learning to cook.”
“Seriously?”
She bristled at the deep skepticism in his voice. “Seriously. In fact, I’m making a lasagna right now, so--” Nixie broke off in horror. “The onions! Damn it! I have to go.”
“What?”
She hung up on him, threw the phone toward the couch and raced into the kitchen. She seized up the smoking pan and dumped its crispy black contents into the sink. She flipped on the faucet and the gush of water vaporized the instant it hit the million-degree pan. The smell of damp, incinerated onions wafted through the entire apartment.
At least the smoke alarms didn’t go off this time, Nixie thought. That was something, right?
The stove smirked at her. Take zat, you eensolent dog! You eensult to zee noble art of cookery!
“That was rude and unnecessary,” she told it. “My last onion, too.”
Maybe she should run out and get another. It was early yet. She could still have lasagna on the table by nightfall. She glanced at the window. An ugly drizzly snow pelted against the pane, obscuring her view of the Potomac. She shivered just looking at it. She wasn’t going out again.
She supposed she could run upstairs and ask Elizabeth Dole for a loaner onion. Surely, all the work she and her mother had done for the Red Cross was worth an onion? But no, that would mean explaining to the former president of the Red Cross that she’d abandoned humanitarian work in favor of murdering innocent onions on a nightly basis.
Yeah, that conversation could wait. Maybe the woman across the hall had an extra onion. That was a nice, normal thing to do, wasn’t it? Borrow an onion from a neighbor? So what if that neighbor happened to be the most senior female Senator in DC. It was still normal.
Nixie wandered toward the front door. Even her bare feet sounded loud in the generic emptiness. Aside from the cathedral ceilings and the mean stove, she could easily imagine herself in a hotel room. Nixie was across the hall and knocking on the door before she realized it, sucking air into her lungs like she’d just been released from prison.
The Senator herself opened the door, an earring in one hand, cell phone in the other. She barely glanced at Nixie, just waved her in and went back to the phone call.
“I want six more votes in my pocket by morning, Jack. I don’t care who you have to sleep with to make it happen. You’ve never been fussy. Enjoy yourself, darling.”
Nixie pushed the door shut behind her and followed the woman’s back through the foyer and into the living room. It was a mirror image of her own apartment, structurally, but where hers could have been furnished by Beige Incorporated, the Senator’s place breathed like a living thing.
The walls were such a rich café au lait that Nixie was tempted to taste them, and plump cushions roosted on the leather couch like funky velvet birds. Chunky sculptures and draped tapestries in the same jewel tones as the Senator’s signature suits added just the right note of sophistication. The collection of spindly houseplants at the window made Nixie smile. They were gasping almost audibly for water. She’d bet anything they had been gifts, plunked in front of the window to expire quietly.
She followed her into the kitchen, noting the normal, serviceable range. No gigantic, temperamental beast of a stove for the Senator from Indiana. Nixie’s respect for the woman grew. Nixie watched her drop her phone onto the desk and clip her earring back into place.
“So, Nixie Leighton-Brace,” she said with a smile. “I’d heard you were squatting next door.”
Nixie smiled back. “I hadn’t thought of it that way until I saw this place, but yeah. I think I have been.”
“Brenda Larsen,” she said, extending a delicate hand. Nixie tried not to crush it. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m hoping to borrow an onion.”
The Senator’s perfectly drawn brows lifted. “Is that code for something?”
“No, ma’am.” Nixie laid one bare foot on top of the other and admired the older woman’s ability to carry off her trim suit the color of ripe eggplants and the matching three inch heels. “I actually need an onion. I burned the last one. My stove doesn’t care for me.”
The Senator pursed her lips and walked back out into the living room. “Is that why this place smells like a bad Indian restaurant every night?”
“Probably.” Nixie trailed after her, enveloped in the cloud of expensive perfume she left in her wake. “Sorry about that. Did I
mention my stove hates me?”
The Senator disappeared into what Nixie presumed was the bedroom. Surely she didn’t keep her produce in there? “Your stove?” the Senator asked, her voice muffled. “Why are you cooking? Don’t you make have your hands full enough fronting Leighton-Brace’s Charitable Giving branch?”
“I used to.” Nixie wandered over to the window, drawn by a particularly crisp ivy. It shot a handful of brown, star-shaped leaves to the floor at her approach, an SOS from a desperate plant. “I quit.”
The Senator emerged from the bedroom in a rustling sapphire-blue ball gown. “Why?”
“I’m exploring a new direction.” Nixie eased closer to the ivy. “Wow, are you trying to kill these plants? I’ve seen wetter soil in the Sahara.”
The Senator frowned. “What? Oh, those. I’m not trying to kill them, no.” She thought a moment. “Though I can’t say I’ve been trying to keep them alive, either.” She turned, presenting the half-done zipper at her back to Nixie. “A little help?”
Nixie stared at the woman’s back. It wasn’t the first time a total stranger had asked her to perform an oddly intimate service. People Nixie had never seen before often viewed her as an old friend after having read about her in newspapers and magazines her whole life. She didn’t think this was the case with the Senator, though. The Senator was as much a public figure as Nixie was, but where Nixie still had the occasional twinge of claustrophobia, the Senator had apparently embraced her lack of personal space to the point of asking near-strangers to zip her dresses.
Nixie pulled up the zipper with two fingertips. She had no doubt the woman was a formidable opponent on the Senate floor, but lord she was tiny. Nixie could probably pick her up and throw her a couple yards if necessary.
“Fancy,” Nixie said as she threaded the hook and eye at the top of the zipper. “Dolce and Gabbana?”
The Senator smiled over her shoulder. “Alexander McQueen.” She clipped a twisty bracelet studded with what looked like genuine sapphires to her wrist. It matched the glitter peeking through the perfect wings of honey-blonde hair over her ears. She studied her reflection in the giant framed mirror on the wall and her mouth curved in satisfaction.
“No necklace?” Nixie asked.
The Senator turned to check her rear view. “Oh, heavens, no. My neck still has a few good years left. Let them see it.” Her smile went sly. “A woman’s bare throat can be very alluring. Don’t over decorate, dear.” She turned away from the mirror and focused on Nixie. “Now, what’s this nonsense about an onion?”
“I was making lasagna and got distracted by a phone call. The onion didn’t make it. I was hoping you’d spot me a new one.” She gave her a winning smile.
“Do I look like a woman who keeps onions on hand?”
Nixie squinted at her. She looked sleek, powerful, vibrant. “Um, no. You don’t.”
“Good. Because I’m not. And neither are you.”
“Excuse me?”
The Senator advanced on her and Nixie edged closer to the ivies. “Do you want to know what you look like to me? You look like a second generation activist with a world-class publicity machine and an approval rating my colleagues and I would kill for. You look like a young woman sitting on one of the most famous faces and fortunes in the world and suddenly doing nothing with it. If this is an identity crisis, let me clear it up for you. You’re Nixie Leighton-Brace. You don’t need a new direction. You need to get back to work.”
Nixie picked at the ivy. “I just wanted to come home.”
“And this is it?” The Senator studied her. Nixie tried not to squirm. “You feel at home here?”
She thought of the echoing, empty apartment across the hall. “I will,” she said, but her eyes slid away from the Senator’s skeptical gaze. “Do you even own a watering can?” she asked. “These poor plants are killing me.”
“In the kitchen, I think. Under the sink.”
Nixie was filling the watering can when the Senator appeared in the doorway. “My cab is here. There’s a key in the basket by the front door. Lock up when you’re finished with the plants, hmmm?”
“Oh, are you sure? I can always come back later--”
“Are you kidding me? Your tender little heart would be torn to shreds imagining my plants gasping their last all night. Weed and feed all you like. Just remember to lock up. And think about what I said. We’ll talk again. Soon, I think.”
Then she was gone, leaving Nixie with nothing but some dying plants and a vague dissatisfaction. And no onion, damn it.
She filled the brass watering pot at the sink, then wandered back into the main room. She’d spent a happy twenty minutes drenching the parched plants when the front door opened. It wasn’t the Senator, she knew immediately. No perfume, no greeting, no clickety-clack of pencil-thin heels.
Nixie’s heart thudded into her throat. Karl had tried to warn her about DC –- the murder rate, the muggings in broad day light. But for crying out loud, she was living in the Watergate. That hadn’t been a hotbed of crime since the Nixon era.
But as she stood there, watering can hovering over the ivies, she was willing to concede this one to Karl. Footsteps clomped purposefully across the foyer, and Nixie knew she would be eyeball to eyeball with the intruder--oh God, the possibly armed intruder--any second. She set down the watering can before her trembling hands made a sprinkler of it, breathed deep and prepared to face down the enemy.
CHAPTER THREE
Dr. Erik Larsen shook his head, scattering tiny droplets of melted snow all over his mother’s smooth, polished foyer. He smiled grimly. Served her right. He didn’t have time for this. The snow had snarled traffic until it was practically moving backward through the space-time continuum, and now, thanks to his mother’s mysterious summons, he would surely be late to the clinic.
Erik hated being late. It was one of the many reasons he and Mary Jane got along so well. She was as pathologically punctual as he was, and would not look kindly upon his failure to show up on time for a meeting regarding their jointly run clinic. Especially not an emergency meeting of the how-are-we-going-to-pay-the-rent variety.
He raked a hand through the crust of slush melting on his hair--damn, it was coming down out there--and rounded the corner.
He moved through the living room at a near jog. His mother’s little surprises were almost always time-sucking disasters, and he was already late enough. She’d promised this one was a no-brainer--You’ll know it when you see it, dear--and Erik prayed she was telling the truth.
He gave the living room a cursory glance, then headed for the kitchen. He was halfway there when his brain registered what he’d seen, and he froze mid-stride.
He turned and looked again at the window. His stomach sank. Yep, there she was. A woman, standing absolutely still in his mother’s miserable collection of dying plants, hands knit together, mouth pursed, an expression on her face that wavered between friendly interest and I-have-911-on-speed-dial.
Oh, Christ. His mother had left him a woman? She’d thrown any number of horse-faced debutantes at him over the years, but she’d never booby-trapped her apartment with one before.
He stared her. She was taller than usual, but thin to the point of near-transparency in her well-worn jeans and the sort of loose, gypsyish top only found at third world bazaars and Goodwill. She stepped away from the window, a mop of red curls bobbing around sharp cheekbones and enormous eyes the color of pasture land. Her feet were bare.
She was no horse-faced debutante, but he made a mental note to kill his mother anyway.
“One of us probably doesn’t belong here,” the woman said with an oddly familiar half-smile. “Is it you or me?”
“Since this is my mother’s apartment, I’m going to say you,” he said.
“Senator Larsen didn’t tell me she had a son in town.”
“Should she have? Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry. I’m in 616. Across the hall?” She wiggled one finger toward the door. “I came
over to borrow an onion and ended up rescuing the plants your mother seems determined to starve to death. She said I should just lock up when I was done.” She tipped her head and studied him. “You have the look of her, don’t you? Your mother.”
He frowned. The Senator was approximately five feet nothing and built like a bird. “Nobody’s ever said so.”
“It’s not a physical resemblance so much as a similar energy.” She pursed up her lips and nodded slowly. “You feel like her.”
“Right. Similar energy.” Erik glanced around the room in the rapidly dwindling hope that his mother had left him something other than this woman. “Listen, did my mother happen to mention that she was leaving something here for me?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. She said I’d know it when I saw it.”
“Oh. Mysterious.”
“That’s my mom.” Subtle as a sledge hammer. He checked his watch, barely suppressed a wince. He stalked into the kitchen, hoping the woman would leave while he was in there, and thus spare him the duty of explaining his mother’s fixation with his marital status. He jumped half a foot when her voice sounded at his shoulder. God, she was quiet in those bare feet.
“Does she do this often?” the woman asked. “Send you on scavenger hunts?”
“No.” He gave the empty counters a desperate look. Nothing. Not that he expected anything. He turned to her and found that oddly familiar smile still on her lips. He frowned.
“Do I know you?” he asked. “Who are you again?”
“Apartment 616,” she said. “The plant savior?” Her smile widened cheerfully, and it made the freckles on her nose stand out like nutmeg sprinkled on cream. That smile wasn’t just weirdly familiar, he realized. It was famous.
“Like hell,” he said, staring. “You’re Nixie Leighton-Brace.”
She lifted one of those sharp, bony shoulders in a half-shrug. “That, too.”
“Of course you are.” He closed his eyes, just a little longer than a blink. “You’re it, aren’t you?”
“I’m what?” Her mossy eyes went wide, and one hand crept to her throat.
