Fatal Hearts

by Norah Wilson

  He caught her staring, and his eyes darkened. “We don’t have to do this. It was probably a bad idea anyway.”

  Before he could leave, she grabbed his arm. “No, don’t be silly. It was just the beer.”

  “Um . . . okay.”

  “Josh used to bring beer too. Same brand, always cans, never bottles. I had a little flashback is all.” She stepped back. “Come on in.”

  He moved past her, and she caught the smell of some masculine grooming product. Not aftershave, judging by the slight stubble that darkened his face. Probably body wash. Before she could form any mental pictures, she closed the door.

  “Is the pizza still hot or does it need to go into the oven for a while?”

  “I guess that depends on how you like it.”

  She caught herself before she could say, “I like it hot.” Instead she took the box from him, led him up the three steps to her kitchen, and plunked it on the counter. Then she popped the lid and checked the temperature.

  “Still hot,” she declared. “That means you must have made the beer run before the pizza run. Thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome. And I made a few other stops between the beer and the pizza, so the beer isn’t as frosty as it should be. Maybe we could slide a couple in the freezer for a few minutes.”

  “Go ahead.” She nodded to the refrigerator. “And put the others in the fridge. I’m good for two of them.”

  “I’ll also be limiting it to two,” he said. “The whole driving thing.”

  She was pretty sure a big guy like him could safely metabolize more than two alcoholic beverages over the course of a whole evening, especially with a pizza thrown in there, but she was glad to know he exercised moderation in that area. Like Josh. In all the months she’d known him, she’d rarely seen him have more than a couple of drinks.

  He moved around her to stow the beer while she reached up into the cupboard for plates. Having him in her kitchen was nothing like having Josh there. She was too completely aware of him.

  “Okay, if we’re going to wait for the beer to cool, maybe I should stick this in the oven to keep it hot.” She glanced up at him.

  “Good by me,” he said agreeably.

  She turned the oven on, popped the pizza in, then leaned back against the counter. He did the same, several feet to her left. Her gaze slid sideways beneath her lashes, taking in the way his arms, which were folded across his chest, strained the sleeves of his T-shirt.

  “So what are we watching again?” he asked. “A UFC match?”

  Her head came up in horror. “No!”

  He chuckled. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. Burn Notice, right?”

  She smiled. “Very funny.”

  “It’s a good show. I watch it sometimes myself.” He shoved both hands into the pockets of his low-riding jeans, an action that drew Hayden’s attention to those long denim-clad legs. “I gather Josh liked it?”

  “Liked it?” Hayden lifted her gaze. “That’s an understatement. He just hated to see it end. We’d been rewatching season seven. You know, sometimes he used to narrate whole evenings, à la Michael Westen.”

  That drew a bark of laughter. “Really?”

  “Really. He had the voice down pat. He used to crack me up with it.” Heavy as her heart was, she couldn’t help but smile remembering. There was something freeing about being able to talk about Josh. No one in Fredericton knew him like she did. His death had left her in such a state of shock, she couldn’t talk about him. But now . . .

  She understood why Boyd wanted to hear more about his brother’s life here. It was a way to feel closer to him now that he was gone.

  Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, she continued. “And you never knew when Josh would whip the Westen voice out. ‘The key to cutting up a cantaloupe is to cut it lengthwise first. Decisively.’ ” She gave her best imitation of Josh imitating the master spy character. “As with any job, you need the right tool if you want to come away clean. A carving knife, for instance. A cleaver will do in a pinch.”

  Boyd laughed. “You know, I can just hear him saying that.”

  Her smile trembled. “God, it’s hard, him not being here. Sometimes I still reach for my phone when something funny happens or when I want to vent, but then I remember.”

  “I know.” His voice dropped. “His death . . . it hasn’t had time to integrate completely with that whole jumble of stuff that makes up my reality. I still wake up in the morning and have to remember it all again.”

  They stood there in silence for a few moments, apart but strangely together in this grief.

  Hayden’s throat ached with unshed tears. She swallowed a few times and cleared her throat. “So, how about that beer? Do you suppose it’s cold enough now?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I’ll get the pizza.”

  She pulled the pie from the oven, dished a couple of slices onto each of the plates she’d laid out, grabbed a couple of paper towels for napkins, then led him to the living room.

  “Nice,” he said, taking a seat on the couch where she indicated.

  She glanced around, trying to see her little apartment through his eyes. The furniture had actually been rented from one of those insta-home rental places so she wouldn’t be stuck trying to sell it or move it when her residency was over. It was nice enough, she supposed. Very well coordinated and matchy and tasteful. Not at all what she’d do when she finally settled in one place.

  “Thanks. It’s rented.”

  “I kinda thought so, but I’m glad to hear you confirm it. It strikes me as a little . . . generic for you.”

  “Yeah. Home Decor 101.” She plunked their plates down on the glass-topped coffee table. “So, Mr. Smart Guy Detective, what’s my style, then?”

  He shrugged, putting her beer down beside her plate of pizza. “I figure when you finally get where you want to be, you’ll feather your permanent nest very carefully, very deliberately, with individual pieces. Some antiques, maybe. Some modern pieces. Stuff that speaks to you.” He popped the top on his beer. “How’d I do?”

  “Pretty damned good,” she responded honestly. “And I can’t wait. I’ve lived in dorms and rented rooms and apartments like this for so long, when I finally get a place of my own, I’m going to make it completely mine. It’s going to have color and energy and joy, and it probably won’t flow seamlessly, and there won’t be a lick of beige anywhere. There’ll be peaceful places too—the bathroom and the bedroom have to be tranquil. And, yes, I’ll pick each piece of furniture, each lamp, each rug and faucet and fixture with a view to how happy it makes me to look at it.” She picked up her own beer, snapped the tab, and took a sip.

  His expression was slightly smug. And okay, he’d nailed it. But all that took was a little insight into human psychology.

  “Shall I take a guess at what your place looks like?”

  She put her beer down while he picked up a piece of pizza.

  “Condo, I’m guessing, since Josh mentioned you’d been at this job quite a few years.”

  He nodded.

  “Not totally Spartan but efficient. Militarily efficient. And nothing messy.” She kept her eyes on his face, gauging his reaction, but he gave nothing away. Great poker face. “Big furniture,” she continued. “Big flat-screen TV with theater-quality stereo sound. No houseplants, but maybe some art? Something really strong.”

  His brow furrowed momentarily, then relaxed. “Josh told you about it.”

  She grinned. “Nope. But he did talk about you a lot.” She picked up her pizza and took a bite. “Mmm, this is so good. Thank you. Isn’t that crust awesome?”

  “It’s good,” he acknowledged.

  “Told you.”

  “But it’d still taste better with some Italian sausage.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, next time you can have sausage on yo
ur half.”

  Something stirred in those golden eyes, but then was gone before she could analyze it. Was it the mention of next time?

  She cleared her throat. “So, what’s this strong piece of art you figured Josh told me about?”

  His expression was curious now. “He really didn’t tell you about the Sam Shea?”

  “What’s a Sam Shea?”

  “It’s a giant photographic landscape of ominous darks clouds over a marsh. The photographer printed it out in huge panels, and the panels fit together to make a massive mural.”

  She shook her head. “That’s a freaking gallery installation. I bet it’s lovely.”

  “I like it.” Having finished up his first slice of pizza, he picked up a second one. “So, what time’s the show on?”

  “Oh, it’s DVR’d, not live. It’s ready when we are.” She glanced at him. “Are we ready?”

  He shrugged. “What would you and Josh do?”

  “We’d talk about our respective days.”

  “So you’d tell him about stuff that happened at the ER, and he’d talk about his investigations?”

  “Pretty much, insofar as we could without naming names or breaching anyone’s privacy.”

  “But not his personal investigation?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “He didn’t talk too much about it, except maybe to say things were going well or certain avenues hadn’t panned out. Just generalities. Sometimes he’d tell me stuff about you.”

  His left eyebrow lifted. “What kind of stuff?”

  “You know, if you’d been involved in a particularly big or media-worthy bust. That kind of thing.” She smiled. “He talked about some of the stuff you guys pulled as identical twins.”

  He actually blushed. “Oh, God, the hockey game.”

  She laughed. “The one on TV that you didn’t want to leave, so you sent Josh to meet your girlfriend at the bar and keep her occupied until you could get there?”

  “In my defense, it looked like the Leafs might actually make the play-offs. And how was I to know she’d pick that night to decide we should finally do it?”

  “Poor Josh.”

  “Poor Josh? Thanks to his impassioned we-should-wait-for-our-three-month-anniversary speech, I had to wait. Two. More. Months.”

  She dissolved in a fit of giggling. “I’m sorry,” she said as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “You got what you deserved, buster. Sending a stand-in.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I never did that again. But I did threaten to mess things up with his girlfriend-of-the-day. You know, committing to taking them jewelry shopping or something. He told me not to bother, because they had a code word she would ask him to say if she thought he was acting strange.”

  “Omigod! Is that true?”

  “Probably, but I never tested it.”

  Her face sobered. “He told me about what happened when you guys were in grade two.”

  Boyd’s smile disappeared. “Yeah?”

  “He said it was really hard on you.”

  “Not just me.” He raked a hand through his hair. “When I couldn’t find him on the playground after school—we were in different classes, but we always met up to walk home together—I was sick. I didn’t know enough to run into the school and tell the principal. Instead, I ran home and told our mother. She called the school, who confirmed he wasn’t there, and then called my father’s employer. Dad rushed home from the construction site. I’d never seen him look like that.”

  “You must have been terrified.”

  “Scared shitless.” He turned the now empty beer can round and round in his hand. “Of course, the police were called, and they started a neighborhood search. They finally found him on a door-to-door canvass, but it wasn’t until the following morning. I think my parents aged ten years in those sixteen hours.”

  “And all along, he was with the old lady with Alzheimer’s, just a few blocks from the school.”

  “Yeah. She was confused. When she saw him outside the school waiting for me, she thought he was her son and took him home. Never mind that her son was then a forty-eight-year-old career officer in the Canadian army, stationed in Alberta.”

  “Josh said he was never really scared, even when he couldn’t find a phone. He knew she was just confused and missed her son. And because she made him do his lessons, he knew she’d send him back to school in the morning. But the cops got there first, right?”

  “Yeah. And Josh was so upset with them for arresting the old lady. But they were heroes to me. Those officers saved the day, saved my brother from a kidnapper.”

  “Is that why you went into law enforcement?”

  He nodded. “Absolutely. From that day forward, that’s pretty much all I wanted to do.”

  “Wow, one event, and it inspired two identical twins to go down two very different paths.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Josh says that experience taught him that things aren’t always as they seem. That lady wasn’t a criminal, but a confused person suffering from dementia. He said that was probably the first event in his life that made him think about the story behind the story.”

  “He never told me that.” Boyd looked down at his empty beer can. “I guess I probably should have figured it out for myself.”

  “Well, it’s not as obvious as your epiphany. What boy wouldn’t want to become a policeman after that?”

  “Josh, apparently.” He stopped fiddling with the can and put it on the coffee table. “I thought the whole desire to go into journalism was because of his affinity for the people who never really fit in. You know, championing the underdog, fighting injustice, showing people the other side. I swear, if there was a weird, ostracized kid on the playground, Josh would find them and befriend them. I had a full-time job keeping the bullies off his back.”

  “See? You were already playing your roles.”

  It made so much sense now, Boyd’s worldview as compared with Josh’s. Oh, personality accounted for a big part of it; she was sure. Just because they were genetic duplicates didn’t mean their personalities should be identical, or even alike. But she could see so clearly how that traumatic event would have shaped them differently. Being on the inside and knowing he’d be free by morning, Josh had had it easier. His family would have thought the worst. She could see how Boyd would have emerged with a conviction that the world was a dangerous place, while Josh took something entirely different away from the experience.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Time for a subject change. Hopefully something not so heavy.

  “He used to talk about your parents a lot too. I gather he spoke to them every day. I was there once when he Skyped with them. After that, your mother would always tell him to say hi to me.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” he drawled. “I expect she was hoping Josh would present her with a daughter-in-law and eventually some grandchildren.”

  At his words, Hayden felt a hollow space open up in her gut. If anyone deserved to have children, to be a parent, it was Josh. Not with her, obviously, but with someone he was crazy about. He’d have been so good at it. What a waste. What a tragic, senseless waste.

  “Shit, I’m sorry.” Boyd’s voice was a low throb. “I did it again. I’ll just shut up now.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She tipped her head back and blinked rapidly. “We have to be able to talk about him or this won’t work.”

  “True.”

  “Besides, it’s hard . . . but it’s also good. Does that make sense?”

  He nodded gravely and held her gaze. “I know.”

  They stayed that way for a few intense moments. Breaking eye contact, she picked up the DVR remote control. “Let’s watch the show now. It’ll make us feel better.”

  It did. They ate their pizza, and Hayden drank her beer. Partway
through, she paused the program so Boyd could get himself two more slices—the thin crust might be tasty, but he declared it not very filling, especially with no Italian sausage—and two more cans of beer for them. Afterward, Hayden clicked the TV off.

  “This is where our night would typically end,” she said. “Well, not this early, because we’d do the catch-up and just veg a little before watching the show. But that’s basically it.”

  “And he’d just go home?”

  “Uh-huh. Straight back to his room at Dr. Stratton’s. He’d always text me when he got there, so I could stop worrying about him.”

  “Worrying about him?” That left eyebrow rose again and he laughed. “Hayden, from here to Dr. Stratton’s would be . . . what? . . . eight or nine kilometers? In city traffic?”

  “You sound like Josh now,” she said. “He thought it was pretty funny too when I asked him to do that. Yet when I was at his place watching a show, he always insisted I call or text him to let him know when I got home.”

  “But that’s different.”

  “Because I’m a woman, you mean?”

  Boyd shrugged. “Well, yeah.”

  “That’s what Josh said too.” She sighed. “And, yes, it’s true. It’s grossly unfair and completely deplorable, but, yes, because I’m a woman, I stand a much greater chance of being assaulted when I’m minding my own damned business than you do. But when it comes to an impaired driver blowing through a red light and T-boning your car, in my experience, it doesn’t matter what sex you are. And as for accidents at city intersections, just two weeks ago we had multiple trauma—”

  “Whoa, whoa.” He held up a hand to stop her. “I get it. You don’t have to convince me. I’ve attended my fair share of urban MVAs. And I’m sorry for laughing. I just wasn’t thinking of how your front-row seat to all that trauma would affect the way you look at everything, including a crosstown commute. Josh could’ve told you I’m not sensitive that way.” He smiled, but it looked sad. “Not particularly empathetic.”

  She wanted to put her hand on his where it rested on his leg and squeeze it. She wanted to see the sorrow chased from those golden eyes. A little freaked out at the impulse, she picked up her empty beer can and fiddled with it.