Page 82 of Not That Complicated

I dropped my head back on my shoulders and groaned at the ceiling. “I don’t want to be a conservatory salesman.”

Dad didn’t glance away from the paper. He did mutter, “Why would you? It’s not like there’s a company waiting for you with your name already on it and everything.Ow.”

Giselle had shoved him. “He’s anartist, Christopher. Building conservatories would crush his spirit. We’ve been over this.”

And over and over.

“Gigi, I’ve got a team. They build the things. All Ray has to do is manage the business.”

“Crush. His. Spirit. Look at him.”

They both looked at me.

Giselle waved an expansive hand at me, her carved wooden bracelets clacking. “Does this look like the responsible, mature business-minded man you want to let loose on your precious spreadsheets?”

I was in my washed-out oldFraggle Rockt-shirt and plaid pj bottoms, my hair stuck up weirdly, and my eyes were red rimmed and puffy. But still. No need to be rude. “I do run my own business, you know. I’m quite successful at it.”

Dad tipped his head consideringly from side to side.

I narrowed my eyes. “So, the police found two dead bodies in my house,” I said.

Giselle’s hand froze in mid-air, fork halfway to her mouth. Dad fumbled the paper.

I crunched into my toast.

My parents lived an hour and forty minutes away. It wasn’t far, but it was far enough that local news from my town wasn’t on their radar.

Dad read the Daily Telegraph every morning, worked a full day every day except for golf days, which were on Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays, and Giselle was a full-time creative. She went from book club to watercolour class to yoga to pottery class. Out of the three of us, her schedule was the busiest. I don’t know where she found the energy.

My point being, if it didn’t make the national news, they weren’t likely to hear of it. And I’d stuck to my initial plan of actively not enlightening them.

I loved my parents, but they had their lives and I had mine.

If I’d told them about the body, Giselle would have arrived to Emotionally Support me through my Trying Times.

Dad would have upped his awkward rumblings about how I should choose a more stable career than flighty artist, since you could weather anything with a firm foundation. I’d get all angry pointing out that I was a working graphic designer, not a flighty artist, I had a firm foundation and many, many skills beyond laying bricks even if I didn’t build it with my own hands...all in all, sharing it with them wouldn’t have been remotely helpful.

Adam had helped.

He’d come to check on me after the first body, and I’d run him off with my insecurities. And then he’d looked after me again with this second one, and then in the coffee shop, and I’d run away...

The big problem with Adam wasn’t that he annoyed me by trying to help. It was that I let him. I welcomed it.

I wanted it.

I was clearly having a breakdown.

As was Giselle, right now, after my mic-drop comment.

“What?” she screeched. “What?”

“Huh,” Dad said once I’d given them the highlights of the last couple of months, minus the sexy bits.

“When I say,Hello, Ray. How are you? Anything interesting going on?” Giselle continued. “That is your cue to sayOh, not much. No, wait. I did get taken in for questioning by the police about a dead man, though.”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“If you didn’t want to worry me,” she said, “you wouldn’t have dropped it into conversation over the breakfast table in a weak ploy to distract your father.”

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