Page 53 of The Vow Thief
“No.”
“Anything you want to say at all?”
“Yes. Take me to my apartment. I need to see if my mail is being forwarded to my father’s house.”
I had a bad feeling about this, but indulged her anyway.“Address?”
She rattled Matt Taylor’s apartment address off like she had lived there for years. I had spent enough nights watching that door to know it by heart.
“That’s not your address,” I said.
“Of course it is.” She was trying her best to be convincing.”
“Lily, I know that it's Matt Taylor’s old apartment.”
Her head turned an inch.
“Old apartment? Don’t tell me he moved back in with that bitch.”
It was a question more than it was a statement. I’m not sure why it bothered me, but it did.
“You need to stay away from the Taylors and stay out of trouble," I bit out, a little more harshly than I meant. My irritation was getting the best of me. I needed to get this shit under control. I already knew that if you show Lily even the least bit of weakness, she would capture it like a butterfly and pin it to a board like a hobby.
“The first chance I get, I am going to visit Matt. You can't stop me.”
“For the next thirty days, you're staying in the house and out of sight.”
She laughed once, a small cut of sound.“You going to lock me in the basement, warden?”
“If that is what it takes.”
Silence rolled between us. I let it. When a person like Lily is quiet, you learn to let it stretch out for as long as possible.
I took her to the address anyway and idled at the curb. She looked up at the third-floor window like it could hand her an answer through the glass. I’m not sure what I wanted her to see, but knowing he wasn’t there gave me a sense of victory.
“He isn't there,” I said.
“You don't know that.”
“I do.” I didn’t mention Charleston. Hearing it from me would only make her resent me, like I packed him up and shipped him off.
She kept looking until the window stopped being a window and turned into memories of something she could no longer have. Then she faced forward again.
I pulled away and cut over toward Lincoln Park.
“You asked to go to the library when you were in holding,” I said.“I know this little bookstore on the way to your father's.”
“You remember that,” she asked.
“I remember everything,” I said.“Pick a book instead of a fight.”
She stopped arguing, which only made me more alert.
I parked on a side street and walked her into a small shop with mismatched chairs and hand-lettered shelf tags. The bell over the door announced us. The air in the bookstore was welcoming with the smell of paper and the various candles scattered around the store. A clerk behind the counter greeted us and went back to a stack of books. I stayed near the entrance and pretended to read a crime novel. I watched Lily’s reflection in the glass of the front window and in the dull shine of the café case.
She moved like a cat burglar who knew every exit. She meandered through the travel section then moved to the memoirs.
She drifted down the side aisle, where the last shelf hid a service door with a bar you push in case of fire. I let her keep moving. I wanted to see how she would play it. Her shoulder brushed a display of fantasy books. She didn’t break stride.
