Because I Said So Read online

  Josie stifled a yawn. “Okay.” She absentmindedly scratched her butt on her way to her room.

  She’s still a kid, Kesa thought. She doesn’t know.

  The shower wasn’t hot enough to leave her feeling clean, even though she emerged steaming and ruddy. Wiping the fogged mirror clean, she regarded her tired eyes for a moment and had to look away. Josie didn’t know how deep some hurts could go.

  After a few scant hours of sleep she was up again, loading the handcart the building super had lent her and jamming as much as she could into her car for each trip. By the middle of the day Kesa found it easier to push away the memories of the previous night’s hours in Shannon’s arms. The weather had turned hot and sticky, and every ten-minute drive between home and her new workshop was sweltering. Multiple trips with bolt rolls left her sneezing from the dust. The boxes and bags of thread, trim, bias tape, buttons, and other accessories became heavier with every step.

  Still, her spirit lifted every time she put the key in the lock of her new space. The three-story building was generic 1950s LA industrial, with the interior gutted and rewired sometime in the last decade for artist and crafts trade space. Her room was in a second-floor corner and looked out over a community garden and small park. A weaver was a neighbor on one side and a nutritionist on the other. The leasing agent had said that some of the other tenants worked all hours so there was usually someone in the building. She would be able to work in the evenings in relative safety. Her lease agreement included a numbered parking space in the gated basement.

  It was a long way from LA’s renowned Fashion District, but she thought it much smarter to be closer to the people she wanted to make clothes for: celebrities and wannabees. Beverly Hills, Laurel Canyon, and West Hollywood were all within a 25-minute radius. This location was smart and cheap at a third of the rent a Fashion District spot half the size would have cost.

  She had one large, high-ceiling room, a kitchenette, and a water closet to herself. The built-in storage cabinets gave her more room for supplies than she’d ever had before. The old walls were freshly painted white, and the vinyl wood grain flooring was unmarred. When she could afford it she would add a TV and a DVD player so she could go on listening to movies, concerts, and documentaries from the library while she worked. Once she was organized, she would be able to set up decorative screens in a corner for measurements and fittings. Many clients would be willing to come to her, but only if they felt comfortable. It was worth the investment in mirrors and decor because of the hidden financial bonus of reducing wear and tear on her aged car. She really didn’t want to replace it anytime soon.

  When she opened the windows she discovered she was downwind of the Asian bakery on the corner. It wouldn’t help her waistline to have such mouth-watering carbohydrates so close, but the aroma of baking bread chased away the dust and mustiness of the room and comforted her aching heart.

  Her last trip of the day was the one she had looked forward to the most. The table that leaned on one side of her bed, that she used to cut cloth, was now set up and ready for work. Her bedroom had floor space for the first time since they’d moved in. She would even be able to reach the window and let in light.

  Which didn’t make it any less lonely, she thought. Only less pathetic. She pushed away images of Shannon in her bed. Not helpful.

  She tugged and pulled the table up the stairs after discovering it wouldn’t fit in the old elevator. A very hot shower and large glass of wine was in order when she got home.

  Even so, sleep was hard to find for a second night in a row. Toward dawn on Sunday, when the city was at its most quiet, she fancied that she could hear Shannon’s heartbeat in the pillow under her ear.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “So what did you think of Josie?”

  Shannon had been expecting Paz to ask that question all day Sunday, but he’d hurried off to his once-a-week gig washing dishes at the local chicken and waffles diner and had been buried in his books when he’d gotten home. Now he was eating Captain Crunch out of the box and watching Shannon pack up her shoulder bag with files to take back to work.

  “I liked her. She seemed smart and articulate. Full of energy.”

  “She’s way smarter than I am. It’s like she can have three conversations at the same time, while reading. She remembers factorials and when I showed her Skyrim she understood all the battle advantages in a few minutes. It’s awesome.”

  “Sounds like she has a great memory.”

  He bobbed his head enthusiastically. “She can reel off movie dialogue word for word, even a movie she’s only seen once.”

  Shannon didn’t volunteer that Josie’s sister did that as well. “I do like her. And I get why you like her.”

  With a nonchalance so obvious it proved he would never have a career that involved subterfuge, Paz asked, “What did you think of her sister?”

  There’s no way he could know about the motel, Shannon told herself. “She’s also very smart and articulate. Must run in the family.”

  “I was surprised how alike they are. Not on the surface,” he added quickly.

  They were both intense. And able to risk their hearts, she thought, but Paz didn’t know that about Kesa. “It’s probably not a good idea to tell Josie that.”

  “Wey, I am not stupid.”

  Shannon laughed and agreed. “I’m still worried about your future.”

  “I know. At some point, I’m on my own, though. Es mi vida. Mistakes and all.”

  Shannon slung her bag on her shoulder. “One of the fun aspects of adulthood is how mistakes latch on and don’t let go.”

  “‘Fun’ is not the word I’d use.”

  “I chose it instead of another F-word,” she said over her shoulder as she went out the front door.

  The short spring season was clearly waning, and the morning heat slowed Shannon’s pace toward the bus stop. The plum blossoms had all dropped, but the trees weren’t fully leaved yet and the sun was almost more than her sunglasses could handle. She hadn’t slept well for the third night in a row and was really hoping that immersing herself at work would push Kesa completely out of her mind, at least for a while.

  They were going to meet again. They’d told the kids to make a plan and at some point they’d all get together to talk again. She dreaded it and hoped it was soon, creating a deeply annoying mental swirl she couldn’t resolve.

  Her morning ritual Diet Mountain Dew, security screening, and passage through the Marshals Service door did steady her mind somewhat, but she felt off her game. Let it go for a while, she told herself. You can only do your job if you are completely focused. She made herself read the weekend analyst’s messages twice and reviewed the report of fugitives taken into custody twice as well, cross-referencing names into her classified database to make sure intelligence agencies didn’t have first dibs.

  Her morning got better when she saw that colleagues at the Justice Department had agreed with her assessment to consolidate several aliases into a single suspect. She forwarded the information to her supervisor, Gustavo, and got back an all caps “YOU ROCK!” from him. He’d given her a great review last week, which had eased her lingering anxiety about working with a new supervisor. Her security clearance had come up for renewal just after she’d arrived back in LA, and that meant he’d seen her background—including her tick of the box next to “homosexual.” The high marks meant she probably didn’t have to watch her back on that count. She hoped for a world someday where nobody had to worry about it.

  In spite of that relief, as she sat looking at her lunch of homemade PB&J and a bag of pretzels, her mind treated her to a full-on replay of Friday night. If she and Kesa met up again—not if, she corrected, when—it would be even more awkward, especially if both kids were hoping she and Kesa would be distracted with each other. Didn’t it make sense to get together in some neutral place and clear the air? Some place where there was no motel in a 100-block radius?

  She chased the thought away by queui
ng up her searches for Seychelles’ aliases. To her grim delight, she finally got a solid hit. “Henry Lymon” had been confirmed by CCTV facial recognition in Toronto during the past week. Her growing suspicion that he might be trying to enter the US seemed reasonable. The marshals in Buffalo or Rochester could work with border control to anticipate the entry, allow it, and then pick him up on behalf of the Central California District, where his bank fraud warrants had been issued. She’d then let the intelligence agencies know where to find their former asset and under what name and score points for interagency cooperation.

  She spent the next hour carefully assembling the information that would allow the district offices involved to confirm the fugitive’s identity and writing up her official confirmation that “Henry Lymon” was a fugitive of heightened interest with multiple aliases. A scanned passport with any of those known aliases would set off the right alarm bells.

  Her summary finished to her satisfaction, she forwarded it to Gustavo for his review. She hoped Seychelles did enter the US—it would be deeply satisfying to have him in custody and put an end to his dabbling in misery.

  What wasn’t satisfying was how quickly her brain, freed from the Zen bliss of assembling pieces of the Seychelles’ puzzle, returned to scanning through memories of Kesa and motels. She didn’t like having personal secrets, and that’s what her history with Kesa was. If Paz and Josie continued to date, that secret could well turn toxic.

  That would be bad, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. She and Kesa should have a private talk to discuss their affair. Not affair, their…thing.

  Her evening bus ride was crowded and hot, so she waited until she was home to look Kesa up on social media. A Twitter account popped up for Kesa Sapiro, “Couturière, Designs for Women, Loves Movies.”

  Shannon tapped open a direct message screen, chose her words carefully, and pressed Send.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Got it? My hand is slipping.” Kesa couldn’t keep the panic out of her voice.

  “I can hold it.” Paz flashed her a confident smile. “Long enough for you to adjust.”

  Josie dodged around them on the stairs. “I’ll get the door open.”

  Kesa quickly wound the thick blanket they were using as a sling around her arm and shoulder again. The sewing machine wasn’t heavy for two people, but it was awkward. Getting them both out of the apartment hadn’t been hard—a rolling cart and elevator had done the trick. But the elevator in her new workspace had chosen to break down midafternoon. Paz’s suggestion of a sling was a good one, that is, until it had slipped off her shoulder.

  The second machine went up the stairs more easily, and the three of them sprawled on the folding chairs Kesa had bought earlier at the discount office supply outlet.

  “Thanks, really, I mean it. I couldn’t have done that without you.” She dug her phone out of her pocket. It was already low on battery and had been buzzing off and on for the last few minutes. “Dinner’s on me. That is, if you want pizza.”

  “I have to get home,” Paz said. “Shannon is expecting me for dinner.”

  Kesa stared at the message from ShannonD. She realized Paz had said something and glanced up. “I’m sorry. Shannon…?”

  “She’s expecting me for dinner.”

  “Another time then,” Kesa said vaguely. She looked at her phone again.

  Shannon had written, “I think we have things to talk about. I’d prefer to do it privately. Could we meet some evening this week?”

  Josie’s shadow fell over the display. “Is something wrong?”

  Kesa hurriedly shoved the phone back into her pocket. “No. No, the battery is really low is all.”

  “I’m going to walk Paz to his car. I’ll be back in a few. Maybe instead of pizza we could pick up Chinese on the way home?”

  “Sure.” Kesa had known she and Shannon would see each other again, but not alone. Though the request made sense, she supposed. Wherever they met, though, it needed to be as far away from a motel as possible. “Fine.”

  Josie gave her an odd look but followed Paz out the door. She could hear their voices rising and falling as they went down the stairs, light and happy. They had no history to weigh down their words. What was it about them that made it so easy?

  She took a deep breath as she surveyed her new surroundings. Two projects were jumbled together on the folding table. Both had a deadline of this Friday. Bolts of fabric were stacked haphazardly in several piles on the floor. Now that she had space she could haunt remainder sales and build up a good stock of quality accessories at bargain prices, but first it all had to be organized. She’d make one more trip tonight for the last of the boxes and some supplies to make the kitchen useful, but she also needed to buy a coffeemaker and ice cube trays and something for clients to sit on that wasn’t a bargain basement folding chair.

  Money was going out the door every minute and it was up to her to bring some in. It wasn’t as if any of this was optional. She’d become a workaholic because the other choice had been losing Josie to Child Services.

  She was going to lose Josie to Paz. Or someone like him. That was the way of life, wasn’t it?

  Kesa didn’t realize she was crying until a wide-eyed Josie asked her what was wrong.

  “Nothing, Jo-Jo.” She wiped at her eyes. “I’m overwhelmed. Really tired.”

  To her surprise, Josie knelt on the floor next to her chair to give her a bracing hug. “This is huge. You have a workshop, at last. Maybe we can skip dinner and go right to ice cream.”

  Kesa laughed and agreed. Her phone was like a lead weight in her pocket. She would answer Shannon later. Right now ice cream took precedence.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Nom Nom Pocha in Koreatown was about as prosaic as a meeting place could be. The chatter of other patrons, clang of pots and pans, and the hissing spatter of an espresso machine combined to make romance hard to contemplate. Kesa hoped Shannon wasn’t late. She’d deliberately picked the half hour before the Mahjong game so that she would have to leave. There would be no prolonged contact. No finding themselves in front of another motel.

  She knew she’d made the right decision when she saw Shannon framed in the doorway. Her light gray suit jacket and slacks accentuated her long, lean frame, and the pale peach tint of her Oxford shirt brought out hints of red in her hair. Competent, professional, cool—it was as if she’d taken lessons from the marshals on how not to be noticed while instantly conveying authority.

  Shannon tucked her sunglasses into a pocket inside her jacket and her gaze swept the eatery to settle almost immediately on Kesa. The lines in her face eased and her lips curved in a smile Kesa helplessly returned. Just like that, Kesa’s heart fluttered in her throat. Her ears singed the side of her head. The reaction was purely physical, and it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t have to mean anything, she told herself staunchly. Their tryst had been completely consensual, and her feeling that she ought to be guilty about it was puritanical social conditioning, and that was all.

  She saw her attempt to school her reaction mirrored in Shannon’s shifting expression: caution, distance, but nothing that could be called nonchalance.

  There would be no repeats, Kesa told herself as her eyes devoured every detail of Shannon’s walk, and she really didn’t want anyone else to know about four years ago, let alone Friday night. She pushed away the voice that asked, if there was nothing to be ashamed of, then why did she want to keep it a secret?

  Her last thought before Shannon slid into the chair on the other side of the small table was, “I don’t have to make sense if I don’t want to!”

  “Hi.” Shannon glanced at Kesa’s coffee cup. “Is it good here?”

  “It’s coffee. Hot brown liquid in a cup.”

  “Sounds great. I don’t get the trend toward burnt and full of sediment. I’ll be right back.”

  Kesa pretended to check her phone while she used her peripheral vision to watch Shannon navigate the line. Though she chided herself for
being ridiculous, she even feigned not immediately noticing when Shannon approached the table again. She wasn’t aware of Shannon’s every move, no, not her. She reminded herself that this woman had put her into a tailspin that had left her an emotional zombie. It wasn’t going to happen again. Absolutely not.

  The silence was, of course, awkward. Like it could be anything else, Kesa thought. Shannon was stirring her coffee—a favorite pastime it seemed.

  Well, there was one thing she could say. “I’m sorry I left. I didn’t want to wake you and I wanted to get home before it was too late to explain to Josie.”

  “I understand.” She sipped from her mug. “That’s not too bad.”

  Kesa tore her gaze away from Shannon’s hands and retreated to sarcasm. “The coffee is okay. I think we’re done here.”

  “I’m sorry too.” Shannon finally looked up from the cup.

  Kesa’s heart skipped a beat. Those wide brown eyes were tinged with purple, a fact Kesa had once upon a time found beautiful. Not that she did now. “For what exactly?”

  “It shouldn’t have happened.”

  Was Shannon talking about Friday night or four years ago? Kesa wasn’t brave enough to ask. “Maybe not. But we’re consenting adults.”

  Shannon nodded and went back to stirring her coffee. Kesa quelled the urge to snatch the stir stick out of her hand and stab her with it. Shannon was the one who had thought they should get together to clear the air. Now she seemed to have nothing to say. She hadn’t had anything to say four years ago, either, so nothing had changed apparently.

  Kesa tried again. “I like Paz. I really do. He helped me finish moving into my workshop. He and Josie are good to each other, at least what I’ve seen. But that doesn’t change how I feel. They’re too young. They think…that love fixes everything.”