Seeing Red(57)

He nodded and retreated down a hallway, ostensibly to the kitchen. “Make yourself comfortable, if you can,” he called back.

“Okay.” She scanned the room again, and decided the plaid sofa looked like her safest bet. She fell into the low thing with an oomph. “Guess I’ll need help getting up.” She struggled a bit, wormed her body left and right, and managed a comfortable tilt that put her at face level with a framed photo on the end table.

Gingerly, she picked it up and brought it closer to her face. She didn’t know if it was the dim light or her slow brain in the early hour, but far too many seconds passed before she realized who she was looking at. It was Seth, or Sergei as he had been then, perhaps ten or twelve. His head was propped against the shoulder of a dark, round woman who covered gray hair with a kerchief and wore a simple blue dress. Her smile was serene, and his was easy.

But wasn’t it always? The man could smile about anything, and Meg envied him for it.

She set the frame back on table as he returned to the room.

“The machine will take about five minutes to brew.” He took a seat on the love seat adjacent to the sofa, which even under his substantial weight didn’t budge nearly as much as the seat Meg had chosen.

“Dammit.”

“What’s that?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. You need to work on your furniture.”

“Furniture is on my list. Among other things. I’ve been in flux lately.”

Part of that was her fault. She didn’t know if she should apologize or shrug, but in the end, did neither.

“You didn’t answer. Where’s Toby?”

“Right. You did ask. He’s with my mother. She came down to help me do some cleanup, and she took him to Great Wolf Lodge for a long weekend.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it, and shook his head.

“What? What were you going to say? Tell me, whatever it is.”

“Just that if I had known, I would have called. Would have come over. I didn’t know how to reach out to you and didn’t want to do it with Toby around.”

“It’s my fault. I overreacted, and that’s why I’m here. Obviously, I’ve had some time to think. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve said this in my life, but…you were right, and I was wrong.”

His eyes widened a hair. “I’m sorry?”

She had to laugh. She could hardly believe it herself. “You were right.”

“What exactly was I right about?”

The look of confusion he wore was so damned adorable she wanted to grab him by the ears and kiss him, but she sat on her hands and resisted. “All this time you were looking out for me. Toby, too. I guess at one point I was feeling a bit jerked around, especially after you met with Spike. I didn’t know what your motives were.”

“I’ve—”

She unseated her hands and put them up, quieting him. “I know. You haven’t had any motives. You are an odd duck, Sergei Rozhkov.”

“You sure you haven’t caught something? I heard Rozhkov’s Disease is contagious.”

She scoffed. “I don’t know which of my friends I owe for telling you about that, but yeah, maybe it is. I’m surprised it’s not more infectious than it is. Or maybe I should say, I’m lucky that it isn’t.”

She must have been talking in one hell of a circle, because that look of confusion on his face deepened.

The coffeemaker beeped, and Seth stood. “Hold that thought. Be right back.”

“Yeah.”

While he banged around in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets and drawers, Meg leaned over and perused the piles of paperwork on the coffee table, just out of curiosity. She wondered just what kind of clutter an astrophysicist-slash-aerospace engineer accumulated. There was a stack of printed MLS listings. Takeout menus. Health-insurance booklets, one with her name on it, which she pulled onto her lap to inspect. One thick envelope gave her pause.

She nudged it closer and squinted at the return address. Ellison Relocation.

“Relo?” She picked it up, and brazenly pulled the sheath of paper out of the ripped envelope. Quickly, she scanned, giving not one shit about the personal nature of the correspondence. If one’s wife wasn’t privy to her husband’s job status, then who was?

She didn’t bother looking guilty when Seth walked in with the coffee cups.

“Was wondering where that went.”

“I bet.” She tossed it on the table, then tried, and failed to stand. She growled and kicked her heels against the sofa front.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re moving to fucking Boulder? Are you kidding me?”