Free VC03 - Mortal Grace by Edward Stewart

disappointment that was strangely open, strangely innocent. She felt something, she wasn’t sure what—apology, as if this were her fault.
    “Why don’t you ask your friend to meet me another time.”
    “Nell,” he said softly. “My friend’s name is Nell.”
    The front doorbell dingdonged twice. Bonnie and her brother dined together twice a month, and tonight was her brother’s turn to pick the restaurant. “That’s my date,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”
    The boy crouched down again and went back to daubing plaster on the baseboard.
    She stared at him. “I said I’ve got to go.”
    The boy never took his eyes off his work. “Nice meeting you.”
    “You don’t understand. I have to lock up. You have to go too.”
    The bell dingdonged a third time, impatient now.
    “I’ll lock up,” the boy said.
    “I can’t give you the keys.”
    “Father Joe gave me the keys.”
    The moment embarrassed her. She felt ridiculous with all her assumptions and prejudices. If the boy had keys, he was all right. Father Joe wouldn’t have trusted him otherwise.
    “The upper lock sticks,” she said. It was her way of saying excuse me.
    He smiled. His eyes were half-closed. She could no longer see the gray.
    “I know,” he said.
    Outside, her brother Ben was waiting for her with a taxi. “We’re going to a Thai place.” His voice was fast and excited, as though he had saved up a hundred things to tell her since their last dinner. “Got a terrific write-up in the Times yesterday. Especially the crab marinated in cilantro.” Though well into his thirties, Ben had the dark, enthusiastic eyes of a man ten years younger. “I was lucky to reserve a table.”
    Bonnie smiled, but there was an uncomfortable undertow to her thoughts, an uneasiness whose center she could not exactly locate.
    Outside the cab window, the long summer twilight was dying and darkness was coming. Streetlights and store signs flickered along Lexington.
    “Hope you’re in the mood for green tea sorbet,” Ben was saying.
    “We’re going to have to put it off,” she blurted suddenly. “Would you mind horribly?”
    In the charged silence of the cab, Billie Holliday was singing “Lover, Come Back to Me.”
    “Aren’t you feeling well?” Ben said.
    “I’m fine.”
    His eyes fixed on her, large and caring and questioning. “What’s the matter?”
    “There’s someone waiting for me. A young girl.”
    “A friend?”
    “I don’t know her, but it sounds like an emergency.”
    She tried to explain. Ben was the perfect listener, as always, catching every implication, quick to nod, quick to frown. Quick to pull her up short.
    “But you don’t know anything about these two people,” he said.
    “Except that Father Joe trusts the boy.”
    Ben caught her point. He nodded. “Okay. Do what you have to. The crab cilantro will keep.”
    “Driver.” She leaned forward. “Would you take us to West Street. Four-oh-eight.”

TEN
    T HE CAB SWUNG WEST. As Christopher Street brought them to the river, Ben whistled. On the corner of Weehawken, a six-story walk-up had the streaked dark smoky color of braised spareribs. Fire escapes and gutters dangled like caught kites. Amputated furniture parts straddled the window ledges.
    “Looks like a force-five hurricane swept through,” Ben said, “and no one’s gotten around to rebuilding.”
    The cab turned north onto West Street and slowed. The driver threw a dubious glance across his shoulder. “You said four-oh-eight, lady?”
    Number 408 was a six-story tenement, gutted from the third story up. The first two floors were intact and even had glass in the windows. The sign over the door was hand-lettered in red paint, and the hand had not been able to make up its mind between print and script: SEA SHELL . Two words with elaborate Gothic S’s.
    Ben shot his sister a glance of brotherly concern. “Shouldn’t I come with you?”
    “Thanks.” Bonnie kissed him good night. “I can handle it.”
    She