“Just water,” he said, and I relayed the request, water for Peter, soda for me, to one of the staff while we settled in.
We looked at each other across the table. I had so many questions. I didn’t know anything about T.J.’s past. Nothing of him remained after I’d lost him. Suddenly, here was a connection, answers—evidence that he’d ever lived at all. I wanted to cling to Peter, but he wouldn’t have understood any of that. At least not until I had a chance to explain what had happened to his brother. Which I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to be the one to extinguish his hope.
Peter spoke first. “Kitty, can you tell me where my brother is?”
There was no way to soft-pedal this. Out with it, that was all I could do. Calmly, methodically, I started in on it.
“How much do you know about him and what he was doing here? When was the last time you talked to him?”
He hesitated a moment, editing his response maybe, like he didn’t want to tell me anything. “It’s been a long time. I know he moved out here a while ago. He doesn’t have a regular job—he fixes bikes. I know he’s hiding, but I need to find him. I know he’ll want to see me.” He was tense, leaning on the table, desperate. And he didn’t have a clue.
I said, “Did you know he was a werewolf?”
He chuckled, disbelieving. “What?”
“T.J.—Ted—was a werewolf. Like me. We were part of the same pack. He was my best friend.”
He stared. “You’re not serious.”
I soldiered on. The words were cotton in my mouth. I just kept spitting them out. What else could I do? “There was a fight. It happens sometimes, like with natural wolves. They—we—have fights for dominance. Your brother was killed. He died protecting me.”
Stricken, he murmured, “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I wish—” Of course I wished it had all turned out different. That wasn’t the right thing to say. I shook my head. “T.J.—everyone here called him T.J.—never told me anything about his family. I didn’t really know anything about him, other than his life here. It never occurred to me that he was hiding. I have so many questions—”
“Do you have proof? Is there a grave? A death certificate? I should have been able to find a death certificate.”
He’d died in a werewolf battle, in the hills. The body had vanished, dropped by the other wolves down some dark hole where no one would find it. The pack cleaned up its messes precisely so there wouldn’t be a trail for the police, or people like Peter, to follow.
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police this?” He was growing angry, his face flushed, puckered from grief, from a struggle not to cry. So he did believe me, deep down. At some level, he must have suspected how his search would end.
“Because it wasn’t their business.” I smiled sadly at the harshness of my tone. What a bitter assessment of the situation. It must have sounded shocking. “Because they’d need the same kind of proof, which I didn’t have. I didn’t want them to keep asking questions.”
“But if he was killed, if someone killed him—”
“The man who killed him is dead, if that helps.”
By the stark expression of shock he wore, I guessed it didn’t. No—I’d watched the man who killed him die, and it didn’t help me at all.
I was about to ask him more about T.J.—where had he come from, what other family did he have, why didn’t he want to be found? But Peter, his gaze down, pushed away from the table. I wanted to hear everything, but I’d had a year to live with T.J.’s death. Peter had just learned about it. He wasn’t ready.
“This is crazy,” he said. “I’ll find out what happened. What really happened.”
His long strides carried him to the front door in moments. I let him go. What else could I do?
I stayed put to finish my soda, but I was having trouble getting even that past the lump in my throat. I covered my eyes with a hand when the tears started.
“Hey, you okay?”
Through a gap in my fingers I saw Shaun standing next to me.
“Headache,” I muttered.
By his smirk I could tell he wasn’t convinced. I scrubbed my already reddened face and looked at him full on. “That guy who was just here?”
“Yeah? Hey, if he hurt you I’ll—”