Hearts of Blue
Page 19

Passing by the living room, I saw a gigantic flat-screen TV on the wall and a designer leather couch. The kitchen was sleek and new, at odds with the age of the house. I guessed the place was built around the ’50s or ’60s, one of those old red brick council jobs. Usually, these builds were a two up, two down affair, but I knew there had to be more rooms, given that six people lived there. Sure enough, a hallway led off from the kitchen to an extension out the back. I was willing to bet the loft had been converted, too.
All in all, it was fairly obvious that the brothers had a decent amount of money coming in, though you’d never think it from the outside. Lee eyeballed me for a second, shrewd as a fox, and I knew he could tell I was taking everything in and coming to one conclusion. Unless his garage was doing a booming business, his money had to have come from elsewhere. This was why I couldn’t understand him inviting me over. Either he was allowing his attraction to cloud his judgement, or he was up to something.
I sat down on a stool and he turned away, opening the fridge to check what food he had in.
“It must get hectic, living with so many people under one roof,” I said, attempting to make polite conversation. After all, I wasn’t going to be a bitch to the man in his own home.
“I’m used to hectic, Sn…I mean, Karla,” said Lee, pulling ingredients from the fridge. “Me and my brothers have been living here since we were kids. Back then there were four of us in one room, though we’ve had the place updated a little since.” He paused and pointed to the extension. “Sophie and Jonathan share the downstairs bedroom. Stu has his own room upstairs, Trevor and Liam share, and I’m in the attic.”
“So your parents don’t live here?”
“You like spaghetti?” he asked, perhaps to change the subject. “I make my own sauce from scratch.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
A moment of silence elapsed, and I wasn’t expecting him to answer my question about his parents, so I got a surprise when he did.
“Mum died when I was fourteen. Overdose. Dad left when we were little, but he still comes around every so often. Waste of fucking space.”
I sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry to hear that. Who took care of all of you after your mother passed?”
Lee cocked an eyebrow like I was being nosy, which I was. “Took care of ourselves. My aunt, Sophie’s mum, fooled social services into believing she was moving in to care for us. What she really did was dump Soph here, then fucked off to live with her junkie boyfriend while getting a nice little government payment every month.”
He was chopping tomatoes, onions, and garlic as he spoke, throwing them all into a blender.
“But if she took the money, how did you survive?”
He paused, looked me dead in the eye, and asked low, “How do you think we survived?”
I stared back at him, and in spite of what he was inferring, sympathy churned in my gut. I didn’t know how to respond. He pointed his knife at me for a second, which was a little jarring.
“Everybody’s always so quick to judge, but we’re all born into our own patch. Some patches are worse than others, and yeah, most of the time you get a choice on what way to live. Trouble is, sometimes the choice is between bad and worse. I had two choices, and if I had picked the one I didn’t, my brothers would’ve been split up and shipped off to a bunch of shitty care homes, where they’d-a been turned into victims. Instead, I chose the other option and turned them into survivors.”
I stared at Lee, but he didn’t meet my gaze, concentrating on the food instead. It made me uncomfortable to see things from his perspective. I’d always looked on the world from the viewpoint of a cop. Somebody who stopped people from taking what didn’t belong to them. The problem was, some people had nothing, and their only option was to take.
There were so many things I wanted to say. Like, why didn’t Stu get a job to support them? He must have been at least sixteen at the time. Yeah, the best he could’ve done was minimum wage, but at least it was honest. Then again, I doubt that kind of money would support a house of five growing kids. Plus, Stu wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. I could imagine him looking to Lee, who seemed a lot savvier, for guidance, and who obviously saw a more lucrative path.
“What I’m saying,” Lee went on, “is that we all have our reasons.” A loaded silence fell, and I grew self-conscious as he studied me. “So, what’s yours?”
My brow furrowed. “I don’t get you.”
“Somewhere along the way you decided to become a cop. What was your reason?” he asked, seeming genuinely interested.
I rubbed my palms on my thighs. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Your old man?”
“What about him?”
“Did he push you?”
I laughed, resting my elbows on the counter, surprisingly engrossed by watching Lee cut vegetables. He had those fancy knife skills, like the chefs on TV. “No, actually. The exact opposite. He doesn’t think women are fit to be police.”
Understanding lit up his eyes as he grinned. “Ah, so you did it to piss him off. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
My smile began to fade. “That’s only a part of it. I want to help people, too. A lot more than I want to stick it to my father.”
Lee’s eyes flickered between mine, his expression contemplative. “Yeah, I can see that.” A silence fell between us, and for the tiniest second I felt like we truly saw one another. All the flaws and all the good bits. The moment was broken when he continued, “Anyway, look, I’m not judging you for the thing with your old man. In fact, this means we have something in common. My dad’s a prick, too.”