Seven Kinds of Hell Read Online Free PDF Page A

using your fists wasn’t uncommon. Then there was his smile, which first caught my eye when I was in his class section. A little crooked, but so, so sweet—
    I swallowed. “Does Will—is he doing OK?”
    “Yeah, he’s fine.” A little of the familiar, stubborn Sean resurfaced, and he frowned. “Zo, I’m not going to get into all that, OK? You guys want to talk, you should decide you’re gonna talk to each other. I’m not getting in the middle of it.”
    I nodded quickly. Of course, no question. “But maybe you and me—we’re OK?”
    He sighed. “Will’s been my best friend for years. You broke his heart with what I thought was a bullshit excuse. What am I supposed to do? I’m not as angry as I was. It’s been two years. Maybe someday you can explain it to me, we’ll be a hundred percent. But now?” He rocked his hand back and forth. “Maybe eighty-five.”
    I smiled. “Thanks, I’ll take it.” I had to take it; no way would I
ever
tell him why I broke up with Will so suddenly. “And I’m sorry I hurt you, too. If I could’ve avoided hurting anyone—”
    “Yeah, OK, ancient history, done with it.” He walked a few steps, coughed. “Any chance you could give me a ride back to the train? Call me a cab? My car is in the shop.”
    “Jeez, Sean, I’ll give you a lift. Just give me a few minutes to change, OK?” A thought occurred to me. “Um, you don’t still happen to have the bag, do you?”
    He shook his head. “Not on me. I remembered it about halfway here. I felt like such an idiot. You can pick it up, once you drive me back.”
    I glanced at him; I didn’t think he’d forgotten the bag. Maybe he’d said so, because just showing up here with it would have been weird, like he was saying, “OK, your mother’s dead, and here’s the last of her stuff.”
    Sean knew the story Ma had told him; that we were hiding from dangerous in-laws. That’s why he’d agreed to hang onto a bag stuffed with insurance papers, the car slip, and other things she wanted to keep safe. He’d been established in his apartment for ages and had a steady job. Ma didn’t trust our flimsy apartment door or want to rely on the schedules of a bank safe.
    I drove us back to our apartment. The excuse of the funeral now gone, things got more awkward. We found ourselves trying to reconnect, the reason for us having to do so resting squarely on my shoulders.
    He mentioned he’d decided to forge ahead and pursue his doctorate to start his own contract archaeology company. I told some lies about maybe looking into a museum studies program in New York. There was an uncomfortable silence for a few blocks.
    “How’s Danny?” Sean asked suddenly.
    Danny was my cousin by affection, not blood, but he was all the family I had left now that Ma was gone. I pulled into the drive, switched off the ignition. “Good. He’s working in Cambridge. I helped him move into a nice place there, couple months back.”
    “Tech job?”
    I paused. “Computational linguistics.”
    “Get the fuck out. There is no such thing.”
    “There is. And not only is he good at it, there’s money to be made.”
    “Well. That’s one way for him to put all those languages to use.” Sean followed me up the stairs. Archaeologists are expected to have a few languages under their belts; Danny put us all to shame. “I wouldn’t have gotten through my Spanish proficiency if he hadn’t helped. But…he wasn’t here today?”
    I nodded, sighed. “Business trip, three time zones away. Not much we could do about it.”
    Danny’s mother, Louise, and Ma met working at a temp agency when I was young. When their paths crossed a year later, in anothertown, Ma decided to accept Louise Connor’s friendship. Not until she asked Sean to hang onto her papers, years later, did I ever see Ma trust anyone like that. Louise and Danny were all Ma and I had for a long time. Junior-high frenemies had made comments about me “having two mommies”; I would have killed