Stay With Me Read Free Page B

to me.”
    “When did I say it to you?”
    “December 8, 1982; February 21, March 9, and September 16, 1983; February—”
    “Okay, okay.” Lieberman sighed. “I am officially retiring the line.”
    “You’ve said that before, too.”
    Lieberman smiled, shook his head. “Some things never change.”
    “Most things,” Brenna said.
    “That right?”
    She gave the waiting room a pointed once-over. “Yep.”
    Lieberman shrugged. “I’ll have to take your word for that.”
    “You can’t sleep?” Brenna said, once she and Maya were in the elevator and heading down. It had been the first thing she’d said to her since leaving Lieberman’s office, Brenna trying dozens of different ways to make a phrase out of what she’d been thinking.
    Maya shrugged. “No big deal.” She gazed up at the blinking numbers and, for some reason, smiled. “It’s only been a couple of nights.”
    For several seconds, Brenna watched her daughter, a lump forming in her throat. “Maya?”
    She looked at her.
    Just say it . “You can tell Dad.”
    “Huh?”
    Brenna cleared her throat. “You can tell him about what happened . . . on December 21.”
    “December . . .”
    Brenna closed her eyes. “It was wrong of me to tell you to keep that from him,” she said. “You can’t keep things from your father, even if those things make me look irresponsible.”
    “Mom.”
    “I shouldn’t have left you alone that night. That never should have happened to you. You were in my care and I let you down.”
    “Mom.”
    “Your father should know that.”
    “ Mom ,” Maya said. “First of all, you saved my life.”
    “But I never would’ve had to if—”
    “Secondly, that freak is in jail right now. No one’s going to hurt me anymore.”
    “Maya . . .”
    “Thirdly, I’m not telling Dad.”
    The doors opened, the last word, “Dad,” echoing in the quiet lobby. It was a cold winter Saturday and gray light pressed through the windows, the whole city still tired from the holidays, everything sad and hungover, the year still too new to matter. Brenna had always hated January, for these reasons and more. “Why not?” she asked.
    “Faith’s a reporter, and she got the same story everybody else did. I was at a friend’s, I came home to find you and DeeDee fighting with each other, Trent called the police and they saved the day. That’s a good story. Why needlessly freak them out with extra details?”
    “It’s not extra details, honey. It’s the truth.”
    “It’s my truth,” she said. “I can tell who I want.”
    As they headed for the door, Maya placed a hand on Brenna’s arm. Brenna turned to her. “Maya, your father deserves to know . . .” she started to say. But Maya’s expression stopped her. “It’s our truth, Mom,” Maya said, very quietly. “And it’s not why I wanted to see Dr. Lieberman.”
    Brenna never found out why Maya had wanted to see Lieberman because Maya didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Whatever I say is going to sound stupid,” Maya explained to her on the subway. “And then you’ll remember it forever.”
    “Hey,” Brenna tried. “I remember, but I don’t judge.”
    Maya rolled her eyes, which wasn’t fair.
    “I don’t ,” Brenna said.
    But really, Maya didn’t have to be fair about this, and Brenna didn’t want to press her. Even if she did manage to yank a reason out of her, Brenna deep-down knew it that it all boiled down to the knife attack— how could it not? And if Brenna’s thirteen-year-old daughter wanted to protect her from the truth, then there wasn’t much Brenna could do about that, was there, other than to let Maya believe she was protecting her?
    The subway jerked to a stop at Christopher Street, and Brenna and Maya sauntered off—no hurry, really. The subway was a pleasure on weekends—always a place to sit, no pushing . . . “So,” Brenna said. “Devil’s food?”
    They were on their way to Magnolia Bakery, where the handoff was