Chapter One of The Falconer
It was Sundayâs paper, read the following day because the boy didnât deliver Mondayâs yet. I almost missed the headline entirely in my annoyed rush to fill the time. I would have scanned and moved on quickly, if not for the picture.
He wore a crisp, black tuxedo, dark grey bow tie hanging unraveled at his neck. He smiled only halfway for the shot, a teasing kind of smirk that was a particular favorite of mine. And above this, was a phrase that sent all the blood in my body to pool in my feet.
Fiery Plane Crash Claims the Life of Celebrated New York Artist Walker Cole.
I read the words over and over, for what seemed like a million times. None of it penetrated. The sentences blurred, some phrases catching my eye and rising above the mess.
Dead, fire, plane, remote, explosion, Mexico City.
My full cup of coffee tilted on its axis, spilling over the edge and dripping onto the obituary page. It was halfway to my mouth when I saw him and hung abandoned now.
His eyes appeared to leap from their dimension and into my own. Tracking me, even now, as I struggled to tamp down the emotions that threatened to drown me at my own kitchen table.
"Jesus, Demi, pay attention," Connor scolded from across the table. Quickly, he covered the spill with a napkin and scowled at me. "What's wrong? You look terrible."
I cleared my throat but the words wouldn't come out. Connor stood and came around to look over my shoulder, planting one fist near the paper to lean in. His richly deep, ebony skin contrasted with his immaculate white dress shirt. The scent of his cologne filled my nose, his chest coming into contact with the back of my head. It wasn't as comforting as it should have been, considering he was six months out from becoming my husband.
"Walker Cole?" Connor said with a questioning lilt. I knew what would come next, I feared it and wanted it in equal measure. Just a sliver of a reminder that Walker Cole wasnât some elaborate hallucination from my past. "Is that...is that the same guy from graduate school?"
I leaned my head further into his chest and took a deep breath in. "When I met Walker I was still at NYU, remember?â
âOf course.â Connor broke away suddenly and took his place back across from me. It was so abrupt my head snapped back.
"What happened to him?" he asked, tipping his cup of tea to his lips. Connorâs chocolate brown eyes appeared set in some determined way upon me. It was an assessing stare. Cold and steely.
I looked down at Walker's face again, trying to remember the last time I had seen him in person. What was the last word he said to me? What was the last thing I said to him?
I was suddenly desperate to know.
"Demi?" Connor said, bringing me back to his question.
Right, how Walker died. "It says here it was a plane crash. I remember he liked to fly those little-"
"What a ghastly way to go," Connor interrupted, his thick British accent coming out more than it typically did. âThat is why I refuse to fly in anything less than a 747.â He pulled out his phone then, scrolling through the seemingly hundred daily morning emails from his firm.
He did it without pause or another comment on Walker Cole.
I tried to copy his ability to shove emotions under a mask of cool confidence. I needed to. I wanted to talk about anything else, anything other than the death of Walker Cole. Especially with Connor.
Summoning all my inner strength, I managed to say, âare you taking the train into work or do you want me to drop you off?"
My voice came out steady, but quiet.
"I have a brunch thing with a few employees from the company we just absorbed. Some place two blocks south of the office. They are so paranoid about having to fire people, now I have to hold their hands for a while to ease the tension. Hopefully a few bloody Maryâs will help."
"People will understand, it's nothing personal," I answered robotically, as if searching for some praise from Connor.
He rewarded me like I knew he would.
Connor smiled wide, his perfect, white teeth all on display. Sometimes, it shocked me how beautiful he was, how easily his handsomeness shone through. "That's exactly what I told Gavin over the phone. If only I had more people like you working for me, pity you went into law and not stocks. Youâve got the stomach for the unpleasantness." Connor stood and kissed my cheek. "Are you in the office today or do you have to be in court?"
He slipped on his jacket. The blue pinstripe in his suit picked up the color of his shirt and tie with perfected ease. Some people look exactly like who they are, a perfect mirror to their insides. Connor Orson Mills was such a person.
He was money and refinement, education and class. Connor, and his entire family, valued reason and logic. It was a comfortable place to reside in, no room for the unnecessary, external or otherwise.
"I'm stuck in the office all day,â I replied, ânothing on the books this week but it's Monday, so that could change quickly."
Connor grunted and then threw back the rest of his tea while gathering his things.
Instantly, traitorously, I glanced at the paper again. At Walker. He called to me for another glance from his unreachable dimension.
I looked at the slight weathering near his eyes and mouth, tiny crow's feet that reminded me of his easy, lazy smiles. There was a time where I loved to make him smile, would do anything, really, to see him happy. I reached my fingers out and touched the tops of his sloped cheekbones. His sandy hair was dappled in places with a little gray and his clear grey eyes sparkled with mischief.
My gestures towards the paper didn't go unnoticed.
"Don't fret over that old man, Dem. It was over ten years ago, let him go. Youâre not the same girl you were then." He tried to sound even tempered but his accent thickened and his jaw clenched.
The comment cost him, I could tell, but didnât linger on it, or thank him. Connor couldnât appreciate it, anyhow.
All I could think was that Walker wasn't an old man, he was in his mid-forties, if my math held up. I supposed, he wasn't mid anything anymore. He wasnât anything, not forty, not handsome, not talented. He was dead. "I know, it just took me by surprise. You know I hate surprises."
It was true, I very much hated anything I couldn't see coming.
"Buck up Dem, I'll see you tonight for dinner. And to remind you I have that Hong Kong trip, tomorrow through Thursday. Might be late that night too, so donât wait for me.â
Connor left before I could say anything back.
  I paced around my midtown office, glancing from the scenic views of the city, to the phone on my desk, eyes darting back and forth like a madwoman. A slice of the paper, the one with Walker's obit, sat next to the phone. I had ripped it out just before leaving the apartment.
Scribbled below his photo, was a phone number I dug out of an old address book. One I hadn't dialed in about nine and a half years.
My assistant popped his head in the door, curly dark hair bouncing. "You want me to grab you lunch?"
I jumped and squealed, putting one hand over my heart. He scared the shit out of me. Throughout all my nervous pacing, I blocked out the reality around me. "Christ almighty Georgie, knock next time.â
True to form, he didn't care at all that I constantly spoke to him like some inferior lackey. The kid had a hard head and a passion for his career. Life would beat that out of him soon enough, I was just preparing him for it now.
"It's one thirty, you skipped the lunch meeting in the conference room."
Oh shit, I did skip the meeting.
I was too busy dredging up Amelia's old number and going back and forth on whether or not to grow some balls and call her. And then I stared at that fucking picture of Walker some more.
Georgie read my face and tried to ease my fears, "I told the other partners you got a call from a client, I don't think they noticed your absence until after, anyway."
My pacing returned. "Good, and no, no lunch. I'm leaving early today, I'll have an early dinner when I get home," I lied. Connor hated eating early. If I tried to eat before he got home, I was likely to get reprimanded by him.
Couples ate together, he would tell me all the time.
Georgie knew I was lying, I could tell in his expression, but he let it go.
If I ever got another assistant, I'd be screwed. No one, maybe not even Connor, understood me the way Georgie did. The hazards of working together for sixty-plus hours a week for years.
Often, he would stay late with me to research. At early morning court appearances he fetched me coffee, files, whatever I needed. And in return, I treated him like shit.
"What's wrong with you, you look like you've seen a ghost?"
My face drained a little further of color, and I had to cough to clear my throat. What the hell did I have to lose by sharing a smidgen? Georgie didn't know my history with Walker, maybe I could open up and then put it behind me and move on.
I blamed my moment of vulnerability on Georgie's apparent concern for me. "An old friend of mine passed away. I just found out."
Georgie leaned against the doorway and his gaze softened on my face. "I'm sorry, I didn't know.â His eyes travelled down to the paper on the desk. âIs that him, your friend?"
I looked at the picture and froze. Did I dare go there? What could it hurt just to let a little of the pressure out. "Yes, thatâs him.â I swallowed. âWalker Cole.â
My assistant cleared the distance to the desk and leaned forward, pivoting the paper in his direction. "Walker Cole, I feel like I know that name somehow. Should I know who he is, uh, was?" he asked, scratching the back of his neck. His hazel colored eyes met mine and I glanced away, turning my back and facing the city through my floor to ceiling window.
"He's was an artist, and a professor up at NYU. Moved out west to paint full time and only comes back for special lectures or specifics sessions.â Not that I knew that for sure. Or that I followed him and his career regularly.
That would be insane, that would be unhealthy.
"NYU, thatâs where you went to school for a while, right?" God, the kid didn't miss a fucking beat. Not one word I told him over the past three years had ever slipped his mind.
It made him valuable to me professionally, but terrifying as a pseudo-friend. From his reflection in the glass, I saw Georgie look at the photo some more, and then back to me. "He is very handsome. Rough too, like Indiana Jones or something."
I snickered, Walker would have loved the comparison. He was always pushing people, himself included, to be adventurous, take risks. To destroy boundaries. To challenge any authority.
My chest ached, and I reached up to rub at the spot absently.
I could forget nearly everything about my life, shove down unpleasant memories from my childhood and teenage years. But I could do nothing to stop Walker Cole from invading my head now. He was a wound that never healed. His death tore it open, and I bled for him.
My defenses snapped up and I whipped around to glare at him. "Itâs none of your business. Get me another coffee, the last one tasted like shit. And I need the brief for next month's trial, updated with the new evidence. Might as well start on the depositions."
Georgie smiled, giving me a salute before leaving the office. I followed him and closed the door, leaning against it to catch my breath.
Why did it hurt so much? I was over him, I was over that time in my life and now I felt right back there; in love with an impossible man, stuck in a life that seemed against me.
Stalking across the room, I snatched up the paper from my desk and tore it two. It wasn't enough for me, it didn't help the aching pain Walker left behind. My carefully controlled life didn't allow for such trips into the past.
I could studiously avoid feeling anything, if only I tried hard enough.
The now two pieces of paper, with Amelia's number and Walker's photo, taunted me. Reminding me I could feel more pain. Flashes of memories came back at me with breakneck speed. The good, the bad, the agonizing, it flew at me all at once and my knees threatened to buckle under my emotions.
The urge to get rid of him, to erase Walker, squeezed painfully around my heart.
I had quit smoking officially the year before, but I always kept an emergency stash and lighter in my top desk drawer. Madness gripped me, the need to destroy, to obliterate wouldnât let me go. I burned away the piece with his picture first. The edges curled in on one another to the point that I couldn't hold it any longer. My shaking hands dropped it into the trash bin as I went to grab the section with her number.
Unfortunately for me, the trash already half filled with papers. They went up quickly. I stood and watched the flames for a moment or two before recognizing that I had a problem.
The tiny trash can fire raged up to the top of the bin and began spilling over. A large stack of files, piled high with old case papers, sat next to the inferno. I snapped out of my horrified, semi-trance and tried to pat down the mess with my suit jacket. The collar went up suddenly and heat hit my hands. I dropped the black fabric but could already feel the little bubbles of blisters mark each palm.
That's when I panicked. I ran across the office, pulled open the door and yelled, "Fire!"
  A paramedic had just finished wrapping my hands when Georgie broke his silence. To his credit, he didn't ask me anything, or tease me, the entire time the professionals combed through our high rise floor. The rest of the office didn't approach either, they accepted my explanation of sneaked cigarette gone badly.
Half the office did the same on their spare time, and the rest were too busy with their own work to stay and make a fuss. The smoking explanation was Georgie's idea, he added a cig to the charred pile of trash can remains while no one was looking.
Another reason the kid needed a raise.
"You owe me one huge raise for today, not even you can deny me that," he stated, as if reading my mind.
I laughed bitterly and stared down at my mummy wrapped hands. "Yeah." On my tongue was another barb, a witty retort or insult. Nothing came. I sat pensively, the fiery burn under the bandages calling to me, echoing another low throb of pending torture in my chest.
When I glanced up at Georgie again, he was looking at me with a half concerned, half curious expression. "Demi, what's going-"
I help up my stinging hand to stop him. "No, no I can't. I can't do this right now. I canâtâŚwill you take me home?" Even though my hands hurt, I could probably drive myself. I doubted, though, that I'd have a clear enough head to get through midtown traffic without killing myself in the process.
My assistant's brows drew in. He looked so lost. âDem-â
Georgie slowly nodded his head, his eyes softening at the corners. It was almost a parental kind of expression. "Stay here, I'll grab my stuff."
I sat and watched him walk away, a kind of numbness spreading over me like warm whiskey. With absentness, I observed everyone milling around the room. Maybe one in ten met my eyes, and when they did, only mild concern or confusion passed between us.
There was no prying, no questions, no accusations.
What I liked about lawyers, is their ability to overlook things that would, probably should, bother most people. We had a unique prowess that sees the whole situation, not just the ugly parts, or the pretty ones, not the false front or the truth, but everything.
And in that chasm of circumstances you realize quickly that there is little in the world that can be black or white, cut and dry. People are neither good nor bad, but shades of both. So lawyers are slow to judge, and in that moment, I felt lucky to be around them.
"Demi?" Georgie said, bringing me out of my thoughts.
I wanted nothing more than to stay in my seat, in my happy bubble of numb ignorance. Anything but face the slow train headed right for me. I heard the engine roar this morning as I read the paper, and now its lights shone on my face.
When would it hit me fully?
Regardless of my illusions to run and hide, I let Georgie lead me out of the office and into the elevator. We rode the entire way down in silence, and the same went for the trek to my car. True to what I imagined, Georgie broke the quiet once he laid eyes on my car.
"Holy hell on a hotdog," he breathed. I grimaced. "You're a junior partner in this firm, one of the most lucrative in all of midtown. You speak like three languages, the big dogs are all grooming you for a big position as partner. You travel all the time to places I'll never see. And you drive this piece of shit?"
I looked at my beat up Subaru, the black paint chipping off the bumper and one door handle hanging at an odd angle. The front fender was a dark grey instead of black like the rest of the body. It had over two hundred thousand miles, and I refused, flat out refused, to get rid of her. She was a fucking tank that started for me whenever I needed her to.
My explanation poured out of me, as if I couldn't stop it even if I wanted it to. "I never had much growing up. We were poor by even the most generous standard. I worked my way through college, and grad school, and law school. I workedÂâat a job you'd never believeâand saved for the day I would buy my own car. Dreamed, even, of when I could own something that was solely mine. That piece of shit is it. She'll have to quit on me before I quit on her."
Georgie looked like he'd been slapped. "Tell me she's not a stick and all will be forgiven."
He smirked at me the way he usually did when I was giving him grief about something. The breath I'd been holding released, and I felt a sense of relief, the likes of which I'd never felt before. The only other person that knew this story was Connor, and he dismissed it like he did all the small stories from a life he would never understand.
"If you want that raise, George, you better learn fast."
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