“I don’t know! I got scared!”
“Your mother seems to have a beef with her coworker, so I thought about offering up like a finger or something, but I really wasn’t sure what she’d do with it, you know? At least these things she can use.”
Gabriel stares at me. “Do not joke about fingers around me.”
“Good god, I cut off one finger and you’ll never forget it.”
“I sure as fuck won’t! I am traumatized!”
His mom returns with a dish and his dad with my special ultra snazzy chocolate milk. Unless she added the chocolate to hide something she put in it, which would make this dinner that much more exciting.
“I hope you like chicken. I should have asked! Oh, do you not like chicken?” Mabel asks, obviously concerned I have some deep-seated hatred toward chicken.
“Gabriel once fed me a piece of toast that was so black it crumbled to ash when I touched it. And I still loved it, so I’m positive this will be perfect.”
“Gabriel has other good qualities,” she assures me.
“Excuse me?” Gabriel asks. “My cooking isn’tthatbad.”
“Honey, one time I saw you eating packaged ramen with French fries mixed in.”
“I was… life was hard, okay? It was a mistake; I understand that now. Please stop telling Liam things about me.”
“I want to know everything,” I say, settling into the idea that I could use these two people to gain Gabriel knowledge before I run and never see them again. “Tell me everything Gabriel has ever done. Start from birth.”
“Please don’t start from birth,” Gabriel pleads.
“He was the sweetest little baby! His sister was so fussy, but he was just adoll. He had these huge brown eyes and would just stare.”
“Sounds creepy if it was anyone other than Gabriel,” I say, having never acquired the taste for children.
His mom laughs as she dishes me up a plate like I’m royalty as everyone else is left to dish their own plates.
“I would like to see pictures of this bush baby Gabriel,” I declare.
Mabel beams. “Of course! I have so many pictures. So tell me about yourself, Liam?”
I quickly realize that this is the worst topic we could have ever settled on when I could get more Gabriel details. “Not much to tell, honestly.”
“You work homicide as well?” Clark asks.
“I do.” There. That should be enough of a life story for them to move on to dirt about Gabriel.
“Gabriel nearly gave me a heart attack when he told me he was promoted to homicide. I’m just relieved that if hehasto do it, he’s moved here to be closer to us,” Mabel says.
“Yeah?” And now he’s going to move into my home… as soon as I can convince him to. “He would definitely be safest if he didn’t live alone.”
Gabriel’s eyebrow lifts as he gives me a look. “Would I? After all, I have Lucille, and you assure me every day that my cat could take out the wickedest of assassins.”
“You always lived around here?” Mabel asks me.
“Within an hour or two,” I answer. “I grew up about an hour from here.”
“Your parents still live there?”
“No, they’ve both passed.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Mabel says as she gets a weird look on her face like she suddenly wants to fill in for my deceased parents. Like she thinks there’s possibly a hole there…
