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price.”
    “What did I do?” I ask her.  Kate
rolls her eyes.
    “You’ve talked about it before,”
she says.  “Remember years of therapy?  Talking about it then did nothing for
you.  Why relive it?”
    “Because I think I’m ready to
remember and get over it.”  She shakes her head.
    “Bullshit,” she says.  “It will
make you crazy.  I mean crazier.”
    “I think you’re wrong,” I tell
her.  “I think it will help.  And that scares the shit out of you.  If I’m
better then you’ll be gone.”
    She smiles at me sadly.  “I’m
already gone.”
    I don’t understand, but that’s
okay, maybe I don’t want to.  Suddenly things are slowing down, which they do
later in the evening.  People are tired and the music gets slower and lower to
match their pace.  I’m done for the night and Kate isn’t there.  I want out of
this cage, and I want to shower and sleep until the next time I absolutely have
to leave the house.  In the locker room I say goodnight to another girl named
Sarah and slip on a white shift dress over a pair of blue lace panties and no
bra.  It’s too hot for a bra.  I think about how four bottles of whiskey would
be a great way to spend tonight and tomorrow, and I can just go home and lay in
bed naked and not move.
    I’m walking out onto Rush Street and
I hear him.  “Hello Jenna,” he says.  His voice is warm, dark honey.  I whirl
around and he’s standing against the wall.  He looks more casual.  He’s lost
the suit and exchanged it for tight black jeans and a black shirt that shows
off his very defined chest.
    “You’re that guy from this
morning,” I say.  “Drake?”  He nods and stands watching me while I light my
cigarette.  “What are you doing here?”
    “I came to see you,” he says.  He
makes me self-conscious and I wish I’d worn a bra because I can feel my nipples
getting hard, even though it feels like Dante’s eighteenth level of hell
outside.  “This is your place of…business, right?  I came to pay you a less
than social call.”
    I shake my head, trying to clear
the vodka fog.  “Are you fucking stalking me or something?”
    He smiles and takes my cigarette
out of my mouth and steps on it to put it out.  “Somewhat,” he replies, making
my heart beat fast.  “I have some business to discuss with you regarding your
father.”

Chapter 5
    We are at a bar.  It’s one of those
5:00 am dive bars where the lights are dark and considering the crowd and the
level of hygiene, it’s for the best.  Drake is drinking a beer and I have a
Scotch, neat.  He asks me if I’m hungry but I’m really not.  I had hoped that
all of the Jack business was over and I could move on with the rest of my life
but my lack of intuition never ceases to amaze me.
    “Jack hired me a few months before
he died to manage his estate and draw up a will,” Drake is saying.  “I think he
knew he was going to die.”  He shrugs.  “Some people just do.”
    “He drank himself to death,” I say,
taking a long, ironic sip of Scotch.  “It was bound to happen.  Some of us wish
it had happened a long time ago.”  Perhaps before I was ever born, I think and
shudder slightly.
    “I think it was intentional,” Drake
says.  “But regardless, Jack did have $50,000 and his house, which he’s divided
equally between you and Devin.”
    My heart stops cold in my chest and
I feel my throat closing up.  My fingertips go up to my temples in an attempt
to not pass out from Drake’s words.  Where the fuck did Jack even obtain that
kind of money?  I think about this and realize Jack had probably been involved
in more horrible things than I ever could have imagined.  As much as I could
use a permanent home and a chunk of change, it doesn’t feel good to me.  “I
don’t want Jack’s drug money,” I say.  “Won’t some loan shark or the police
just come around seize it from Devin or me if we claim it?”
    Drake shakes his head.  His sensual
mouth