He brought her a glass of wine and settled in next to her on the couch.

“You’re anything but a waste of my time.” He kissed her knuckles before taking a sip from his glass. “So . . . Raven. I met Raven fourteen years ago. I was twenty-five and she the aforementioned twenty-two.”

Elise snorted and he flashed a grin.

“I had all this responsibility in my life. I’d had it for a long time, really. Even before my parents died I took care of Erin and Adrian. They were both finally out of high school and working on this band thing. Things were good. I was tattooing and building a following. She was, well, she’s not much different now than she was then.

“Where I had all this stuff anchoring me—family, a job, a community—Raven didn’t. She was a free spirit and I couldn’t get enough. She was everything I couldn’t be. She floated around, doing whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and she wanted me. Which I found very attractive.”

Elise just listened. Sometimes you needed to get it all out, even if she was sitting there listening to the story of how he fell in love with another woman.

“She and Erin became close as well, but Adrian never really trusted her. To this day there’s distance between them. I fell and I fell hard. She told me not to. She told me that she wasn’t into longterm exclusive relationships. And when it came to it, she cheated. Well, not really cheated; she f**ked someone else and didn’t hide it. To her, hiding it would have made it cheating.”

Elise knew part of his attraction must have been that he thought he could be the one to change Raven. The more she told him it wasn’t possible, the more attractive she’d have seemed to his twentyfive-year-old self. Also, she really hated Raven at that point.

Brody chuckled. “The look on your face makes me feel avenged. So you can probably guess I didn’t end it. I kept at it for a few years on and off. It broke me, or I let it break me. Whatever. But when Adele was killed, she came and ran my shop for months. She refused to let me pay her anything but straight commission. She handled everything up here. She stepped in during the hardest time of my life and she gave me exactly what I needed. She watered my plants, she took care of my fish, she dealt with my mail and anything else I needed while I was gone or traveling back and forth. She did it all without me having to ask. Afterward, she sat with me and Erin both, many a night, listening to us pour out our pain. She stayed here for fifteen months all told, from the date of the murder until months after Erin had settled back in here, in Seattle. Everything was chaos, everything felt so hard just to deal with. And Raven made it so that all I had to do was support Erin.”

“That’s a wonderful gift.” And it was, Elise couldn’t deny it.

“So she’s just, well she’s just Raven. She’s not perfect. She’s not even likeable half the time. But she stood up for me and my loved ones when we needed it most. She’s been an amazing friend to Erin through all she’s gone through. She’s special to me, but I don’t make the mistake of not knowing exactly what she is and what she’s capable of. She’s not selfish, not really.”

“She’s at the center of her own universe and that’s how it is.” You can’t hate those people, but you can try to keep them out of your life. She couldn’t hate Raven, not after that story, but Elise didn’t like her, and she didn’t trust her either.

“But you’re not her.” He laughed at her reaction. “No, what I meant is, you’re empathetic. You take care of people—not to your extreme detriment, but you go the last mile for people and you don’t do it on your schedule.”

“I cut my brother from my life, Brody. I didn’t have him over for barbecues or even through my front door for about six months before he died, and even before that things were strained. I’m not Raven, but I’m not you either. I don’t go the last mile. I have limits and it makes me selfish. I can accept that. Like I said, I’m not noble.”

“You take on a lot. You carry a lot of guilt. Raven didn’t steal from me, didn’t put my loved ones in danger. Was he bad? At the end?”

“Yes. He’d burned his bridges, so no one would have hired him even if his voice hadn’t been shot. I hated to hear his voice on the phone when I answered. Hated to see him waiting outside my building. He was a millstone and I resented that.”

“Who wouldn’t? Come on, Elise! Who wouldn’t hate that?”

“If he took a shower and ate a meal with me, I gave him money. I know, I enabled him. Another mistake in a long line, I’m sure. But Jesus, he looked horrible and he was sick. He was so angry all the time. He said things, hurtful things you only know when you’re close to someone. He heard things from my husband and used them to hurt me.

“And then he’d get clean for a while and be his old self. Silly and shallow in most ways, but he had a good heart. He was so good with Rennie when she was a baby. But he always fell back into drugs. I had to keep him out of my life. Out of Rennie’s life. He ran with my ex, who had been in and out of jail, so that was always there between us. He stole from me. He shot up in my house! With my baby around. I couldn’t do it. Having a junkie in your life is hell. You live in a place of fear all the time. Dread. What will he say or do? Will this ringing phone be the police or my parents telling me he’s dead? Will I be relieved when I hear it?”

“So it’s your fault he overdosed? After being a hard-core addict for years? At some point, you have to let go. You have Rennie to think of.”