The Serpent's Skin by Erina Reddan (top 5 books to read .txt) 📕

I hadn’t returned any of Tye’s phone calls since I’d seen Dad. Rat-Tail, our self-appointed message taker, was pulling at his thin, scraggy Rasta-tail at the stream of unanswered messages. Tye and I were always the first in to the office, so he was waiting in the lobby downstairs already when I made it through the revolving doors the next day.

‘So my relationship with Rat-Tail has gone to a new level,’ he opened with.

I put my arms around his neck. Breathed him in. Wondered how long we might have for this ease once I’d told him. I couldn’t see it as anything but a one-way ticket down Resentment Road. If I wanted it and he didn’t? If he wanted it and I didn’t… I turned my brain off. I’d been around and around these computations too many times already. I had no idea what he would think. Hell, I had no idea what I thought.

‘He says to tell you how he likes how polite you are,’ I said.

‘And?’ He waited.

I leaned away to grin. ‘Only he can’t understand your accent, but!’

Tye threw his hands in the air.

I laughed.

Tye didn’t have an accent, but Rat-Tail heard through his eyes, and the brown skin and brown eyes Tye inherited from his Japanese mother confused him.

I used the distraction to make peace with Tye. I grabbed his hands in mine and told him the nothing I discovered at Dad’s.

‘Okay.’ He nodded in his measured way. ‘What next?’

‘Next I get real busy on my Stintini case.’

Before he could say much, Maurice was there, sweeping us into the lift in his take-no-prisoners way.

He clipped his way through a number of questions to Tye, who’d spent his Sunday working on their case, before turning to me. ‘Got the Stintini brief ready, JJ?’ he asked.

‘Yep, yep,’ I said. ‘Almost. Just a final polish to go.’

‘So barely started, then?’ He shook his head, seeing straight through me.

The lift doors opened. ‘You know where I am if you need me,’ he said before sweeping away again like some minor king leaving his minions.

I’d met Maurice the first day of uni. I was early and sat in the very top seat nearest the door to the lecture theatre. He told me later it was his ritual to arrive early for the first lecture of the academic year. I watched this guy, who was supposed to be a God of Law and was the actual Head of the Law School, place his papers on the lectern and stride up and down the platform. He wouldn’t have even known I was there but for the noise my pen made when it dropped to the ground and rolled down the next stair. He shaded his hand against his forehead and found me in the gloom of the back of the theatre. He didn’t ask me to go down to him. Instead he took the stairs two at a time to get to me. I had no idea that the flowing black gown was not de rigueur. That was another part of his first-lecture ritual. Full academic gear. ‘What school did you go to?’ was his first question. Which I didn’t appreciate, coming from a down-in-the-mouth, library-what-library, but-boy-can-we-put-on-a-mean-mass kind of school. But instead of disapproving, a smile cracked through the seriousness on his face. ‘Good. Good,’ he said. ‘Too many students are spoonfed into this place from nurseries wallpapered with money and schools dripping with gold.’ He had a clipped, decisive way of speaking. It was like he knew who he was. I let go of the breath I’d been holding ever since I passed through the mighty sandstone gates of the university.

Turns out he came from a school just like mine. Not Catholic. But the down-and-out part. So when I nearly gave up a few years later, there was enough between us that he offered me a part-time job at his Chambers. That became Articles when I finished. He was a hand on my shoulder, and that has been a good and bad thing. Right now, bad. I had to confront him about ringing my dad. But… opening another front right now? It would have to wait.

I sat down at my desk and pulled the Stintini files out. Flipped open the first manila folder. The words on the page pulsed at me, refusing to stay in their straight rows. Flipped it closed. I pushed back in my chair. Bit my lip, dug into my palms, rubbed at the jackhammers pounding away on my arms. Really useful things. I plucked a pen from the re-purposed jam jar, opened the file again. I could ask Suze to do some of the basic work. I’d never done that. Always did my own work. I put my hand to my belly. Felt the quease of it. I really should have tried to get more sleep. I bundled up my files, scribbled out a note and did my own gratitude smiling as I dropped the lot with Suze. I scribbled out another note and left it for Tye. Took a tram home and got straight into the Austin without going inside to run Rat-Tail’s gauntlet. I angled the wide bus steering wheel away from the curb and headed for the freeway.

Tessa pulled into her driveway just after me, so I had a moment to gauge her mood in the sliver of rear-vision mirror. There was nothing there but business as she parked beside the front door. I rubbed my palms together and got out, hands to hips, watching. Georgie rocketed out of the car first.

‘Hey batboy,’ I said.

He flew into my arms. I squeezed my eyes tight to get more of his little body hug, taking the edge off something a few layers down in me. ‘You had twins, you smart little guy. How’s that going?’

‘They don’t do much.’ He stood back and put his head on the side like