“Missi!” Liv screamed. “You were only supposed to do that as a last resort!” She ran to help her father up.

Missi shrugged. “When was I ever going to get to do it now that we’re going legit? Besides, these bastards just put me through a month of unmitigated hell for a stupid reason.” She smiled innocently. “A girl’s gotta have a little fun now and then.”

It was over. Four millennia of wet work were over without so much as a whimper. How about that? I might have waxed more philosophical on it if I didn’t have a planeload of turbulence waiting for me on the tarmac.

I left the others to negotiate the terms of the dissolution of the company and made my way to the plane. And even though we had just scored a major victory without spilling so much as one drop of blood, my mood worsened with each step.

Ronnie had something to say. No doubt it was that she had chosen Drew over me. Perhaps she’d twist the knife and tell me why him. Whatever it was, this was going to be unpleasant.

I found her sitting alone on the steps of the jet. I didn’t want to talk to her. But since I’d just dragged her into another hemisphere, I guess I owed her something.

“Hey,” she said.

“Come on. We can take you two home now.” I took her hand to lead her up the steps but she pulled out of my grip.

“You are so wrong about me.” She wasn’t pleading. She just wanted me to know.

I cocked my head to the side. “Am I?”

She nodded. “You never gave me a chance to explain. And I’m really pissed off about that.”

“Well, the feeling’s mutual, because you didn’t try to explain.” My brain hurt. I wanted to go home, sleep for a week, then think all this through.

“Okay. I guess that’s somewhat true,” Ronnie said after a moment.

“Well, here’s your big chance. Go ahead. Explain it.”

For a second I thought she was going to get angry and refuse to talk.

“Drew isn’t my boyfriend.”

“What?” Not a great response, but considering the month I’d had, it was a respectable one.

“He isn’t my boyfriend.”

“Oh. Right.” I’d had enough of this. If she wanted to play games I had Risk and Sorry on the plane.

“He’s gay. And he’s my cousin,” Ronnie said, a slight glimmer of victory in her eyes.

“Right. And the Victorian house is really several apartments.” Oh, that nasty sarcasm.

“No, Drew is house-sitting for a professor who is on sabbatical in Paraguay. My apartment is being renovated due to an asbestos problem.”

Oh. Shit. I had hated her over asbestos.

“You never gave me the chance to explain,” she concluded. “If you had, you would’ve known that.”

I didn’t say anything, so of course she decided it was a good idea to continue.

“What is it with you men, anyway? All I’ve learned from being around you that no matter how well educated and worldly, you are still jealous, possessive and love to fight. You jump to conclusions at a moment’s notice and never stop to think about it-”

“Maybe you’re right,” I cut her off. It was too painful to hear that she had such a low opinion of me. Hell, I had a low opinion of myself.

“And then, after dumping me unceremoniously without so much as an explanation, you leave. And a few weeks later, you show up again with a file full of…” The words choked in her throat. “Full of ugly things I’d rather not have known, thank you.” She paused. “You came by just to hurt me even more. Just to prove you were right. And then you left, again, without allowing me to explain.”

Somehow, Veronica had managed to make herself really angry at me all over again. And I just stood there and let her.

She pushed past me and climbed aboard the jet. We didn’t speak all the way back to Cedar Rapids.

Chapter Thirty-four

The first thing I did was put an unconscious Dekker on the family plane. He awoke on the tarmac in Amsterdam without knowing how he got there. I left him a letter in his pocket and hoped I would never see him again.

The next few weeks were a blur. I helped my cousins dismantle the Bombay Corporation. Our other cousins seemed relieved that we had done this without them. Paris and I managed to liquidate our assets and divide them equally among the living Bombays. We kept the island and the jet. We’re not complete fools.

Missi got married to the guy she met on the reality show. I gave her a felted bag I knitted from the cashmere I got in Mongolia. For some reason, Missi and Lex spent their honeymoon in Ulaanbaatar before settling on Santa Muerta.

Life was slowly getting back to normal. Sartre grew fat as I spoiled her rotten with an extra ration of fruits and vegetables. I could tell she missed Ronnie. She actually seemed a little depressed.

I missed Ronnie. But I’d messed that woman up. Because of me, she’d eaten testicle soup, been kidnapped by a Dutch mercenary, saw her hero crucified and had a lover who treated her like a grand inquisitor. Maybe I was never meant to have a relationship. So why did I still believe that I could have had that with her? But what kind of relationship had areas that you could never, ever discuss? I’d lied to her about Dekker-letting her wonder what happened to him. And there was so much more about me she could never, ever know. Love couldn’t last in a vacuum.

Somehow I managed to get in on the last few carnivals of the season. The work was steady. Some of the bloom was off the rose. I’d be forty in a year and a half. The injuries I’d suffered on the steppes of Mongolia still haunted me. And for the first time in my life, it seemed important that I had a plan for the next forty years.

That disturbed me the most. After all, I had taken so much joy from the idea that I was completely and utterly free. You know what started to get to me first? Eating alone. No, eating alone in a trailer, night after night. Suddenly the things I loved about my life had become the things I hated about my life.

Oh, sure, I toyed with the idea of settling down in some obscure university town. It wouldn’t be too hard for me to land an academic job. But the thought of that made me feel sick inside. Was that insane or what?

As if I could settle down somewhere. And there it was. Whenever that possibility crossed my mind, I thought of Veronica. And when I thought of Veronica, I wondered what she was doing. Probably thinking evil thoughts about me. She probably was afraid I would show up on her doorstep again someday and kick her puppy.

With a sigh as rusty as the metal safety bar on the Ferris wheel, I snapped the two riders into place. It was a young couple, probably in their early twenties. I gave them a smile as I pulled the lever and sent them up to the moon.

“Poor thing,” I heard as they came around the first time. I was bored or I wouldn’t have been eavesdropping.

“He’ll never amount to much,” they said on their second rotation. Were they talking about me? No. It was stupid of me to even think that. They could be referring to anyone here.

“I love you,” the woman said to the man on their third rotation, and I watched as they kissed, disappearing into the stars. Just for fun, I let them ride twice as long.

“Coney!” I turned to find Chudruk standing directly behind me.

I threw my arms around him in a big bear hug. “When did you get back to the States?”

Chudruk grinned. “I came with Zerleg. He starts college this semester!”

“That’s great! He’s going to Yale, right?” I ignored the fact that the Ferris wheel was still turning. I didn’t hear anything anymore as the lovers went by.

“No. He decided on Iowa. Got a poetry scholarship.”

I wasn’t upset. Zerleg should go to the school he wanted to. I was just happy he got away from home to do what he loved.