The Bone Artists by Madeleine Roux Page A

business. Oliver could hear said business booming next door. The Berkleys liked to keep work and home close together, their second-story suite of apartments just one door and two dozen steps away from the shop.
    Correction—Nick Berkley liked to mingle business and family. Oliver wasn’t in love with the shop the way his dad was.
    “That’s what I told your granddaddy, too,” Oliver muttered under his breath. His father had informed him as much the last time they’d had the same old dinner conversation about Oliver’s future. It always ushered in a tense silence. Forks and knives were never so loud screaming across plates.
    Oliver opened the closet, grabbed a light canvas coat, and pulled it on, patting the pockets to make sure the acceptance letter from UT was still there. Its reassuring bulk on the left breast gave him a smile. Dad didn’t know yet, and frankly, Oliver wasn’t eager for that confrontation. But screw it. Today was about feeling good. It was about spring break.
    The closet was wallpapered in news clippings, magazine pages, and posters, some glossy, some faded. It was like a living timeline of his life and interests—flaking LEGO ads taped over with Catherine Zeta-Jones posters taped over with cheesy fantasy dragon illustrations taped over with muscle cars taped over with Saints pennants. An odd little time capsule to hold his simple wardrobe.
    The corridor leading from his attic-like bedroom down the hall to the kitchen was narrow and dark. Nobody smart had designed the layout of the apartment—the halls all turned out pokey and far, far away from any natural light. On the kitchen counter, the last two bananas were about to go bad, so Oliver took them both, peeling one and pocketing the other as he grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge.
    Coffee would come soon, but not until he had Sabrina and Micah with him. Then he could push the crisp, white paper across a café table to them and sit back to sip his morning brew with everything just a bit righter in his world.

 

H e didn’t expect her to call on his way to pick up Sabrina.
    Oliver pulled his beloved Challenger over, idling it safely against the curb, too nervous to juggle the phone, banana, and steering wheel all at the same time. Not with her on the line. Not with her voice slithering into his ear.
    “Oliver, dear, it’s been six whole days. That’s practically a lifetime in my line of work,” she said.
    Sucking in a deep breath, he tried to let the hum of the vintage engine put him at ease. This was just a phone call. At least Briony the Dragon Lady wasn’t sneering down at him in person. Christ. That was an experience he dreaded with every cell in his body.
    He tossed the half-eaten banana into the passenger seat. The almost too-ripe smell was making his stomach go queasy.
    “Hello, Briony,” he said with singsong mock enthusiasm. “Good morning to you, too.”
    “Do I need bloody cheek from you? No, I certainly do not.”
    The first time Oliver had met Briony Kerr, balanced on her knife-dagger high heels, he had made the mistake of thinking her attractive. Objectively, she was, but the wife of his boss was all angles—blunt cut, peroxide-bottle white hair; frosty-gray eyes bearing down on him like lasers. . . . He shuddered at themost recent memory. A six-day-old memory, in fact.
    Oliver watched the tourists going up and down the sidewalk. “We’re finishing up tonight. You’ll have what you asked for tomorrow, all right?”
    Shit. Tomorrow . In the wake of his good news, Oliver had managed to push away the thought of the Part-Time Job he and Micah needed to finish that night.
    “I see. Tomorrow, then.”
    “Yup!”
    “You’re lucky I’m such a patient woman.”
    Patient! What a crock of . . .
    “So lucky,” Oliver chirped. “The luckiest.”
    “Right. You can dispense with the sarcastic commentary, Mr. Berkley. I’ll expect to see you at seven tomorrow at your family’s charming establishment.”
    He waited