Fatal Entanglement

The plane touched down in Atlanta without fanfare. Afternoon light drove through the terminal glass and laid a hard bright block across the sleeve of Carol Perry's beige trench coat. Five years in Paris had left a certain finish on her, and standing here in the thick air of the place she came from, the finish didn't sit right.

Outside, April in Atlanta shimmered. Traffic ran unbroken down the interstate, tires hissing over hot asphalt. Behind a strip mall, the white steeple of a small Baptist church stood up alone against the haze.

The warm wet Southern air came at her all at once, and Carol thought about why she'd come: because Ava Smith was in a hospital bed, fighting for her life.

She walked into the room to find Ava sitting cross-legged on the mattress, thinner than she should have been, eyes closed, muttering.

"Life is an illusion. Men are recreational. Don't get attached—"

The knot Carol had been carrying since takeoff loosened all at once.

"You get sick once and suddenly you've achieved enlightenment?"

Ava's eyes flew open and her whole face lit. "Oh my God. You're here."

"You're in trouble. Of course I'm here." Carol sat down in the chair beside the bed. "What did the doctors actually say?"

Ava had been diagnosed a few weeks earlier with myelodysplastic syndrome — a malignant disorder of the blood-forming stem cells. Some people called it the waiting room for leukemia.

"So it's complicated." Ava sighed, but her voice stayed remarkably level. "My boyfriend of four years waited until I was admitted, then walked out with the cash in the company account, half the core team, and two years of my technical files."

She paused.

"As for the disease — the doctor gave me one piece of bad news and one piece of good news. Bad news is I've progressed to intermediate-2. High risk of converting to full leukemia. Chemo starts now."

"And the good news?" Carol asked, wanting there to be some.

"Good news is," Ava said, in exactly the same tone, "chemo will only manage it, not cure it, and it'll do serious damage to my ovaries. I probably won't be able to have children."

Carol went still. Her first thought was that Ava had them backwards. Her second was that no, actually, there was no ranking these.

"That's the good news?" She reached over and put a hand on Ava's forehead. "Are we sure this thing hasn't gotten into your brain?"

"Finding out my boyfriend is a piece of garbage counts as good news, doesn't it?" Ava had always been built this way, loose-jointed about disaster. "Besides, I was never going to have kids. I've always thought this thing was hereditary. It's what killed my father."

Four years with Kenneth Thompson. They'd come home together, built the company together, and it had been steady the entire time. Then she got sick, and he emptied the accounts before the IV was in.

Carol's jaw tightened. "Fine, he doesn't help. But you don't put a knife in someone's back while they're in the hospital."

Ava's mouth pulled sideways. "Men. They're all running the same software. Honestly? Love is the least reliable thing on earth. Show me a woman who believed in it and I'll show you someone who paid for it."

She waved a hand. "Never mind. You've never dated anyone. You wouldn't know."

Carol let that one stand, because she couldn't argue with it.

"I've never dated anyone," she said quietly. "But I've had a taste of something close enough. I had some savings. I moved them into your account. It isn't much, but it should hold you for a while."

Ava opened her banking app and counted the digits. Then counted them again.

"This is not much?"

It landed on her then, that when Carol said not much, she was working from a different dictionary entirely.

Carol clapped a hand over her mouth. "Shh. You know I love you. That's the whole message. Try not to stroke out."

Paul Williams had always been generous with her, from the very beginning. After she moved abroad, worried about what her life over there actually cost, he'd multiplied the number several times over and never mentioned it again. Five years of that added up.

"Forget my heart, you can have a kidney." Ava's voice had gone thick. "But you're really lending me this much? Look at me. I might not be able to pay it back."

"Then call it equity," Carol said, perfectly calm.

Aeris Nox was days from insolvency. Everyone with sense was running the other way. Buying in now made you an idiot of historic proportions.

Ava hadn't cried when she and Kenneth tore each other apart. She hadn't cried signing her own chemotherapy consent alone in an empty room. Her eyes stung now.

"It was always going to be you."

She could carry things by herself. She'd been doing it her whole life. But there was a difference between carrying it alone and carrying it with someone standing behind you, and she felt it.

Carol laughed and pulled her into a hug, rubbing her back. "A man who's only good in the good times isn't a loss. It's fine. I've got you."

Ava sat up suddenly. "Wait. You just showed up here — is that going to be a problem? With your family? Did they even agree to you coming back?"

Carol rarely volunteered anything about her family, or about the years before she left.

What Ava knew was this: she wasn't close to them. She had a brother, and he was the most important person in her life.

She also knew that five years ago, Carol had been sent abroad against her will. Carol's own word for it was exile.

"Worst case," Carol said, more evenly than Ava expected, "they send me away again. I made my peace with that before I got on the plane."

What Carol didn't know yet was that news of her return had already gotten out, carried off by some stranger in a hallway who thought nothing of it at all.

If you asked Atlanta society which of its daughters was the most talked about, Carol Perry's name came up fast.

Partly it was where she'd come from. Mostly it was who stood behind her.

The news made three or four hops before it reached Michael Brown, who forwarded the photo into a group chat and tagged Paul in it several times without getting anything back.

Paul was walking out of a meeting when the call came through.

"What are you doing that's so important? You didn't answer me. And you didn't think to mention that Carol's back."

Paul took the phone away from his ear and opened the message.