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The next time Bart comes to visit, Dirk brings her one of the green origami flowers, hidden in the palm of his hand, and presents it to her happily. It’s one of the best ones he’s made so far, and one of the most tricky.
Predictably, she picks it up, unwraps it with angry curiosity and, finding nothing interesting inside, throws it over her shoulder.
Dirk pretends not to find the whole experience devastatingly painful. He should have learned by now not to expect anything even remotely resembling affection from his twin sister.
‘And how are you?’ Dirk asks, as cheerfully as he can muster with his heartfelt gift being trampled by a guard, roving around the tables of couples.
Bart scowls at him in response, and grunts, noncommittally. Dirk waits to see whether she might respond in kind, but she does not surprise him.
She stays silent as she pulls out a large file and thumps it on the table.
‘All I got on your fuck boy’s sister,’ she growls.
Dirk’s face clicks on fire and he urgently leans forward, hissing: ‘He is not my fuck boy!’
Bart raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh? So you’re his fuck boy then?’
‘No one is a fuck boy!’ Dirk squeaks, a little too loud. The couple at the next table - a husband-and-wife pairing - glare over at them. Dirk swallows and instinctively goes to nervously adjust his tie, even though he hasn’t worn one since his last parole hearing six months ago. ‘And why are you researching his sister? I told you to stop!’
‘He’s important to your case. I think she is too. I gots a feeling.’
‘Your feelings -’ Dirk emphasises feeling with the degradation it deserves, ‘- get people killed.’ A numbness settles over Dirk’s neck with a worrisome thought ‘Wait - no. You’re not - you’re not getting your - your feelings about Todd - are you? Are you going to -?’
‘Nah,’ Bart shrugs, leaning back in her chair. Dirk sighs heavily, overwhelmed with relief. ‘Your fuck boy’s safe from me. If the universe wanted him dead there’s no way he would’ve stuck him in prison. I would’ve got him outside a Dairy Queen with a screwdriver, or somethin’.’
Dirk swallows. ‘Did you? Last night? A Dairy Queen? A screwdriver?’
Bart gives him a grin which reminds Dirk uncomfortably of sharks. She crosses her arms and leans back in the chair. ‘Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered, Svlad.’
‘Not my name,’ Dirk says, his mouth mumbling the automatic response as his brain whirrs to catch up. ‘How on earth you manage to do, you know, your thing,’ Dirk hisses, ‘whilst still maintaining the facade of a defence attorney is beyond me. What was I mad at you about again? Ah, yes, Amanda -’
‘Look, she’s - ugh,’ Bart opens the folder in front of them and twists it around, so it’s facing Dirk. Dirk sees photos, candid shots of a girl with long brown hair, staring forlornly out of the window of a house, grabbing coffee, looking over her shoulder as she waits at a bus stop. ‘See? Normal. Boring. I didn’t do nothin’. Got Ken to tail her. He’s good with that shit.’
From what Todd’s told him about Amanda’s personality, Dirk can’t consider her in any way boring or normal. And that’s without even considering her fascinating hereditary condition.
‘This is Amanda,’ Dirk murmurs, an impulse to reaffirm. He picks up one of the photos. Runs his fingers over her face. There’s something there. ‘Todd’s sister...’
‘You picking it up too, yeah?’
Bart is the only person in the universe that understands, well, the universe in the same way that Dirk does. Dirk doesn’t lie to her.
‘Yes,’ Dirk says, feeling the weight on his shoulders lessen as yet another tangential truth is unwoven from the mess of interconnections. ‘She is important. You’re right.’
‘Of course I’m right,’ Bart says, as if it was never in question. Dirk realises it never really was.