“And you’ll eat every single bite she gives you, even if you don’t like it,” Tobias added under his breath, because you did not disrespect a Haitian woman’s table and live to tell the tale.
“Why wouldn’t I like it?” Sullivan whispered back, looking alarmed, and Tobias couldn’t help teasing him by giving him an apologetic look, like they might be about to feed him insects or something, when Manman was probably making oatmeal.
Papa said, a bit tentatively, “So, have you given any thought to what you’d like to study?”
“A bit,” Tobias hedged. Then, with studied casualness, he added, “Sullivan already made me look through the school’s course catalog to see what I might be interested in. He doesn’t waste time.”
And that did exactly what he’d thought it would—his papa looked at Sullivan with new respect.
Parents could be so predictable.
* * *
Sullivan’s house was quiet when they got back; only Raina remained, and she was reading an issue of W that she must’ve brought with her, because Tobias didn’t remember seeing it before. She lowered the magazine and fixed Sullivan with a baleful stare.
“Not going to die?”
“Would it keep you from yelling at me if I was?” Sullivan asked hopefully.
“No.”
He deflated and threw himself on the couch.
Tobias patted his uninjured shoulder sympathetically and asked Raina, “Ghost’s gone then?”
“Left with your lawyer friend’s retired old man, who now has the USB and says we’re all to forget we saw it. There’s a note for you.”
“Oh, thank you.” On the table, Tobias found an old utility bill still in its envelope. On the back of the envelope was a sketch of a stick figure stabbing another stick figure—this one with a mohawk drawn in jagged black lines—while a third figure with a backpack stood nearby, a speech bubble over its head that proclaimed I AM A FILTHY HARLOT!
Tobias grinned, the last of his tension dissipating. He left the bill on the table and took the envelope upstairs, the irritated drone of Raina’s voice—going on about professional decorum and cost and profit or something—becoming wordless as he went. As far as good-bye notes went, Ghost’s was hardly loquacious, but Tobias got the gist.
Shovel talk, indeed.
In Sullivan’s room, Tobias took out his biochemistry textbook. The cover picture of a double helix against a blue background seemed both alien and innocuous to him now that he would never have to force himself to read another word within it. He reached behind it and pulled out the letter from his birth mother.
He stared at the two pieces of paper for a long time—two messages to him from difficult, potentially toxic people who nonetheless seemed intent on reaching out. Eventually he shrugged. The answer was the same it had always been; some things about him had changed, but others had not. The textbook went into the milk crate on Sullivan’s side of the bed in case he’d been serious about wanting to read it. Ghost’s sketch went into Tobias’s bag. The letter from his birth mother went into the trash can in the bathroom.
It had never been her that he wanted. Only the right to choose for himself.
He got out his phone and sent a thorough update to Church, letting him know that Ghost was off with the ex-cop and safe and sound for the time being. They texted for a while, catching up, and then Sullivan came in and sprawled on the bed.
“Ghost left a note?” Sullivan asked.
“Mmm-hmm. He says hi.”
“I bet.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired. My arm hurts. That stuff your dad gave me is wearing off, I think. Or maybe it was never enough in the first place. Either way, this sucks. Your friend is mean.”
Tobias kicked his shoes off, wondering if he could coax Sullivan into taking a nap. “I’ll pass the message along. Speaking of mean friends, Raina’s gone?”
“Yes.”
“She left you in one piece, at least. What’s the verdict?”
“I’m back on subpoenas for lying and sleeping with a client, but I’m not fired because I solved an unsolvable case.”
Tobias squinted, thinking it over. “Sounds fair. Could be worse.”
“Really could be.”
Tobias’s phone buzzed, and he opened the text message from Church: I gotta go too, customers. But you’re okay?
Tobias glanced at Sullivan, whose eyes were closed, the muscles in his brow and jaw already beginning to slacken into sleep. Tobias smiled, feeling stupidly fond, and sent back: Yeah. I’m good.
Epilogue
Fourteen months later
Tobias let himself in through the back door with his key and went through what he privately thought of as his home again process. He took off his shoes and undressed, opening the small cabinet so he could put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket and pull out a pair of black sweats that he kept on a shelf. Lastly, he buckled the black leather collar around his neck.
As he did, that small spot in his head that was always worrying, always wondering, always working, settled.
Oh, he’d thought, the first time he’d put it on. No words existed for that feeling, no description could suffice. It was just...oh.
He made his way toward the kitchen, careful about any debris that might stab him in his bare foot, but it seemed like the first floor could officially be termed done. It wouldn’t be much longer, he knew, before Sullivan started to get that antsy look that meant he was chafing at the enclosed walls. A matter of weeks probably, before they started bugging Sullivan’s sister Therese about a new place to live.
Church had asked him about it last time, suggesting that maybe Tobias should put his foot down if he was bothered by all the moving—three times in the past year—but it truly didn’t bother him. Yes, they were forced to keep their belongings sparse so that moves wouldn’t be stressful, but Tobias’s anxiety about keeping his things neat tended to do better when he kept the clutter to a minimum anyway. Plus, when Therese had fully renovated the house Tobias had first stayed in with Sullivan—and which he still thought of
