And my friend’s father had been standing in the path of it.

10.2: Mister Death and the redheaded woman

“I have to find him.” Theo turned back to the office door.

“You said once… that you didn’t like him.”

Theo looked over his shoulder at me. The answer was in his face: that if I had been born instead of grown, I wouldn’t have said that.

I followed him out into the dark hallway. I couldn’t do anything about Frances. But I would not lose Theo.

“Where are we going?” I whispered.

“He has a bedroom one floor down.”

If this had been a movie, he would have said, “We’re not going anywhere.” I was glad it wasn’t. “Did — do you live here?”

“Not for years. I moved out a little after my mom died.” Tom had been honest about the illumination in the stairwell. Theo pulled a candle out of a jacket pocket and lit it, and we started down in that narrow field of jittery light. “I visited, though. Mostly to fight with him. And I always thought I hated that, but I kept coming back. I guess it was better than not seeing him.”

The candlelight offered emotional armor that even darkness couldn’t have provided. “Do you… do you love him?” I said.

“He’s my father.”

“Does that mean you love him?”

“It means I can’t tell,” said Theo.

The power was working on the floor below, and the stairwell door was unlocked. Theo opened it a crack and light blasted out, followed by a rush of slightly cooler air. He blew out the candle. When our eyes had adjusted, we stepped into the hall.

“Theo!” I whispered suddenly. It sounded like escaping steam in the silence. “Was there a guard on the front door?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you wonder why not?”

“I still wonder why not, man. Maybe he went to check out the tornado. You want to stand here ’til he shows up?”

“I should have brought a gun from upstairs,” I muttered. “There’s got to be a guard someplace.”

Theo shrugged. “Neither of us knows from guns.”

“You can’t tell that from looking at us.”

He gave me an encompassing stare. “Right now you wouldn’t scare me if you had a cannon.”

He was right, of course. I was suddenly aware of myself in every undignified detail: smeared with blood, soaked with sweat, blinkered with tangles of hair. And half-dressed besides. LeRoy had used a lot more bandage than he’d had to, but I felt the skin on my shoulders, arms, and stomach cooling as the sweat dried, and shivered more than was called for. I found I couldn’t meet Theo’s eyes.

But Theo’s mind was elsewhere. “We gotta do this on attitude,” he continued. “Think Mel Gibson in Monte Cristo.”

“Sure. Could we also do it on paranoid willingness to hit anything that moves with the nearest heavy object?”

“I’ve got no problem with that.”

Theo, my patron saint may have killed your father. If so, I made it possible. I didn’t say it. It wouldn’t have helped.