He lifted his right pant leg—a prosthetic.

“Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco,” Sussman said. “But me? I got a right leg hobbling around somewhere in Baghdad looking for its owner.”

“You got coffee?”

“And cookies!” Sussman said.

For that first of six sessions, all I could do was drink coffee and fucking cry.

I thought it might be Elena, Jimmy and Lucy who would have the hardest time with my going to Oslo for a month.

Maybe longer.

Turned out it was Tomás.

While Elena said she’d miss me, she quietly understood why I had to leave for longer than my usual two weeks in Oslo every few months: Too many ghosts crowding in on me, each one bellyaching. Too much violence brushing against my skin and humming in my bones. And a heart very much in need of healing.

I wanted Lucy to know a sense of normal. Something I hadn’t quite given her the past several months. It took some doing to convince her to stay. I was willing to leave in an effort to let her have that peace and also prove to her that she had become part of the fabric of my heart.

“You let me down,” she said. “I expect that from humans in general. But not you, Sherlock. Not you. Ever.”

“I know,” I said. “And I am so sorry.”

“Just don’t be such a dick.”

“I’ve pretty much got this dick thing down to a science.”

“Tell me about it,” she said.

Then we hugged.

But Tomás . . .

“At least I don’t have to worry about you going off to some godforsaken war zone,” Elena said as she and Tomás dropped me at Detroit Metro Airport.

“He’s going for a woman,” Tomás said. “That’s always a freakin’ ‘war zone’!”

“Don’t mind him,” Elena said. “He’s feeling a bit abandoned.”

“What?” Tomás said indignantly. “Because this pendejo is going on a trim hunt? Not a chance, woman! No way!”

As I sat in first class waiting for my flight to taxi to its runway, my phone pinged with one last text before I set it to airplane mode: i got your six—tu padrino.

About a year ago, Tatina and I promised each other we’d stop making out in airports like horny teenagers. I, after all, was a trained killing machine who knew how to keep his cool under fire. And she was now a university professor, a profession that demanded at least a modicum of respectable behavior in public places.