It’s five o’clock when Sully gets home again. For hours, I’ve been sitting in his living room with the television on, although I’m not sure what it is I’m watching. Mostly I’ve been staring at a patch of wall above the screen, or out the window at the neighbor’s fence, which is starting to build up to a festive Halloween, that calendar holiday where families celebrate skeletons, ghouls, and disguise, as if none of it will ever pervade them.

When Sully rushes in, Gravy wakes from where she’s been asleep on my foot, and her tail thumps once. She begins the long process of standing. Sully’s carrying a huge pizza box, on top of which are a couple of sheets of flat white paper, pinned underneath his thumb. Probably the receipt for the takeout. He turns off the TV, sets the pizza box on the couch, and crouches in front of me, still in his jacket and shoes.

“What?” I say. “What’s the matter?”

“I have to tell you two things.” His eyes are deep brown like oak. “I’m so sorry I fell in love with your sister. It completely messed up my judgment.”

“I know,” I say. “I’ve already told you it isn’t your fault.”

“And two”—he passes me the white sheets of paper from on top of the pizza box—“look what I found.”

I open them shakily, scan them as fast as I can. They’re documents, headers over the top that look official and medical, data in a printout below. “What are these?”

He bumps his fist once against my knee in tiny triumph. “They’re the key, Ruth. It’s early days, but they really could be everything.”

ALEX

Chase has never been so interested in my job. Since he apologized last week for not understanding it, he now asks me question after question about cases and procedure. I’ve slowed down on what I tell him—mainly because it’s confidential—but I also have to be careful. As harmless as he is, he could blunder in and ruin everything. But I like that he’s invested. It took him long enough.

When he’s in the apartment, he’s also extra attentive of Will, but he’s been father-figure-obsessed with the notion of Ruth’s pregnancy since the get-go, so probably it’s all just an extension of that. If he asks to take Will out alone, I don’t let him. Even if I feel a little worn-out from the demands of new motherhood, that child is not leaving my sight. If he goes outside, I’m the one who’ll take him.