He leaves behind him a sense of restlessness I’m becoming used to.

When Whisper and I reach Seb’s town house, the night is quiet. The street is empty. I make sure to linger outside for a while to see if anyone is keeping watch. The air is cold but still. There is no snow, no rain.

After I’ve made sure that no one’s looking, I go in through the back.

Inside the town house all the furniture is gone. There’s a single light on in Seb’s study, and that’s where I find Leo wrapped in a blanket. The desk is gone, and so are the books on the shelves. All that’s left of Sebastian Crow in this space is the worn sofa he used to curl up on when he was too tired to go to his room but needed a nap. As the cancer took a firmer hold of him, became terminal, ate him up from the inside, this is where I’d find him.

It’s now where I find the lover he’d abandoned.

Leo is asleep with a bottle of bourbon at his side. There’s a shot or two left. I’m careful to pour it down the sink before Leo wakes up. Or before I forget that booze was once the greatest joy of my life and that it is a cruel mistress who only takes, never gives. It’s a shame, though, because this is the good stuff.

When I return to the study, Whisper is on her belly by the sofa, and one of Leo’s hands has fallen over her. She doesn’t seem to mind. I leave them there and pull all the shades in the house closed. I’m tired, but I know I won’t get much sleep tonight. I drive to Vidal’s house. The lights are off, but there’s a streetlight right in front of the house. I can see the glow of a laptop screen in one of the darkened rooms upstairs, visible through a gap in the curtains. A few minutes later, a face appears in the window.

Even though I’m in the car, I flinch and draw back into my seat. I don’t know if I’ve been seen or not.

Suddenly I don’t want to be on empty streets anymore. It would have been nice to have Whisper here with me, but I think about how calm she seemed on the floor beside Leo, and I remember that he’s a part of her life now, too. I don’t feel guilty about going to the Hastings office without her.

I sit in Leo’s office and read through the latest financials.