“Hey,” Doyle answered, and he sounded very much like the man who’d nearly broken in two that afternoon.

“Hi.”

“Everything okay?”

Larkin smiled. He absently shook his head, rubbed his temples, because of course Doyle, with so many arrows in his own back, tended to the well-being of another over himself. It was a common trait among those whose hearts were most bruised—to never want someone to hurt like they did. “No,” Larkin answered simply. “Are you okay?”

The pause was profound.

Doyle echoed, “No.”

A ghost of a laugh escaped Larkin. “I wish American social norms allowed for more honesty like this. Are you leaving soon.”

“Yeah. I’m cleaning up the darkroom a little so it’s actually usable tomorrow. You know what I just found in here?”

“What.”

“A fruitcake. A whole fruitcake. I think it’s from last year’s holiday party.”

Larkin smiled again. “I’m going to cook dinner.”

“You are?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“You don’t cook, Evie.”

Larkin didn’t reply to that verifiable fact, and instead said, “In 2003, Jay Leno ate a bite of a 125-year-old fruitcake and didn’t die. Toss the cake in the breakroom and come home.”

Doyle’s rich, top-shelf laugh seemed to reverberate off the walls of the darkroom. “I won’t do that, but I’m on my way.”

Larkin said goodbye, hung up, and went to the bedroom to strip out of the clothes that smelled of sweat, hospital antiseptic, and of neighborhood trash sitting curbside for morning pickup that he seemed to have collected on his walk from the Audi to Doyle’s building. Larkin showered, dressed down in black jeans and a light summer flannel in shades of yellow, black, teal, and aquamarine, then flicked the fairy lights on in the main room. Larkin cuffed the sleeves at his elbows as he walked into the kitchen, where he then proceeded to dig through the cupboards and fridge before deciding—with the exception of no white wine, because Doyle didn’t keep alcohol in the house—they had ingredients for making risotto. There were also scallops that hadn’t been cooked yet, and a whole bag of spinach, because it had three times more calcium, iron, and potassium than leaf lettuce, and Doyle was more conscious of those things than Larkin was when they traded off on grocery duties.