Her words about Adrian also stuck with me, particularly when I picked him up the next evening for our first self-defense class. He got into my car with a cheery attitude, seeming neither depressed nor crazy. He was, I noticed, dressed very nicely, in clothes that would have been an excellent choice for the visit to his father. He noticed my attire as well.

“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in anything so… casual.” I had on olive green yoga pants and an Amberwood T-shirt.

“The class description said to dress in comfortable workout clothes—like I texted you earlier.” I gave his raw silk shirt a meaningful look.

“This is very comfortable,” he assured me. “Besides, I don’t own any workout clothes.”

As I shifted the car into drive, I caught sight of Adrian’s left hand. At first, I thought he was bleeding. Then, I realized it was red paint.

“You’re painting again,” I said in delight. “I thought you’d stopped.”

“Yeah, well. You can’t take painting classes and not paint, Sage.”

“I thought you’d stopped those too.”

He gave me a sidelong glance. “Nearly did. But then I remembered I’d convinced some girl that if she gave me a chance and got me into those classes, I’d follow through on them. That’ll teach me.”

I smiled and pulled into traffic.

I’d left a little early so that Adrian and I had time to take care of our registration. When I’d called the Wolfe School of Defense earlier today, an agitated man had told me to just show up with the money since we were down to the last minute. The address was outside of downtown, in a residence set on sprawling grounds that had made no attempts to go green and thwart the climate. The desert still held claim here, giving the house a dismal, forlorn look. If not for WOLFE printed on the mailbox, I would’ve thought we had the wrong place. We pulled up into the gravel drive—no other cars were there—and stared.

“This is the kind of place you see in movies,” said Adrian. “Where careless people run into serial killers.”

“At least it’s still light out,” I said. Ever since the alley, darkness had taken on a whole new menace for me. “Can’t be that bad.”

Adrian opened the car door. “Let’s find out.”

We rang the doorbell and were immediately met with the sounds of barking and scampering feet. I stepped back uneasily. “I hate poorly trained dogs,” I muttered to Adrian. “They need to behave and be kept in line.”

“Just like the people in your life, huh?” asked Adrian.

The door opened, and we were met by a fifty-something man with a grizzled blond beard. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. Also, he had an eye patch.

“This is incredible,” I heard Adrian murmur. “Beyond my wildest dreams.”

I was taken aback. The eye patch made me think of Keith’s glass eye, which in turn made me think of my role in him acquiring it. It wasn’t a memory I liked being reminded of, and I wondered at the odds of running into another one-eyed man. This guy nudged the herd of dogs aside—which appeared to be some sort of Chihuahua mix—and barely managed to step outside without them following before he shut the door.