“Ok.”

“I heard it, and I thought someone was shooting at me . . . like, you know. The Haverford.”

Somers nodded, chewed, swallowed, reached for his water.

“She wasn’t scared,” Hazard said. “I held it together enough that I told her we were playing a game.”

“Ree—”

“And I never would have let her get hurt, John.” Hazard sat forward now, his eyes finally coming up. “Never. I had the gun because . . . because it was automatic, I guess. But I never would have let her get hurt.”

“I wasn’t worried about her right then.”

“I’m not thinking about . . . this isn’t like that.”

Somers ate for a while in silence. The meal really was delicious, and although Somers probably would have pretended that a salad was a great addition, he was perfectly content with meat, carbs, and cheese. From the other room, Evie took both sides in a conversation; apparently her parents were dead, and she was explaining that she was really a princess, although there was enough garbled language in there that Somers hoped he might have gotten some of that wrong.

“I know I need to do something about this.” Hazard clasped both big hands together and rested his head against them. “I know I agreed to find someone new.”

“We were both going to start looking,” Somers said. “I dropped the ball. We got that call about Susan, and then things have just been crazy. Tomorrow. We’ll start looking tomorrow, and we’ll really get started on this.”

Hazard nodded.

“Why don’t you go stretch out in the living room?” Somers said. “Keep Evie company. I’m going to wash the dishes.”

“No, after what I put you through, I should be—”

“Hey, we’ve been doing really good tonight, right? We’re handling this like adults. Let’s not ruin it.”

This was the part, Somers knew, that was very hard for Emery Hazard. Some of it was nature; some of it was nurture. Some of it was having every man in his life fuck him up in some way. Whatever the reason, when things got bad, Hazard wanted to handle it like this, the self-effacement, the penance. They’d been working on it; it’d been getting better.

Tonight, Hazard just blew out a breath and said, “Ok. I mean, thank you.”

He moved into the living room, and Somers put away the leftovers and went to work on the dishes. Halfway through the saucepan, which had crusted-on tomato from being left on the heat too long, Somers decided he might need to let it soak. Just for a few minutes. He filled it with soap and hot water, dried his hands, and tried not to fall asleep on his feet. As he ran the terrycloth between his fingers, he realized, with a dull kind of shock, that in the excitement of finding that cache of evidence in the Sexten Motors building, he hadn’t even noticed that he’d never heard back from Dulac.

Drawing out his phone, he placed the call and listened while it rang and then went to voicemail. He called again. Voicemail again. This time, he said, “Whatever you’re doing, take two minutes right now to call and tell me you’re ok.” He waited for the screen to time out, and then he unlocked the phone and called again.