“Change?”

He laid his tea down, gripping his knees. “She’d tell me she killed her parents. Or that her mum is still alive; then it was that she’d done something to her dad, and she’d make these… This is going to sound like a joke.”

“Go on.”

“Hissing noises,” he said, flinching as though the memory was striking him. “There’s so much about her that feels…”

Lauren took another sip of her tea. Markus didn’t speak for a long time, staring at the TV; no, it was the cabinet, at one of the drawers.

“It feels like an act,” he said finally. “I kept thinking, well, she’s going to snap back to normal now. Or she can’t be serious. Or… there must be an explanation, something to make it okay.”

He was staring at the drawer again.

“The only part which didn’t change was the stuff her dad did to her. I feel dirty even talking about this.”

“I get it,” Lauren said. “I don’t want to pry.”

Too much.

She felt like a little girl again, her dad smiling at her as she traipsed through the house in her long detective’s jacket, magnifying glass raised. Her parents had always been so loving, so accepting; it had never changed. She was on the case now. Dad might be disappointed if she told him, but she bet he’d be a little proud too.

“I don’t think she even knows who she is,” Markus said. “How can a person be convincing and ridiculous at the same time?”

Lauren shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. But people have bad childhoods all the time. I know plenty myself. They are some of the most loving people I’ve ever met. What happened to them, it made them kinder; it made them…”

“Go on,” Markus murmured.

Lauren suddenly felt conversationally overdressed; she was speaking with the tenor of a sermon. “It’s not even that it makes them anything. I think a bad childhood can bring out the bad, but I think a person can also shrug it off, and just… just be the good person they were all along. That’s all.”

“So maybe Casey was born bad, and made worse.”

“Yeah. I guess so. But if her story changes, who knows?”

“Who knows,” Markus repeated. “But I know who she is.”

His voice trembled and he glared at the drawer, like he was trying to move it with his mind.

“What is it, Markus?” Lauren asked, gesturing at it.

He looked at her sharply. “I’m just thinking.”

“And I’m still wondering what magic words you said to make Casey back off.”

“I don’t see what good this can do,” he said. “I only agreed to meet with Scott so I could tell him… Tell him I’m sorry, I guess. Tell him I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Telling him sorry won’t help him. He’s got two black eyes, Markus.”

He flinched. “Really?”

“They’re faded a little, but yeah. He’s telling a hilarious story about how he tripped and fell, telling it to anybody who will listen. It’s almost like he doesn’t believe it himself.”