Adam doesn’t come to Pine Manor at all on Friday. He’s not there for gentle yoga or for the therapy dog session. Ms. Sinclair enjoys her visit with Heidi the labradoodle as much as ever, but Adam isn’t there to laugh with her when a glass of water is accidentally knocked over by an overzealous tail. It’s the first time he hasn’t come to see his grandmother since the day we met.

During my afternoon break, Marie tells me about Mr. Sinclair’s accident, as if it hasn’t been all over the news. She talks to me in a low whisper, like she’s gossiping about someone’s love affair instead of a car accident. She says Ms. Sinclair’s grandson was here yesterday, and that he and Dr. Kopsey decided not to tell Ms. Sinclair about the accident. They thought it might be too much for her to handle, and they asked the nursing staff to please not discuss it in front of her.

I’m relieved to hear Marie’s words. Not only because it confirms that Ms. Sinclair is still blissfully in the dark about her son’s suffering, but also because Adam talked to Dr. Kopsey about it first. I think they made a smart decision, regardless of how difficult it probably was for Adam to lie to his grandmother about his father’s imaginary return to Seattle.

I spend the rest of my workday tending to the people I love. Ms. Sinclair enjoys some time watching her birdfeeder while Mr. Reizenstein naps in a wingchair. Apart from Adam’s absence, it’s a day like any other. In fact, it’s pretty much like all the days were before Adam arrived.

But despite the calmness of the day, in the back of my mind thoughts are clamoring around, introducing new questions and doubts, and making me wonder, yet again, if there’s any way Adam will ever forgive me for taking his father’s money. I wonder if his mother told him I was there. And if she did, I wonder what he told her about me.

Every time I step into Ms. Sinclair’s room, the daisies look back at me, giving me hope and reminding me that maybe there’s still a chance. My lone swooner may still love me. And, after tomorrow, maybe he’ll be willing to forgive.

* * *

I step off the bus and walk up the stairs to my apartment feeling both tired and happy. It was so very good to return to Pine Manor. Today, I got back a good portion of my reason for being, and some of my patients got back their last remaining chance for peace. Ms. Sinclair doesn’t know it, but someday very soon, she’s going to need that chance. I saw it again today, in her blue eyes. It didn’t take my breath away this time, though, because I’m not afraid anymore. I know now everything will be all right.

I unlock my apartment door and step inside, tossing my bag down onto the floor and closing the door behind me. When I turn around, I see the top of someone’s head sticking up above the back of my sofa. I recognize the intentional bed-head immediately. The familiar bass riff of “Soul to Squeeze” blasts through my veins and a fresh jitter starts to dance around inside of me. He sits up and turns around to look at me over the back of the couch, scanning me from head to toe before offering any words.

“Looks like you’re back to work.”

Not for the first time in my life, my scrubs are speaking on my behalf.

I nod, still standing by the door, music pounding inside my head.

“How was Gram’s day?” His expression stays solid. Unfazed. Though I know he isn’t.

“Good. But I think she missed you.” More surging notes.

His mouth flexes into a small, closed grin at the thought of her. “I missed her, too.”

“How’s your dad?”

He shakes his head and the small grin drops away. There’s a long pause before he says, “My mom told me a friend of mine stopped by the hospital yesterday.”

Oh… “I heard about the accident on the news. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Really?” He shrugs with exaggerated disbelief. “That’s funny, ’cause Perry, my father’s driver, told me you came for the rest of your money.”

Perry Devine needs a punch in the throat. The music’s pacing picks up as my heart starts racing in my chest.

“Then Perry’s a liar.”

Adam shakes his head and stands up. He crosses his arms over his chest and glares at me. “Perry’s worked for my family for my whole life. I’m pretty sure he’s not a liar, K’acy.”

I walk over to the sofa and stand in front of him. The key from behind the hall picture is sitting on the coffee table. “Adam, why are you here?”

“I’m here because I want you to tell me the truth.” His face reddens as the words come out. “I want to hear it from you.”

I stare at him, knowing no matter what I say, it’s going to hurt him. I scramble for the right words. “I never wanted your father’s money in the first place.”

“So, you’re not denying that you took money from him to end things with me?” His arms tighten across his chest. The bass line rolls on, deep and resonant.

“I took money from your father, yes. But not because I wanted to end us. I took it because he didn’t give me a choice.” It certainly isn’t a lie, but I have to tread carefully.

“What are you talking about?” His hands drop against his sides.

“He told me if I didn’t take his deal and leave you by the end of the week, he would file more complaints, just like the one he already had.” My stare moves from his eyes to the floor at my feet. The music instantly quiets.

He’s unmoving and silent for a long time. When I look up at him, his gaze shifts to a spot on the wall behind me. “What the hell is happening?” I don’t think the question is aimed at me, so I don’t answer it. Something hardens inside of him, and his jaw tightens. “So…you’re telling me that because he couldn’t convince me to dump you, he was trying to force you to leave me instead?”

I nod. “He told me you deserve far better than what I have to offer. He thinks I’m only interested in your trust fund.”

He looks down at me and relaxes his jaw. “So, he decides to blackmail you? And you just do it? Without talking to me about it first?”

“I thought it would be easier…”

“Easier? Are you kidding me?” His sarcasm and scorn are front and center.

“He said he would do something worse if I told you about it.”

“Worse?” Hearing the extent of his father’s manipulation is not going to be easy for him. I know that, and yet, I don’t have a choice. I’m in too deep. And this may be my only way out.

“He told me he would pay one of my coworkers whatever they wanted to go to the police and tell them I abused my patients, including your gram. And, if that happened, I wouldn’t just lose my job, Adam. I’d go to jail.” I close my eyes and suck in a fresh gulp of air, relaxing my shoulders with my exhalation. When I open my eyes again, the hard line of his mouth has softened a bit. “I knew if I didn’t take his money, he would make you believe things about me that weren’t true. He would make you—and a lot of other people—think I hurt your grandmother. The idea of you believing that is worse than having to walk away from us. It would hurt you even more than this mess, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t risk you thinking I’m the kind of person who would intentionally hurt someone I’m supposed to be taking care of.”

He looks worn down and injured, inside and out. There’s a long pause before he speaks again. “Did my father withdraw that complaint because you took his deal, or because I talked to him about it?”

I don’t have to say a word because he already knows the answer.

“Jesus.” His brow wrinkles, and his chest deflates. He runs his right hand up through his hair. It stops on the back of his neck. He waits like that, for a long time, obviously trying to process everything I’ve said. “It’s bad,” he says finally. “Really bad.”

“I’m so sorry.” I want to hug him, but I don’t think he’d let me.

“They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

I don’t know what to say.

“My mother’s a wreck, I had to lie to my gram, and now…I don’t even know what the hell to think.” He covers his face with his hands and smudges his fingertips against his forehead.

I say the only thing I can think of. “You did the right thing by not telling your gram about the accident. She’s better off believing your father’s back in Seattle.”

“That’s what Dr. Kopsey thought, too.”

I stand in front of him, again not knowing what to do or say next. More than anything, I want us to be okay. I want him to say he believes me and he understands why I took his father’s money. I want him to forgive me. Without me having to tell him anything more.

“I…I need to go,” he says, tossing the words into the air between us like they don’t mean what I think they do. He’s leaving, and I think it’s for the last time. I don’t know if he believes me or Perry Devine. I don’t know anything anymore.

He turns his back on me and walks over to the door. As his hand twists the knob, he pauses and adds, “Take care of Gram tomorrow, please. Take her outside, if you can. I don’t think I’ll make it in to see her.”

He opens the door and steps out.

“Adam,” I call, before he closes the door behind him, “even if you don’t believe anything else I’ve said, please believe I will always take care of your gram.”

He turns around and looks at me, delivering no physical or verbal indication of whether or not he believes me. He just stands there and stares at me for several seconds before closing the door between us.

* * *

Since Adam left a few hours ago, I haven’t stopped thinking about what everything means. I can’t get the argument he had with his father on Wednesday night out of my thoughts. Obviously there was anger when Mr. Sinclair left the parking lot; it was the one thing Sondra was positive about. I hope Adam doesn’t think he was in any way responsible for his father’s accident. Argument-inspired road rage is a thing, and maybe Adam’s feeling guilty about the tone between them when his father left Pine Manor. He may also be second-guessing his decision not to drive his father to the airport. Maybe there’s guilt that he wasn’t in the car, too.

Or…maybe there isn’t.

Maybe there’s absolutely no guilt. Because, maybe, Adam learned the truth about Bradley on Wednesday from the photograph in his grandmother’s room. And maybe it only served to deepen his mistrust of his father. Maybe Adam is only feeling grateful he wasn’t in the car.

I wish I could ask him about all the maybes.

I’m in bed, trying to settle my spinning mind enough to get some sleep, when my cell phone rings. It’s Tasha’s number. The flat on Gravelston Street.

“Hello?”

“Hey, sis.” There’s a long pause, during which I wait for her to say more. The silence is awkward and yet expectant. When she doesn’t continue, I start talking. I need to make sure she’s okay.

“Charlie. Hey. It’s good to hear from you. Is everything all right?”

“You should’ve kept this money for yourself,” she says, her voice more tender than I’ve heard it in years. “I don’t deserve all the chances you keep givin’ me.”

“You deserve every one of them, Charlie. And you need to stop telling yourself you don’t.”

I hear her breathing, soft and thoughtful. “You sound like Daddy.” The emotion in her voice is overwhelming.

Another long pause, only this time it’s mine. I close my eyes and press the phone tighter to my ear, as if doing so means I won’t miss a single moment of my sister. “He believed in you, and I do, too.”

More silence. Maybe tears. A light sniffle escapes her body and enters my ear like a tiny Cupid’s arrow meant to mend what’s broken.

“I registered for the spring semester at Blue Cliff,” she says finally. “And Tasha got me a job at the salon again. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be the oldest shampoo girl in the history of Houma. But I’m gonna make it happen this time, K’acy. For real.”

When our daddy died, Charlie totally lost it. First, she landed in a hospital; the doctors had to stitch up her wrists. And then, I made her check herself into a mental health facility. She said the guilt she felt about all the trouble she’d given him over the years since our momma left made her feel undeserving of any life at all. Especially since he lost his in such a horrible way. She said watching him suffer was like watching a puppy drown while your hands are tied behind your back and your feet are nailed to the floor.

Charlie stayed in therapy for a few months after the funeral, but all these years later, she’s somehow still incapable of seeing the perfect life my father always told her she deserves. I don’t know what she and her psychologist talked about in all of those therapy sessions, but when they ended and she was discharged, Charlie went back to the real world and instantly started thinking she was nothing important all over again. She started abusing herself in different ways, and I couldn’t stand to see it. She became the puppy in the water, and I had to get out of there before I stopped believing she could pull herself back out. I was young and I was angry and I left her. Probably when she needed me the most. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stay in Houma and watch her self-destruct. So I left for Philadelphia with her parting promise to use my father’s death as motivation to make something of herself ringing in my ears.

But, from the sound of the voice on the other end of the line today, the puppy must still be afloat. And maybe, just maybe, she’s finally nearing the shore.

“I know you will,” I say, pride swelling in my chest. The broken pieces of my heart rearrange themselves back into some semblance of order, the tiny Cupid’s arrow now holding them loosely together like a toothpick through a sandwich. Precarious and teetering, but together.

My deal with Winston Sinclair may bring some good to this world after all.

“There’s something else I need to tell you,” she adds, a quiet tremor in her voice vibrating between us and causing a flutter in my heart.

I open my eyes and stare at the dark ceiling, waiting for more words and wondering why she sounds so raw.

“I’m pregnant.”

I slowly close my eyes again and let her revelation sink in.

“But, don’t worry,” she continues. “Tasha’s gonna let us live with her and Elijah until I can get my own place. The classes I’m gonna take at Blue Cliff are at night. I’ll watch both babies during the day, and Tasha will have them in the evening, until my classes are over.”

I sit up in the bed and put my free hand on top of my head. This baby has the ability to either be Charlie’s savior or her sword to fall on. What a huge weight for such small shoulders to bear.

“How pregnant are you?”

“Nine weeks.”

Nine weeks. The reason for her eight-hundred-dollar phone call a few weeks ago is clear now. She was either going to end the pregnancy and has since changed her mind, or she needed the money to get away from the what’s-his-face and start a life of her own. I’m not going to ask her which one is the right answer.

“The money that came in the mail today…” she adds, “…it’s incredible. Did you know about the baby? Did Tasha call and tell you?”

“No. No. I just…I picked up some extra work, and I thought it might help you out.” It’s the same lie I told her before. “I’m doing okay here, and I wanted you to have it. Sounds like my timing was pretty good though, huh?”

“It definitely was.” She sounds so unsure, like she doesn’t believe she can do this.

“You’re going to make a good momma, Charlie. A much better mother than Louise McGee ever was, that’s for sure.”

“Thanks, K’acy. That means a lot.”

Neither of us says anything for a long time. We just listen to each other breathe and think our own thoughts. I’m going to be an aunt. And my daddy is going to be a grandpa. If he were alive, he would be singing at the top of his lungs, filled with hope and promise and love.

After she gives me her new cell phone number, I say good night to my big sister. Before we hang up, she promises to call me again next week.

I tell her how much I’m already looking forward to it.

* * *

When I leave for work on Saturday morning, I see Perry Devine’s dark sedan parked across the street from my apartment building yet again. But this time, the moment he sees me step off the stoop, he climbs out of the car and starts walking across the street toward me. As usual, he’s wearing a dark suit. His crisply ironed shirt is Oxford blue. He’s decidedly uncasual this morning, with a bright yellow tie wrapped snugly around his brawny neck. I keep walking to the bus stop, as if I don’t even see him. I have no idea why he’s here, and since all I want to do is punch him in the throat, I think it’s better for us both if I pretend he doesn’t exist. He calls after me, but I just keep walking.

The next thing I know, Perry Devine is jogging past me, and when he cuts me off and blocks my way, not only do I want to punch him in the throat, I also want to kick him in the groin. Hard. He stops right in front of me and turns around. I can see my reflection in his mirrored aviators. I look stronger than I feel.

“Where is he?” he says, his voice a mixture of sadness and anger. It takes a moment for me to realize he’s talking about Adam.

“I don’t know. Thanks to you and your boss, he wants nothing to do with me. Congratulations.”

“So, you’re telling me he’s not in your apartment right now?”

“No, Mr. Devine, he’s not.” I cross my arms over my chest and sling my weight down over one hip. A fire starts smoldering in my gut. “Why did you lie to him? Why did you tell him I only came to the hospital for my money when you know that isn’t true?”

“Because it’s my job to protect him. And he needs to be with his mother and father right now.”

“It’s your job to protect him, and yet you’ve somehow managed to lose him? Please tell me you see as much irony in that as I do.” I try to push past him, but he stands firm, stepping in front of me each time I try to walk forward. Flames start to lick up out of the smoldering fire inside my gut. “He’s probably asleep at his place. Or on his way to see his father.”

Perry Devine shakes his head and eyes me cautiously. “He never came home last night. I sat outside his place until morning, and he never came home.” The flames in my belly cause it to tumble over on itself. “I thought he might have come here last night, while I was driving his mother back to her hotel.”

“He did come here last night,” I say, my voice full of contempt. “But, thanks to your lie, he left quickly. He was only here to say goodbye.” Grief and rage and confusion pump my veins full of bile and suffocate me with their intensity. I want to scream and cry, but more than anything, I want to lift a fist and swing it hard and fast, straight into him.

As he nods in understanding, his expression changes ever so slightly. It softens into something closer to worry than anger. It reminds me he’s known Adam since he was just a small boy. He’s watched him grow and seen how his parents have treated him. Perry Devine has seen Adam’s mother choose shopping over spending time with her son. He’s seen the full extent of Mr. Sinclair’s need for control. He’s seen Adam at his best and his worst. He probably knows Adam better than his own parents do. I’m sure he cares about him.

Hell, Mr. Devine probably cares about Adam more than his own family does.

He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a business card, holding it out for me to take. “I know you don’t like me much, Miss McGee, and I get that. Really, I do. But would you just text or call me if you happen to find him before I do? I just wanna make sure he’s safe.” There’s something else in his voice now, beyond the worry and concern. Compassion, perhaps. Maybe even love.

Today, Perry Devine isn’t just doing his job. He’s trying to find someone he cares about.

I take the card from him and tuck it into the pocket of my scrubs.

He steps aside then, and lets me pass. I keep walking to the bus stop and see him drive by soon after I take a seat on the bench. As I wait for the 61A, I think about the possibility of him being wrong. Maybe Adam did go home last night and Mr. Devine just never saw him. He couldn’t have spent the night in the hospital or at Pine Manor because overnight visits aren’t permitted. I sort through the reasons why Adam may not have gone home last night, and they cause a bullet of worry to burrow its way into me. Maybe there’s something else going on. What if Mr. Sinclair’s accident wasn’t an accident at all? The newscaster mentioned that foul play wasn’t suspected, but maybe that’s changed. Is Mr. Devine worried something’s happened to Adam, too? Has he tried calling or texting him? Does Perry Devine even have Adam’s number? Panic starts to set in just as the bus pulls up to the curb.

I climb the stairs and find a seat in the front as I fumble for my phone. Once it’s out of my purse, I open up my texts. The moment I do, it rings in my hand.

The ringtone is sharp and familiar.