I SWALLOWED, MY hands going cold as I stood on the porch of a house more familiar to me than my own childhood home.

I just stood there.

I honestly had no idea how long I’d been standing there, but I knew it was too long.

I needed to press the door buzzer.

I needed to do it, but I just stood there, staring at the blue-painted door without really seeing it, staring at the gold-painted buzzer with the mother of pearl button without really seeing that, either. They’d painted the door since two Christmases ago, which was the last time I could remember being here. I was pretty sure the door used to be red.

That was the first time Black came over here for Christmas.

Both of us had come for the whole thing that year––Christmas Eve, and Christmas day, too. Black brought bourbon for Nick’s dad. He brought a beautiful, authentic Japanese tapestry from Kyoto for Nick’s mom. He brought all kinds of obnoxious presents for the nieces and nephews, including drones and robotic dogs and cats and karaoke machines.

Angel and a good chunk of her family joined us, along with Anthony, who’d been Angel’s boyfriend before she met Cowboy.

We all got drunk, played the yearly poker game, ate too much, played soccer and football in the narrow backyard. After the kids went to bed, the adults stayed up to watch movies late into the night while we took turns making drinks and putting out presents.

All of that felt like a million years ago now.

Black hung back, standing a few steps lower on the stoop, but I felt his light around mine, wrapped into and around me like a heated blanket. I couldn’t help but wonder how I’d be doing without it.

As it was, I felt like I might throw up.

Angel stood closer to me, on the other side of the stoop. She gripped my hand tightly in hers, maybe to support me, or maybe for herself. Whatever the truth of it, I could see from her face that she wasn’t doing much better than I was, being here.

In the end, it wasn’t me who reached for that doorbell, though.

It was her.

Giving me a borderline apologetic look, she leaned forward all at once, jabbing at the mother-of-pearl doorbell with her index finger. She laid into it for a good few seconds, making sure whoever was inside got a chance to hear it.

When she let up, she leaned back, releasing my hand.

She stared at the door like she thought a monster might walk through it, rather than an adult she’d known for most of her life. She folded her arms over the green leather jacket she wore, squinting and fidgeting uncomfortably, like she was back to being a kid, living down the street from Nick in their old, crappy neighborhood out on Hunter’s Point.

But Nick’s parents hadn’t lived in Hunter’s Point in decades.

Nick’s oldest sister, Numi, was top of her class in Harvard. She got there on a full scholarship, and landed a job at a major firm in San Francisco once she passed the bar. Not long after that, she moved her parents to this place on Potrero Hill.

Nick and his younger sister had still been in high school.

To avoid looking at the door, Angel glanced at Black, then up the street, then at the curb in front of the Tanaka’s door, staring at the car she’d driven us here in, her mint condition, midnight blue with white racing stripes, 1970 Plymouth Hemi Barracuda.

I hadn’t ridden in that car in what had to be two years, not since before Black and I left for Los Angeles.

I was still looking at her, glancing between her and her car, when the door opened behind both of us. Both of us tensed, then turned.

Yumi Tanaka, Nick’s mother, stood there.

Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw us.

Then she blinked, and her mouth twisted into a smile. Before I could speak a single word, she walked out onto the stoop, wrapping me in her arms.

“Miriam!” she cried out.

There was so much delight in her voice, I felt that sickness in my chest deepen into a full-blown panic attack.

“You should have called! I would have made dinner! I don’t even have cake right now…”

Releasing me, still before I’d managed to utter so much as a squeak, she turned to Angel, beaming even wider.

“Angel, dear. Come here! Give me a hug!”

Angel got the same warm squeeze I did.

She did a little better with smiling as she returned it, and speaking.

“Hey, Yumi,” she said, squeezing her harder than usual. “You look great.”

“Bah.” Nick’s mother waved off her words, beaming. “I look old.”

She did look good, though.

Mrs. Tanaka, which is how I still thought of her in my head, despite her insistence that I call her Yumi, had to be in her early seventies, but she looked a great deal younger. Her dark eyes were sharp, her black hair slicked back in a perfect bun. She wore a neat, powder-blue dress with a slim belt at her waist, like something you’d see on someone readying for a tea or Tupperware party in the sixties.

I watched as she released Angel and turned, aiming her dark eyes––eyes so much like Nick’s, my breath caught in my throat––down the porch steps at Black. She regarded him with a sharp stare. That stare was also disconcertingly like Nick’s.

Still surveying my husband with an open scrutiny, she smiled, as if in spite of herself.

“You still afraid of me, big man?” she scoffed.

Black didn’t hesitate.

“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely, Mrs. Tanaka.”

She laughed, shaking her head.

“So, no hug for me, then?” She scoffed at him again. “You know, if I wanted you dead, I would have poisoned you at the last Christmas party you let my Miriam attend,” she told him. “Sushi can be dangerous. Don’t you read?”

Black grunted a laugh, as if he couldn’t help himself, either.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “And sorry we missed last year’s.”

“Sure you are,” she grunted, slightly less amused. “I know it’s your fault.”

Turning, Angel quirked an eyebrow at Black, smiling faintly.

“Well, it wasn’t not his fault,” she murmured.

“See?” Mrs. Tanaka pointed at Angel triumphantly. “I knew it!”

“Not helping, Ange,” Black muttered, folding his arms inside the motorcycle jacket he wore as he shifted his feet. “It wasn’t exactly my fault, either, if you recall.”

Mrs. Tanaka laughed for real that time, waving at all three of us to follow her off the porch.

“Come on,” she said, motioning with a jerky wave. “Come in! Even you, big guy. I just made a pot of coffee, at least. Numi brought me another bag of the good stuff.”

Numi had changed jobs since that first high-powered one she got out of Harvard Law. I was pretty sure she worked for some giant tech firm now, but I couldn’t remember which one; she’d worked for a number of major companies in the Bay Area by then. From what Nick told me, her name was well known in the business scene. I’d even seen profiles of her in a number of business magazines and online sites.

Numi was a single mom now, with three kids.

She also lived down the street, so spent more time here than the rest of the Tanaka kids, all of whom had their own families now, apart from Nick.

The thought caught me off guard.

Then it hurt like hell.

A pain jabbed through my chest, like it was trying to crush itself from the outside in.

Nick used to joke he’d been cursed with three sisters, but the truth was, they were fiercely protective of him. He and his dad may have been outnumbered, but they were definitely not treated like second-class citizens. Angel claimed it was the real reason why Nick was still single. She joked he was too used to women fawning all over him.

He’d scoffed at that, of course.

I fought the memory out of my mind, even as I wiped my eyes, clearing my throat and blinking. Luckily, we were walking into the house, following Mrs. Tanaka towards the kitchen, so she wasn’t looking at me. Even so, I turned my face away from her back, hoping like hell she hadn’t noticed anything.

I had to keep it together here.

I fucking had to.

A warm hand wrapped around my shoulder, pulling me back against an even warmer chest, even as both of us were walking. I felt his light wind even deeper into mine, pulling me into his heat, into that solidity under his feet.

“No getting kissy-kissy in here,” Yumi Tanaka told him, wagging a finger at Black as we came to a stop at the doorway of her kitchen.

I found myself looking around the pristine, white-tile kitchen, focusing numbly on the stainless-steel pots and pans hanging from a rack attached to the ceiling, the perfect white cabinets with their sky-blue handles, the old-fashioned oven and gas burners.

“Just because my son isn’t here, that doesn’t mean you get to act like horny teenagers,” Mrs. Tanaka went on, still mock-scowling at me and Black. “I don’t need to see that. Saw enough of it when Nick was growing up.”

Black didn’t laugh that time.

Neither did I.

Black cleared his throat.

“We need to tell you something, Yumi,” he said. “Is Mitsuko here?”

Unlike me, Black had no trouble calling Nick’s parents by their first names.

She frowned faintly, glancing over her shoulder at him where she’d been placing coffee cups and saucers on a serving tray. Pulling the coffee pot off the burner of her stainless-steel coffee maker, she poured coffee into the four cups she’d arranged, then placed a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes next to it, along with four tiny spoons.

The coffee set was beautiful, and looked like real china.

Yumi Tanaka had those old-school manners I associated with my grandmother.

“He’s not here,” she said finally, after a long-feeling pause. “Mitsuko. He’s in Salinas for a few days. Visiting his brother. He just had surgery.”

Black and I exchanged looks.

“You don’t want to talk to me?” she retorted, hearing our silence. “Whatever it is, I can tell him.”

Black hesitated again.

So did I.

So did Angel.

But we had to tell her now.

We’d come over here. We couldn’t just leave.

She’d probably be angry we’d waited so long to talk to her as it was. If we told her even later than today, she’d be even more upset. She’d want to know why we didn’t tell her as soon as we reasonably knew. She’d probably want to know why we hadn’t called her the instant he’d gone missing, long before we’d spent weeks and months looking for him.

Black exhaled, giving me a look.

Fuck, he sent.

I couldn’t disagree with that.

“Okay,” he said aloud, frowning faintly as he looked back at Yumi Tanaka. “We were hoping to talk to both of you, but––”

“Both of us aren’t here,” she cut in, curt. “So you’re going to tell me, big man. Whatever this big news is. You’re going to come with me and sit, and you’re going to tell me.”

Picking up the tray she’d laid out, she started to leave the kitchen with it, heading for the sitting room, which stood on the other side of the kitchen’s right-hand entrance, just past the massive, freestanding wood cutting block. When we all didn’t move immediately to follow her, she paused by the door’s opening, now looking at all of us warily, as if she’d already picked up that this wasn’t news she was going to want to hear.

“…Come on, then,” she said, sharper. “Coffee’ll get cold.”

Black gave me a look when I glanced at him, frowning faintly.

We both exchanged looks with Angel too, who frowned as well.

We were all-in now, though.

BLACK AND I followed Mrs. Tanaka into the sitting room.

Angel, shoving her hands into the pockets of her black skinny jeans, followed.

All four of us entered the Tanakas’ blue and white sitting room, and found places to sit on the blue and white flowered living room set, hovering around a glass-covered table with a white-painted frame.

We all dutifully retrieved our coffees from the serving tray.

Black and I took the love seat across from the main couch where Yumi Tanaka sat. Angel sat in the one freestanding chair, which matched the sofa and loveseat.

We all held our coffee cups and saucers, but none of us took so much as a sip.

That time, Black didn’t break the silence.

I knew it was ridiculous to expect him to.

He’d already broached the topic with Mrs. Tanaka.

He’d paved the way for me and Angel, which is more than he had to do.

Even so, some part of me might have been hoping he’d do the heavy lifting for this part, too. When Angel looked at me, a pleading expression in her eyes, I could tell she’d been half-hoping the same. At the very least, she wanted me to do it.

In the end, I let out a resigned sigh.

Leaning forward on the loveseat, I set my coffee and saucer on the glass table, and met Nick’s mother’s gaze.

“We have bad news, Yumi,” I said, as gently as I could. “It’s about Nick.”

She paled. I felt it as much as I saw it.

On one level, she had to have known.

She probably suspected the instant Black said we had something to tell her.

Fear for Nick couldn’t be a new thing for her. Nick had been to war––hell, he’d done six tours. He’d been a cop after that. Then he’d been a homicide detective.

Yumi Tanaka had been fearing people showing up at her door to deliver bad news about Nick for most of his adult life. Nick told me she’d been visibly relieved when he informed her he’d decided to take a private security contract for a while, working for Black. She’d hated him being a cop almost as much as she’d hated him being in Afghanistan and Iraq.

She’d been thrilled he’d be working for Black, who she saw as some kind of celebrity, not really as a private detective, much less a private security contractor.

She thought Nick would be wearing fancy suits and attending galas in New York, not doing anything that could be really dangerous, much less life-threatening.

That was well before Nick told her the salary Black was offering him.

“What’s wrong with Nick?” she said, her voice sharp. Her dark eyes swiveled to Black. “He’s in Europe, right?”

I frowned, glancing at Black.

Black gave me a bare glance, then looked back at Yumi Tanaka. He lifted an eyebrow, his mouth pursed in puzzlement.

“Europe?” he said. “When did he tell you that?”

But I was already shaking my head.

“No.” I looked back at her. “No, he’s not in Europe. He was with us in Thailand, Mrs. Tanaka… Yumi. He died in a fire there, when––”

“What?” She let out a disbelieving laugh. “In Thailand? He didn’t die in Thailand. He told me all about Thailand. When did this happen?”

I felt my face warm.

This part was going to be harder to explain.

“Two months ago,” I said after a pause.

Seeing the disbelief growing even more prominent on her face, I exhaled.

“There was some question as to whether he survived,” I explained. “We’ve been looking for him ever since, Mrs. Tanaka. We thought maybe he got a ride out with another group.” My jaw tightened as I gave Black a brief, hard look. “…A private group we’d contracted with to help us while we were in Thailand. Some of their employees also disappeared. We tried to find them, and find Nick. But after all this time, the likelihood of him being alive is practically––”

She shocked me then.

She burst out in a laugh.

When I fell silent, staring at her, she shook her head, pursing her lips.

“I talked to Nick four days ago,” she said, her voice a low scoff.

I froze, staring at her face.

My hands were clasped together so tightly now, my fingers were numb.

“What bullshit game is this?” Yumi Tanaka asked, sounding angry now. She glared at Black openly, all playfulness in her expression gone. “Is this some kind of a joke? He told me he quit working for you. He said that you’re an asshole boss. That you put his life in danger. He said he has a better job now.”

Black’s jaw fell.

He stared at Yumi Tanaka like she’d just told him she was about to have his baby.

When I looked at Angel, the expression on her face wasn’t much different than Black’s.

I turned, staring at Mrs. Tanaka, feeling like the floor and the loveseat had just disappeared out from under me.

“Angel!” Nick’s mother turned on my best friend, her voice openly angry. “I could see if Miriam was pulled into this by her husband…” She practically spat the word, giving Black an angry glare. “…But what is your excuse? Are you fighting with Naoko now, too?”

Without waiting for Angel to recover, Yumi glared at me and Black.

“I thought you came here because you felt bad,” she said, her voice growing angrier as she spoke. “I thought you came to apologize, for putting my son in danger in that horrible bullshit Nick told me about in Thailand… leaving him in some dungeon, where he nearly died. Letting him nearly get killed in the jungle when they set the trees on fire. But you come here to scare the shit out of me? To make me think something bad happened to him?”

Her eyes swiveled back to Angel.

“I’ve known your mother longer than you’ve been alive, Angel Devereaux! I held you in my arms the day you were born. Why would you do this to me? Scare the hell out me like this? I’m an old lady… you think this is funny? Is this your idea of some kind of joke?”

Angel worked her jaw, looking between me and Black, maybe for help. Her eyes were so wide, she looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“N-N-No, Mrs. Tanaka,” she stammered. “No… of course not…”

Yumi Tanaka stared at me last.

The look in her eyes was pure fury, but more than that, betrayal.

She looked at me like I’d just stabbed her in the chest with a sword.

She looked at me like I really had killed Nick.

“He loves you,” she said, her voice cold. “He loves you, Miriam. He’s always loved you. Too much, maybe. He would never do this to you. He would never do this to your mother or father, if they were still alive. You are family to him.” She glared at Black again. “…More than family. Naoko should have been more to you, too. If you were smart, you would have married him long before you met this… this playboy.”

She looked back at me, her dark eyes still filled with fury, betrayal, but now also what might have been pity.

“I expected better from you, Miriam. I really did. But maybe you forgot what family is, after what happened to yours. Maybe it’s not even your fault, since so much happened when you were so young… those horrible murders of your parents and sister. Maybe you’re too broken now. You think love has to be difficult. You think it always has to be about pain.”

Again, she glared at Black, not even hiding her meaning.

All three of us just sat there, frozen, on the blue and white upholstered loveseat, and the blue and white upholstered chair.

All three of us stared at her, our mouths half-open, our throats paralyzed.

When Yumi Tanaka fell silent, for a long-feeling few seconds, all I heard was the ticking of a cuckoo clock that stood over the gas fireplace behind me.

I have no idea how long that silence actually lasted.

I have no idea how long I just sat there, my mind frozen like a block of ice.