HOLT

When I return to the house in Greenwich just a few hours after my confrontation with Sylvie, Ender is gone along with any sign he and his duplicitous mother ever lived there.

Mika, who has no idea I am Ender’s biological father, figured I wouldn’t care that she let Ender’s “Aunt Prin” onto the estate, or allowed Ender to leave the premises with her. After all, Ender’s mom texted Mika to explain that she’d forgotten her best friend would be swinging by later that night to pick him up, for a promised trip to Six Flags Hurricane Harbor. And she’d told Mika to allow Prin to bring her car around to the guest house—ostensibly to help Ender pack his overnight bag.

I am not surprised by this move at all. Sylvie has always excelled at running. But if she thinks I will let her get away this time, she has another thing coming.

Within an hour of my arrival, Allie and I have an elite team of former hackers who now make a living as “security consultants” assigned to Sylvie’s case. And just a few hours after that, I am told they’re in. Bank accounts, credit cards, email—even Sylvie’s Waze app. She won’t be able to so much as withdraw money for coffee without me knowing about it, much less buy a plane ticket out of the country. This time there will be no place on Earth the little rabbit can run.

Less than a week later, I arrive at the New York offices of Meier, Swath, & Crane, the law firm our family has used for personal matters since my first-born aunt married a Cal-Mart executive who was handpicked by my grandfather.

“You have a strong case,” Gil Meier III, the son of the man who originally signed the Calson’s account, tells me when we meet privately in his office. “But are you sure you want to sue for full custody?”

This is third time he’s asked me some variation of this question during the course of our initial meeting. I get the feeling he is used to most fathers trying to figure out how to pay the mothers of their illegitimate children to go away without a fuss.

But in my case, I want to destroy Sylvie. Take everything from her, like she took everything from me.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I answer. “I won’t settle for anything less than full custody.”

Gil’s shoulders slump as if he hoped I would give him a different answer. “In that case, perhaps we should consider the proposal Ms. Pinnock’s lawyer sent over…”

My head jerks back. “She’s already lawyered up?” I ask.

Gil replies with a somewhat consternated nod. “Not only that, but a rather…sassy legal intern hand delivered a proposal for arbitration to my assistant this morning. If it had not been for one of the security guards recognizing her as the daughter of some rapper from a reality show he used to watch and assuming she was one of my clients, she would never have made it to this floor. But turns out she’s an intern for the lawyer who is representing the mother of your…ah…child. The lawyer is licensed in New York, with special privileges to work in Connecticut. But I have never heard of her, and according to my initial research, she doesn’t have much custody experience or experience with sighted clients for that matter. You see…”

“Her name is Amber something or other, and she’s blind,” I finish, scrubbing a hand over my face.

“Yes, Amber Reynolds,” Gil confirms with a surprised nod. “Do you know her?”

“Technically, yes,” I answer, cursing inwardly. I had been betting Sylvie would not be able to find a lawyer she could afford as fast as I could push a custody hearing through. But it hadn’t even crossed my mind that Sylvie would connect with Luca’s ex-wife. I imagine Amber jumped at the chance to represent Sylvie. How does the old saying go? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I’m sure it also applies to the enemy of an enemy’s best friend.

“What does she want?” I ask.

“Well, nothing yet. The document I received is a simple offer to present each of the proposed custody agreements to a neutral arbitrator, rather than taking it through the public courts. Ms. Reynold’s choice of delivery person aside, it is a very reasonable suggestion. Ms. Pinnock agrees to sign an NDA so this matter doesn’t make it into the press. And in exchange, you agree to private arbitration. The arbitrator’s decision will still be binding, but the case and any subsequent settlements will remain private. Which might be the best strategy of all since your board vote is still coming up in three more weeks…”

Gil goes on to list several additional reasons for why I should accept Sylvie’s proposal, but Sylvie has surprised me by going on the offensive, and I do not like to be surprised. In the end, I tell him I need a day to think about it.

However, there is another surprise waiting for me when I get home from work to find Lucynka fretting with a letter in her hands.

“This has come for you, and I know I am supposed to open and vet your mail, but…Wes has been so upset about his friend’s sudden going and I am thinking maybe this letter be related to personal matter best left between you and Sylvie.”

I raise an eyebrow as I take the letter from her, and not just because Lucynka seems to have guessed more about the nature of my relationship with Sylvie than she previously let on. The envelope is slightly heavier than I was expecting, and though I can see no imprint, there seems to be something other than paper inside of it. The front is addressed to me in Sylvie’s straight up and down handwriting, while what must be her new apartment address in Stamford is written in much smaller print in the top left corner.

Lucynka lets out a relieved hum as if she is glad to have the letter out of her hands. “Mr. Wes is asking to take dinner in his room again tonight. Would you like eat here or have dinner in your office?”

“My office,” I answer as I walk away. I guess my son and I are coping with Sylvie and Ender’s departures in different ways. Me by throwing myself into more work, and Wes by staying in his room and playing videogames until Mika tells him it’s time to go to bed.

But it’s been a week of just Mika, the psychology grad student Sylvie chose as her replacement, and there haven’t been any Wes incidents in my daily briefings. So I guess he’s dealing.

Sylvie was right about him needing a nanny with a psychology background, a small voice says inside my head.

A voice I ignore as I use Grandpa Hank’s gold-plated letter opener to split the top of the hand-addressed envelope. Inside, I find a handwritten letter, and as I suspected, there is something nestled inside the letter. A cerulean blue device. One I barely recognize at first…until I do.

It’s my iPod shuffle from ten years ago. Now ancient by technology standards, with some cosmetic damage around the edges, but it’s the same one I used to pass back and forth with Sylvie.

Confused, I read the note she folded around it.

Holt—

I wish things could have been different. This belongs to you now.

Love,

Sylvie

I re-read the letter several times, frowning at it like it is written in code. Her wish throws me off. As does her “love” sign-off. But there are none of Sylvie’s usual markers in it. No sorrowful-but-vague apology for what she’s done. Just the return of an item I didn’t even remember was in her possession.

It pisses me off. And for a dark moment, I think about pulling a Wes. Throwing the little blue rectangle to the ground and stomping it with my foot.

But instead, I start searching my drawers for something I haven’t owned in a while. However, as it turns out, I’m a little too ruthless when it comes to discarding old tech, especially because I always tend to have the very latest devices.

“Do you own a set of non-Bluetooth or firewire headphones?” I have to ask Lucynka when she arrives with my meal.

Less than fifteen minutes later, instead of eating the prosciutto-wrapped chicken, I plug my housekeeper’s freshly cleaned earbuds into the blue iPod Shuffle and push play. Even though I am pretty certain what I will find. One of my old playlists. Probably one I won’t even remember making—

My thoughts cut off when the haunting melody to that Jill Scott song Sylvie introduced me to last week starts to play. What had she called it? About a minute into the song, the singer answers my question with, “Jahraymecofasola.”

I am completely entranced. And then another song starts to play. One I recognize as “Two Weeks” by FKA Twigs, because I bought the album back in 2014. Then comes “Royals” by Lorde, a song I remember hitting the radio hard in 2013. I don’t recognize the next song. It’s a reggae tune, but I’m betting if I look it up, the release date would be 2012. Then comes, “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Goyte…2011. The songs continue, cycling back to the year Sylvie and I met and fell apart. When I reach that first year, there are two more songs from the past two years, including a Mexican hit that crossed over into the American market despite being in Spanish.

Ten songs. Ten year’s worth of songs that somehow sum up every thought and feeling I have ever had about Sylvie during the last decade with and without her.

The meal Lucynka brought me never gets eaten. I listen to those songs, all ten of them. And I might have pushed play again if not for Wes’s sudden appearance in my open doorway.

He has a game controller in his hand and his face is puffy like he’s been crying.

And I take out the earbuds because I suddenly remember how Wes and Ender promised to see each other when they were first separated back in Ixtapa: via a videogame.

Wes hasn’t been playing videogames alone in his room this past week because he misses Ender. He’s been doing it because it’s the only way he has left to communicate with the boy he considers his best friend.

And as if to confirm my sudden realization, Wes sobs, “Is it true? Is it true Ender is my brother?”