Buttered green beans, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, dinner rolls, Jeff’s mouth watered as he watched what all hit the dinner table. Cole slaw, grilled chicken, steak, he started getting nervous, though there were plenty of people sitting around the table, so maybe this much food was justified. Peach pie, salad, croissants, another chicken, Jeff broke out in a sweat.

When Suzie cooked this much, even with Vin, Miranda, Suzie, Ben and Gene and two girls Jeff didn’t recognize plus himself, it meant she had some huge favor to ask. Since he was the only one here from whom she might ask this huge favor, it meant she was going to hit him with it tonight.

He hoped whatever it was wouldn’t make him regret stuffing his stomach, because he didn’t get home cooking like this very often.

“Here, Jeff. Have a steak. It’s medium rare, just the way you like it.”

“Thanks.” He watched the slab of beef closely as Suzie placed it on his plate. It looked mouth watering, though he may have thought so mostly because he’d had steak at Suzie’s house before and knew what to expect.

“I’m sure you’re wondering what I want.”

He nodded, not very eagerly.

“I’ve had an idea. I’m not entirely sure how good an idea it is, and I want to run it past you to see if I’m being at all reasonable.” Suzie settled into the seat at the head of the table, then passed a variety of serving dishes around, more interested in what went on other people’s plates than her own.

“Well I think it’s a great idea,” Miranda said as she reached across Vin’s setting for the rolls.

“You would,” Suzie said with a pointed look at Miranda’s hand. “It was yours.”

“Adopting Gene was your idea?” Ben glared at Miranda, his face going red and his chin jutting out.

Surprisingly, Gene also glared at Miranda. Jeff wasn’t sure, but he could swear he heard the boy mutter something like “what did I ever do to you?”

“I think it’s a stupid idea,” the girl next to Gene said. She had a rainbow of temporary dyes in her hair, giving her a parrot-like appearance. She was busy with her food and didn’t seem to notice or mind that Miranda gave her a dirty look.

“Why is that,” Suzie asked calmly. “You can’t say he belongs with a father who beats him.”

“No, but what if his mother comes back?” The parrot girl arched an eyebrow.

“Gene, I thought you said your mother abandoned you when you were five.”

“Yeah,” he said grudgingly. He’d grown at least an inch since the last time Jeff had seen him, which was only a couple of months ago.

“Have you seen any sign of her since then?”

“No.”

Suzie took a deep, calming breath before speaking again. “I think we all need to accept that for good or bad, both of Gene’s parents are out of the picture. He’s as good as orphaned.”

That shut everyone up. Jeff managed to put away several delicious bites of steak cooked to perfection, a buttery roll, and several forkfuls of green beans before Suzie hit him with the question he expected. Luckily, he’d already guessed what it would be and had his answer ready.

“So, do you think I’m being reasonable in adopting Gene?”

“From a legal stand point, sure. It won’t be easy since he does have living parents and you are not married, but it’s certainly possible. From a personal stand point? You might want to discuss it with Gene. If he agrees, then come on down to the office and we’ll get the ball rolling.”

A bit of salad, a slice of peach pie, and a period of conversational mayhem later he excused himself. Eating as at Suzie’s house came at a price, but one he considered well worth it.

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“It’s not my fault,” Gene growled as he followed Ben and into Ben’s room. “I never told her to do it.”

Lisa let the two boys charge ahead. They were so full of testosterone it was better to just get out of their way. She waited for Tracy to pass through, too, because walking in front of Tracy tended to be an iffy proposition. It meant she went unnoticed as she entered the room, which suited her just fine.

“Well someone must have, because I can’t see my mom coming up with the idea of adopting you on her own.” Ben wind-milled his hands in frustration.

“I swear, I never said a thing.”

“It’s true,” Tracy said with an eager nod. “I’d have noticed if he had.”

“You aren’t here all the time,” Ben countered.

“Pretty close,” Lisa muttered under her breath. She’d seen more of her cousin in the last couple of weeks than she had in years, thanks to the boys.

Ben gave her a hard look. Lisa shrugged, hands up in apology. She didn’t mean for him to feel embattled. The comment had simply slipped out.

“So what are we going to do about it?” Gene commandeered Ben’s chair, straddling it so his back wedged against the desk and his legs spread around the chair’s back rest.

“What? Don’t you want to be adopted?”

“Not if you don’t want me to be.”

“I…” Ben flapped his jaws. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Well, I know what I’d want if I were you,” Tracy offered. They all looked at her, waiting for whatever words of wisdom or idiocy she cared to share. “I would want my mother to ask my opinion. Then I could be all graciouslyness and say how I didn’t mind a bit, but I get to keep all my inheritance to myself.” Tracy grinned.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I want,” Ben said.

“You don’t want me to inherit anything?”

“Not that. I mean I want to be asked. But once Mom gets like this there’s no way she’d stop to see what I wanted. It’s like when she starts cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Once the Turkey is in the oven, get out of the way because there’s not stopping her.”

They all laughed. They’d seen Mrs. Hammacker in the kitchen often enough to know how single minded she could get.

“So? You want me to talk to her?” Gene had scooped up one of Ben’s pencils and was messing with it, his eyes not looking at anyone or anything in particular.

“It won’t do any good. Not yet anyway. But yeah. Maybe later we both should say something.”

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“Tracy, I found your ring.” Mrs. H walked into the room without knocking.

Seemed like she’d done a lot more of that since Tracy started hanging out with him in his room, but Gene couldn’t really say anything because he knew he was lucky to have a room at all. It’s not like they were really going to do anything in Mrs. H’s house.

Tracy crawled off the bed where she’d been curled up next to him and took the ring.

“It is! It’s my ring!” Tracy beamed. “How did you get it out of the sink?

“I took the pipe off.” Mrs. H said it like she did that kinf of thing all the time and didn’t mind. If it had been his old man there’s have been a lot of btching and moaning and it would of never got done unless Gene did it, and Gene didn’t mess with pipes since the time in Cincinnati when he was nine and his father came home right when Gene got everything under the kitchen sink taken apart and none of it put together again. “Gene,” Mrs. H said all serious, “There’s something I want to talk to you about.

“Yeah, sure, Mrs. H.” He slid off the bed cause she wasn’t likely to be happy about him just laying there while she stalked.

“Um…” She gave Tracy a look.

Tracy, the rat, just rocked on her feet and smiled back. She knew perfectly well Mrs. H. wanted her to leave the room, but she wasn’t going to do it

“Um… maybe… out in the hall.” Mrs. H. waved at him to come out of the room with her. Gene followed. “Gene, I think I should adopt you.”

“What?”

“Wouldn’t that be good?” She ignored his question. “If I adopt you, then you should call me “Mom”. If there’s a problem and you end up in the hospital, they won’t keep me out, and I can handle all the paperwork for school so much more easily.

“But…”

“And no one could say you weren’t a full-fledged member of this family. Wouldn’t that be good?”

What was he supposed to say? “Gosh, gee, Mrs. H. Thanks a lot for wanting to make me a part of your family, but I don’t see much point in it.” She was the one always saying how he was a member of this family and ought to act like it. Wasn’t that enough?

“Then it’s decided. I’ll call the lawyer today.” Mrs. H headed down stairs.

She didn’t even notice Ben and Lisa standing on the other end of the hall. Ben looked like someone had just kicked him in the nuts.

“Oh boy. Guess she didn’t ask her own son what he thought about it.” Tracy curved the fingers of one hand over his shoulder and shook her head like she felt bad for Ben, but didn’t really take him, or anything else seriously. It was a “poor baby” look and fit just right for both Ben and Gene.

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Vin had one knee between Suzie’s legs and a hand on either side of her chest. If Miranda had seen this a couple of months ago, she’d have ripped both of them up one side and down the other. Now, she simply tilted her head, and considered various possibilities, including that the two of them were doing something perfectly innocent.

“Hey, Miranda. Did you want to see how Teflon tape works, too?”

“What kind of tape?”

The combination of Suzie’s cheerful and guilt free voice along with the way her head and shoulders disappeared under the cabinet below the bathroom sink and, yep, there it was, the bright flash of silver from a pipe wrench, all lead Miranda to one conclusion. Suzie was an idiot.

“I’ll pass. And so will Vin. Right Vin?”

“Oh. Right. I’ve seen enough.” He scrambled to his feet looking embarrassed, but not really guilty.

Actually, he looked at her as if she were a ticking bomb already past its explosion date. He didn’t used to look like that. Not when they first took up with each other. Was this what she’d done to him with her jealousies and insecurities? If this was some kind of mirror being held up to her, she didn’t like it much.

“So…,“ she said carefully, not wanting to light any fuses, not even her own. “What’s going on?”

“Suzie’s doing a little plumbing.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Miranda said encouragingly. She could already see the plumbing thing. “I didn’t realize the sink was broken.”

“It wasn’t. Tracy lost her ring down it. I was just fishing it out.” Suzie shoved herself out from under the sink with a grunt. She happily turned the water on, then bent over to check her handiwork, still oblivious to how she looked.

“Um. Tracy. Yeah.” Miranda refrained from saying anything more about the girl. There was something unsettling about Tracy. Miranda couldn’t quite put her finger on what, but she found herself more and more uncomfortable around her.

“Vin was just helping me out.” Suzie gave the pipe a little more wrench action, then glanced over her shoulder at Miranda. “Actually, maybe you could help, too.”

“I don’t do pipes!” Miranda held her hands up defensively, though it looked like Suzie already had the job done.

“Not that.” Suzie felt the pipe, then ran water again, then touched the pipe again. “This is done anyway. No, what I need help with is figuring out what to do about Gene. His father has been trying to lure him out with lies about his mother coming back. Gene says he doesn’t care, but I can tell he really does. I just can’t figure out what I should do to make him feel more secure.”

“Well, that’s obvious,” Miranda said with a snort. “Adopt him.”

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“What does Teflon tape look like?”

“It’s that white stuff on a plastic spool. It feels kind of dusty and kind of oily but not really either.”

Well, that was clear as mud. At least he knew to look for spools instead of something like a tape measure or a roll of masking tape. He picked through the tool chest, and actually found it fairly quickly. If only he could drop the solution to dealing with Gene into her palm as easily.

“Thanks.” Her wiggling fingers closed round the spool.

“About Gene, I’m thinking he just needs the same kind of love you give Ben. Be there for him however long it takes. He’s probably nervous about parental love. I mean, how old was he when his mother abandoned him?”

“He thinks around five, but doesn’t remember for sure.”

Vin nodded, though Suzie couldn’t possibly see past the pipes under the sink. “So he hardly remembers her, but he’ll have noticed that everyone else around has a mother who loves him. That’ll make a boy insecure. And then there’s his ham-fisted father, who isn’t likely to be taking up the slack. Not really. Gene must think he’s the most unlovable male in the universe.”

“Oh, I doubt it’s that bad. He’s a smart kid. I’m sure he realizes…”

“We are talking about a teenage boy, here, right? Trust me on this. He’s sure no one in the universe can be as ugly and stupid and unwanted as himself. He’s busy minding his manners right now because that’ll get him by, but I’ll bet he was acting up a lot before he fell in with Ben. It’s just like how Ben acted like the perfect little robot until you kicked him out.”

“He did not!” Suzie came out from under the sink glaring. She had a pipe wrench in her hand big enough to put a noticeable dent in his head, if she felt like putting one there. “I did not!”

“Wait” Vin held his hands up in front of him, warding off any potential blows. He carefully removed the wrench from her fingers and dropped it to the floor with a solid thunk. “You sent him off to live with his father and wouldn’t let him back in the house. That sounds like kicking him out to me.”

“That was for his own protection.” Suzie reached for the wrench.

“You sent him to a man who later cut your lawyer’s brake lines.”

“Better than letting him get taken away by the man who shot you.”

Vin could hardly argue. That whole episode still gave him nightmares, and the occasional twinge in the shoulder.

She fingered the wrench thoughtfully with a little furrow of concern between her eyebrows. “Why do you say Ben was a perfect little robot?”

“Wasn’t he? All those ‘yes ma-am’s and ‘no sir’s creeped me out. Always working on his homework as if his life depended on it. Looking back, I’d say he was terrified that you would do exactly what you did – make him live with his father.”

Suzie’s lips compressed, then frowned. She spun the little wheelie-screw type thing that made the jaws of the wrench open and close.

“You know I’m right.”

“Maybe.” She darted a glance his way, then slid back under the sink where she set the wrench to the pipes with an audible clunk.

“The point is that Gene is probably feeling the same way. For a kid who has been through as much as he has, you’d think he’d act out more, wouldn’t you? Instead, the worst thing he does is try to spend time with his own father.”

“Well,” clunk, clunk, “when you put it that way,” clunk.

“So maybe all he really needs is to know you’re serious about being his mother. Once he knows he can depend on you, that you will love him no matter what, I’m sure everything will clear up.”

She went quiet again. He hunkered down in an effort to see her face. He found her messing with the spool of Teflon tape.

“Hey, how does that stuff work anyway?”

“Oh, it’s really cool. Watch this.” She pinched off a strip of the stuff then wrapped it around the threads of the pipe. “You really can’t see well from there. Get a little closer.”

Vin leaned forward. He started to lose his balance, and put a hand down fast on the base of the cupboard under the sink and a knee on the bathroom floor, coincidentally between Suzie’s legs. Nothing was touching, and he ignored the inadvertent intimacy.

“Oh shoot. It bunched up. Let me try again.” She pulled off the first piece, pinched off another strip, and wrapped it around the same pipe threads. It instantly fitted itself to the grooves. When she ran her fingers over it, it became form-fitting.

“Wow, how does it do that? Did you add glue or something?”

“No. That’s just the way Teflon tape is. It makes a nice seal and lubricates the pipe at the same time. Great stuff.” She grabbed the dangling part of the U-joint and threaded it on.

“What exactly are the two of you doing?” Miranda’s voice came from right behind him.

Vin flinched. After everything he’d been through trying to convince her to trust him, this was not going to look good.

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Suzie swore. Actual cuss words. Vin couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Suzy swear. He could hear her over the low drone of the TV, which made him realize he wasn’t watching anyway and shouldn’t waste his entire life like this, constantly changing channels and feeling dissatisfied. So, in a rare break in his own habits, Vin turned the idiot box off, and went to see what had Suzie so upset.

He followed the rising and falling cascade of frustration into the hall, then to the left toward the back of the house, but instead of finding her in the kitchen, he found her in the little bathroom tucked into the tiny space between the utility room and the kitchen.

She lay on the floor, her head in the cabinet under the sink. Tools spilled out of a toolbox on the floor, including several sizes and varieties of wrench.

“Need some help?” He was almost afraid to offer, since he had no interest in plumbing.

“Yes. Could you hand me the Teflon tape? I forgot to grab it and now I can’t reach.”

“Sure.” He dipped his hand into the tool chest, carefully shoving aside screw drivers, a hammer, and various metal things while listening to the thunk and scuff of a pipe wrench being wielded.

The wrench thudded and Suzie swore, no doubt having slipped.

“You all right?”

“Perfectly.” Thud, thud, “fine,” she pushed through gritted teeth.

“Maybe you should take a break. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Thunk. Thunk. “No I won’t. Ow!”

Suzie came out fast, bumping her head on the underside of the sink on the way, then sitting there with her hand on her forehead looking glum.

“Is it really that bad? We could actually hire a plumber, you know. I’ll pay for it if you’re feeling pinched since you’re no longer getting rent from Drew.”

If anything, that made her look even glummer.

“It isn’t that. It’s Gene.”

“Gene.” Vin nodded even though he had no idea what she meant. Did she regret taking the kid in? He was using Drew’s old room, so she couldn’t rent it out, which Vin didn’t mind at all since he didn’t really want a stranger moving in with them, but he could see how it might be a problem for Suzie.

“It’s so obvious that he still wants his mother even though she abandoned him.”

“His mother? I didn’t know he had a mother.” Actually, Vin didn’t know much about the father either. He’d noticed the kid spent more and more time with them, then suddenly had his own room and Suzie announced he was a member of the household. He hadn’t really thought much about it, though.

“I didn’t either. His father’s been trying to lure him back home by saying his mother has come back. I’m afraid it might work, even after all the times he’s beaten Gene. Even though he put Gene in the hospital.”

“Wow. The kid’s had a hard life.”

“Yeah. I feel for him. I really do. But what can I do to help?” She eased down into the cabinet under the sink again. A minute later the wrenched rattled against the pipe.

“Seems to me you’re already doing a lot for him.”

“Not enough if he’s willing to run back just because his mother might be there. Ouch.” The rattle of the wrench slipping was followed by a couple of choice swearwords. Then Suzie came out from under the sink with the u-joint in her hand. With entirely too serious an expression on her face, she up-ended it, and a ring fell out. “Tracy lost it yesterday. Nice, but I’m not sure it’s really all that valuable.” Suzie rubbed grime off it to show a ring barely a step up from vending machine quality, then stared at it a long time. “Here. Hold this for me.”

She eased onto her back again, u-joint in hand, but instead of getting the wrench going Suzie went quiet.

“Everything all right?” He hoped she hadn’t thought of something that would really upset her. He couldn’t handle an upset Suzie.

“No.”

“What can I do?”

“I forgot the Teflon tape again. Could you hand it to me?” She held her hand out, palm up, and wiggled her fingers.

“Yeah. Of course. Um…what does Teflon tape look like?”

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“I hate her.” Gene slammed the phone into the receiver, the plastic thud of it echoing through downstairs hall.

“Who?” Mrs. H said from the kitchen.

“My mother.”

“You’re mother?” Mrs. H came out with a dishtowel in her hand. “I didn’t realize you still had a mother. Where is she?”

“Why do you want to know? Want to get rid of me by dumping me on her?” Gene knew in a part of himself that he wasn’t being fair, but he was tired of holding all these thoughts inside. He wanted to be more like Tracy. She just said whatever, and no one cared.

“No, of course not. I don’t want to let you go at all. But if you have a mother out there, then maybe I’m only interfering where I shouldn’t. Was that her on the phone?”

“No. That was my father.” Gene growled out the word “father”, half choking on it. The word had too much dignity for the guy, but no way was Gene going to call him “Dad.”

“Your father,” Mrs. H said flatly, her back getting all stiff. No surprise there. Gene knew already she hated the guy almost as much as he did. Then she shook her head all confused. “But where’s your mother?”

“Who knows.” Gene shrugged like he didn’t really care. “She took off when I was five. No one’s seen her since.”

“How horrible!” Mrs. H. scrunched up the towel like an actor in a karate movie getting ready to crush an apple.

“Yeah, well. I don’t care about her anymore. It was a long time ago. Like my father said, she isn’t worth thinking about.” Gene lifted his chin a little, almost daring her to argue, which was dumb, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Really.” It wasn’t a question. She crossed her arms and leaned into the frame of the door to the den. “Then why are you thinking about her now?”

“I’m not! But he… my father… he said she was back. But it’s a lie, I know it is. He said the same thing before. He wants me to pack my things and move back in with him. He says everything will be different now because she’s there.”

“Oh. Gene. You must realize it’s a trick.” She touched his shoulder lightly, her eye full of pity.

He shrugged the hand off. “I know. He said she’d be in the park when I went to meet him, but she wasn’t there. She’s never been there before, so it was dumb to think she would be now.”

“You went to meet him in the park?” Her voice and shoulders tightened with alarm the way grown ups sometimes do when they don’t want you to know they are upset. She kept it all level when she said, “Didn’t we talk about that?”

“Yeah, but…” Uh-oh. He hadn’t meant to say that.

“Didn’t the woman from Social Services talk to you about it?”

“Yeah, but….”

“You promised you wouldn’t take that risk again. How am I supposed to keep you safe when you put yourself in harm’s way?”

“I’m sorry! I won’t ever do it again. Please don’t throw me out.”

Mrs. H. sighed in exasperation. “I’m not going to throw you out, but Gene, I need your word you won’t ever do it again.”

“Ok. I won’t.”

“Was that him on the phone just now?”

“Yeah. But it’s ok. I know my father only ever lies. She isn’t really there now. She walked away from me when I was five and never looked back. Even if she came back, I don’t care. I don’t, and I’m not going to.”

Mrs. H. Opened her mouth like she was going to argue. Her brow wrinkled, then cleared. She patted him on the shoulder.

“It’ll all work out, Gene, I promise. Just don’t do anything stupid, like visiting your father. All right?”

Gene nodded. He could hardly argue. Besides, he liked it better when she looked at him with approval. And she did. She smiled, gave his arm a squeeze, then headed back to the kitchen.

“Tell Vin it’s his turn to set the table. We’ll be eating soon.” And with that, everything was back to normal.

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“Pobresito,” Maria muttered under her breath as she took Drew’s hand. Had it not been for her and Todd, this fine man would not now be addicted to some strange new designer drug. He could have been back in that place he’d come out from, wherever it was, doing simple internet investigations.

“What?” Toby moved closer, making Maria tense, and release Drew’s hand.

“Poor man, I said.”

“Is that all?”

“Cowboy,” she muttered with disdain. Heartless man. He understood nothing of the needs of another man or the love of a woman. How could she ever have dated Toby? Her brains, they’d gone missing.

“Come on.” Toby pulled on her arm. “August 4th is coming soon. We need to get ready.”

“No. You go ahead. I will be there soon enough.” She slipped loose.

“I’m not going to leave you here.” His eyes flashed to the hospital bed where Drew lay, the jealous jerk. It wasn’t like there would ever be anything but work between the two of them.

Either of the two of them.

Maria sighed, and brushed the hair from Drew’s eyes. He looked tired around the blown-pupil glaze. He swatted at her hand, and came no where near.

“What are we going to do about him? The doctors, you know they aren’t going to be able to do anything, considering what he’s on. We should take responsibility.”

“How? By taking him home and putting wet washcloths on his forehead until he comes down?” He glared like he knew that was exactly what she wanted to do. “He’s better off here. As for detox, we’ll come up with something. We need him clean and sober when we go before the judge. Which isn’t going to happen if we don’t get back to the office and get to work.” He grabbed her arm again.

Drew turned toward her and almost focused on her eyes.

“Go.” He waved in a general way, like a drunk swatting a fly. “Don’t waste my work.”

“It isn’t right,” Maria said to both men.

“Excuse me. Visiting hours are over,” a nurse said from the door.

“All right. It must be fate.” Maria followed Toby from the room.

She wanted to say something comforting to Drew, but all he ever wanted was that woman he left behind. If only Toby could be more like him. As for the cowboy, he had a smug grin on his face that made her want to hit him.

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Drew rolled over.

The ceiling tiles were white with holes. Part of his mind knew they were supposed to be a steady, industrial white with regular, randomly spaced holes. The holes weren’t supposed to expand and contract with his heartbeat, and the white of the tiles wasn’t supposed to glisten with rainbows half-seen and half felt.

Maria’s face hove into view, whisps of hair falling from her bun to spear toward him like sharp words.

“What are you on?”

“I don’t know.” Drew thought the words loudly, but he wasn’t entirely sure he said them. The sound of them didn’t seem right. Maybe he only moaned.

“How long has he been like this?” She turned toward a shadow too far away for Drew to try to face.

“I found him in his apartment.” Toby’s voice came from the shadow.

Drew didn’t remember the man coming to his apartment, but then, there were a lot of things he didn’t remember. The story of his life recorded in his brain was full of holes that often began and ended with the flick of a lighter.

“What did the doctor say?” Maria sounded worried.

Doctor? Then this wasn’t the ceiling of the local FBI office? Where was that office? Wisconsin? No. Some place hot and dry. Albuquerque.

The ceiling tiles of hospitals in Albuquerque could be very entertaining. They were dancing now, rippling like waves of an ocean. Was he a fish looking up at the waves? Or had he gotten up and down mixed up? He spread his fingers at his sides, feeling for the ocean floor and came up with metal tube railing and starched cotton sheet. He was on a hospital bed. But why? Did he really need this?

“They’re running some blood tests. But if it’s the Chinese Sh*t they won’t find anything.” Toby’s voice deepened with irritation.

“It isn’t his fault.”

“I never said it was.”

If Drew had been himself, he might have resented both their attitudes. Instead, he tried blinking a few times to see if the holes in the ceiling tiles were really expanding and contracting like living things.

“If it weren’t for him…” Maria left the comment hanging.

“Then it would have been one of us.” As if they had avoided a fate worse than death. “Obviously the stuff is worse than we thought to make a man like him fall.”

“Maybe he isn’t really addicted.” Maria’s face came into view again. He hadn’t realized she’d moved away from him, and didn’t really care.

“The stuff doesn’t last that long. It’s been days since his last rendezvous with the perps. If he’s like this now, he has to have done more of it for reasons that have nothing to do with the job.”

Job. That’s right. Drew was here to do a job. And once it was done, he could go home. Home. Home home home to Suzie’s house. He could go now, right?

“What are we going to do about him? We still need him for the case.” Maria sounded worried. “Maybe he went out without telling us. Maybe he learned something.”

“Hey! Mr. Banks. Can you hear me?” Toby came up on Maria’s side.

Drew rolled his eyes in that direction, but didn’t bother to answer to condescending jerk.

“Did you find any evidence?”

“Ahhhh…” That was Drew’s voice. It rumbled in his chest before it came out, so he knew it was his, though it sounded a lot more lucid than he actually felt.

“Just tell us if you learned anything. Tell us what you know,”

Home. If he could tell them something, he could go home.

“Ramirez is coming. August 4th. In The Snake Pit. Catch him then.”

“I’ll be D@mned.” Toby grinned. “I was going to suggest to the boss that he be sent to rehab then discharged, but I guess we’ll have to hold on to him instead.”

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“Huh. That Tracy.” Ben said as he and Gene walked home. He couldn’t believe she had kissed both Gene and himself right there in Lisa’s living room with Lisa watching and everything.” She’s really something,”

“Yeah. She is.” Gene grinned like he knew something more.

Ben hated it when Gene got like that, all mysterious and knowing. He walked half a step faster down the uneven sidewalk with his head up like it belonged up there in the bright green leaves of Summer trees. Half the time he didn’t know jack. But the other half he did and Ben could never be sure which was which without asking. So he asked. “So what does it mean?”

“Isn’t that obvious? It leans Tracy is mine.” Gene’s grin got bigger.

“How do you come up with that?” Like he really minded. Except he didn’t want to come in second, even with a girl who wasn’t all that comfortable to be around.

“She kissed me longer, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, but she kissed me first.”

“But when she kissed you, she was looking to see what Lisa was thinking. Didn’t you notice?”

Ben had noticed. He’d also noticed the way Lisa got really mad about Tracy kissing himself, but not so mad about kissing Gene. Or maybe he just wanted it to seem that way. “Well, if Tracy’s yours then Lisa’s mine.”

“Huh. No big deal there. Lisa’s been yours all along.”

“I wish,” Ben muttered. As if all these weeks when he’d been agonizing about who she liked better didn’t count.

“What? You didn’t know?”

“No I didn’t know. How am I supposed to know something like that?”

“I thought it was obvious.” Gene glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow arched.

“Yeah, right.”

They hit Jennifer Street and walked along in silence for a while. It was weird. When he and Lisa left the house that morning it was just another day of vacation. Nothing much was going on except Mom getting strange about Lisa. Now everything looked different, even the old houses and all the cars parked up and down the street.

“So. Now that we know who belongs to who, what are we going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.” Gene shrugged.

“I think…. Maybe… we should go on a double date.” Ben wanted to go out with Lisa, but he was still nervous. It would be better to do it with a friend.

Gene didn’t answer that for way too long. When he did, it was mostly a grunt.

Yeah, well. Whatever. Whether Gene or Tracy would come along or not, Ben was going to got out with Lisa. He’d ask her even if he had to close his eyes to get the words out.

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