Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Evan waited.

She solved the cube, spun it on her finger like a basketball, then attacked it again, fingers flying. Now it was checkered. Now striped. Her proficiency was staggering.

He waited some more.

“I mean, what do I care if he posted a picture of him with Sloane last night? It’s his problem if he wants to date some stupid rich girl who exfoliates with whale semen and only eats panda meat.”

“Whale semen? Is that a thing?”

“Duh. They’re mammals.”

“I meant the facial-care application.”

“No, X. And she doesn’t really eat panda meat either. I’m just saying. He can go back to his life and his mom landlord and fuck right off.”

She winced, pulling her head to one side, contorting herself again to get at that knotted muscle by her shoulder blade. Her face looked suddenly full, a heaviness in the cheeks, beneath the eyes.

He remembered her once telling him about when she was fourteen, barely hanging on in the Orphan Program. After having an ear blown out from a demolition charge, she’d been left to find her own way to her pickup point. Stumbling along, she’d come across a father rocking his baby on a park bench, murmuring, You are safe. You are loved . After she’d conveyed this memory to Evan, she’d stared at him, her eyes glimmering, and said, Can you imagine?

He couldn’t. But since knowing Joey, he’d been starting to imagine how to impart something like that.

Right now it had to be without words. Without eye contact. For the millionth time, he wondered what Jack would have done. When Evan was young and guarded and lost, Jack had always known exactly how to find a way in, what not to say. This was the domain of other people—of Mia, of parents, even fathers like Andre who at one time had held the weight of Sofia’s life in his arms.

Until he’d chosen not to.

Evan cleared his throat. “If you need—”

“I don’t need anything, okay?” Flash of anger, her expression hard, impenetrable.

“Okay.”

“I don’t need you. I don’t .”

“Okay.”

Dog slumped down on the floor with a harrumph and panted contentedly. He smelled like musk and sunshine. Over on the beanbag, Joey strained even harder to reach the sore spot in her back.

Evan said, “Can I help you get that?”

“No.”

“You need to learn to accept help.”

“Why? You never do.”

Evan said, “So you can teach me.”

She still didn’t bother to look up. Meeting his gaze would be too much for her, but he could tell that she was selling it to herself differently, that he wasn’t worth looking at. Not a blemish on her face and two kinds of concealer on the bathroom counter. However hard it was for him to decipher the rules of ordinary life, it was harder for her. Sixteen years old with a labyrinth ahead and endless potential if she could just find the right route through.

She kept trying to get at that muscle. He sat, watching her frustration mount.

Finally she said, “ Fine . Just ’cuz I can’t reach.”

He crossed to her and took her place on the beanbag, motioned for her to sit down on the floor in front of him. Facing away, no eye contact. That was good.

He set his hands on her shoulders. Her right one was a good two inches higher than the left, curled slightly forward, the muscle fiber locked up. He found the pressure point with his thumb. Applied pressure, the angry knot yielding nothing.

He gripped the ball of her shoulder, hunched and tight. The problem was there. He held it gently, set his knee in the space between her shoulder blades, and applied gentle pressure, peeling the shoulder back.

“Breathe,” he said. “And release.”

Her inhalations came in jerks, the exhalations shuddering. Her shoulder trembled, moved back a quarter inch. Fought forward again, muscles and tendons rippling beneath his fingers, in spasm.

“Steady,” he said. “Let go. Just let go.”

“I am ,” she said, her voice wavering.

Joey let her head grow heavy, made a sound between a groan and a growl. Dog the dog’s collar jangled as he lifted his head.

Her breath evened out. He kept the pressure on, gentle and insistent. Her skin grew suddenly hot. And then her shoulder peeled back and away, opening up, a sudden smooth movement that set it in line with the other.

She tipped her head forward more, let it go lax.

She shook a little. He wasn’t sure what was happening until tears spotted her jeans.

“Damn it,” she said softly. “Damn it damn it damn it.”

Evan drove back to Castle Heights to gear up for the trip to Creech North. Any plan to get him in and out of the top-security compound in one piece would require maximum flexibility and a wildly inventive cover.

So far he had a vape pen and a parking sticker.

It was going to be a challenge.

He parked in the underground lot and made his way through the lobby, sufficiently preoccupied that he barely noticed the person sitting in the sofa area.

Lorilee Smithson.

For once she didn’t leap up at the sight of company; she didn’t even look over at him as he moved quietly to the elevator. She was staring out the windows onto Wilshire Boulevard, half her face painted with the late-morning sun. Her jaw was set in contemplation, a grave bearing he had not thought her capable of.

He could have continued on to the elevator unseen. But something about her expression made him pause.

He looked back at the elevator. Behind the security counter, Joaquin was watching him, eyebrows raised at this break in Evan’s routine. Joaquin didn’t speak or move, like a nature photographer gone motionless to avoid spooking the wildlife.

Cutout construction-paper snowflakes danced across the walnut facing of the security desk, Evan close enough to see the sloppy crayon penmanship signing the lowest one: PETER HALL, AGE 9.

That kid was constantly decorating the lobby, Easter Bunny piñatas and Thanksgiving tissue turkeys and customized drawings for every resident’s birthday. Evan flashed on Peter sitting on the couch in his dead father’s dress shirt— I don’t have anyone to be proud of me— and the image about wrecked him. How could a kid that fundamentally good ever have to wonder if he was good enough for someone to be proud of?

With quiet awe Evan considered the upbringing Mia had given Peter that let him interact with the world so purely, so freely, so unabashedly. That was what kids were supposed to do: say how they felt and have fun and create joy before life wore them down and dulled their clarity. Joey had never had that chance, and neither had Evan.

Was his decision to leave the Nowhere Man behind some misguided attempt to fight his way backward to some kind of freedom? To the childhood he never had?

He thought about that moment at Lorilee’s going-away party when she’d paused amid the dancing to stare balefully at her HAPPY TRAILS! banner, contemplating a future that was unsure and maybe even impossible.

Was that it, then? The thinnest thread connecting him to her? He’d always viewed her as a member of a different species. If they were alike in some distant, tiny way, what did that mean? Did he owe something different to her? To himself?

He was still standing there motionless in the lobby, Joaquin’s eyes on him.

And then he reversed course.

He walked back to Lorilee and sat opposite her. He was unskilled at small talk, uncertain how to initiate it. But he was here, breathing the same air, tinged with her perfume.

She slowly registered him, more dazed than languid. “Oh. Hi, Ev.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just … you know.” She removed a tissue from a bright pink purse and dabbed at her eyes. “Just a lot going on.”