I wore a hat pulled low over my face and canvassed the house before entering. The promise I’d made Chance stuck to my skin as if it was covered in tacks and though he could find me whenever he wanted, I still tried to avoid him if possible. I spent almost a week undercover. Paddy had started pretty much ignoring me, occasionally giving a worried look or silently setting coffee with bourbon next to my tools when it got really cold. He told me several that I could trust him, I could talk to him, that he was there to help me, but I only grunted and said I was fine and there was nothing to worry about as he shuffled away, deflated. To try and stay inconspicuous, I even went to one of Amy’s classes, which left me all but immobile the next day.

In the basement, I hobbled from side to side, limbs stretching like frozen rubber bands as I leaned wooden studs against the concrete walls, framing the room. We could’ve almost made it completely soundproof with another concrete wall: Typical Paddy, his Spanish wasn’t what he thought it was and he told the guy to order cuarenta—forty—instead of catorce—fourteen. The extra bags lined the walls like midget sentries. I’d assumed that Paddy made an offer the laborers couldn’t refuse, because after the top two floors of the house were cleaned, they’d be ready to move in. Impressive for a few days of work. Knowing how anal-retentive Chance was, I even had Paddy lay an extra three coats of sealant to the floor to avoid undue scratching. Me, Paddy and the brother-in-law of Santo Sangre were the only souls who came by the house, and them mainly for appearances. Will Watkins got the rest of the crew for another job.

The echo of the nail gun was Delilah clucking her tongue. The tink of steel on tin was Chance breaking the coffee pot. The grunt of the router was guttural Russian. I stretched my arms, laughed at the mental picture of Amy mocking me.

“Hey.”

A frigid spike in the bottom of my spine that spread to warmth, then collapsed like a supernova. I set down the nail gun, in the event I was tempted to use it.

“Hey, yourself.”

Black Mary Jane’s covered with dust, black tights with striated lines like ribs. The edge of a black skirt peeked below her pea coat. She looked like a vixen undertaker, or the member of some sexually bestial cult. Either way, I was glad that my work pants were heavy and she wouldn’t notice anything.

“You guys did a really good job with the house. It’s beautiful.”

I thought Amy would say the same. After all, it was all of her design sensibilities. I just nodded my head, thanked Del.

“I never realized how big this basement was, either. You could live down here.” The tone of her voice held a baiting edge and after seeing the bags of cement along the walls, all I could imagine was The Cask of Amontillado.

She traipsed around the basement, circling like an unassuming predator. A few times she picked up tools, played with them like a child would, then set them back on the ground as if they were porcelain. ​I couldn’t help but watch her and wonder which of us was the moth, which one the flame.

“My brother tells me you’ve come to a decision.”

I swallowed, snapped my fingers as if I was striking a phantom lighter and why the Hell was I doing that?

“Yeah, appears that way.”

She smiled, picked up the nail gun. “Can I try?”

“Are you going to cut off my wedding finger?”

Two steps forward before I could blink, her warmth tactile on the back of my hands. She smelled of static electricity.”‘You can’t cut something off with a nail gun.”

I placed the frame’s bottom beam on the floor and took the pencil from behind my ear to mark the fastening spots, but before I could crouch next to it, she’d driven two dozen nails into the board.

“Where the fuck did you learn to use a nail gun?” I asked it before I realized I didn’t want to know.

“I’m glad you’re coming with us, Cole.” She laid the gun on a sawhorse and stood in front of me, not touching but so close I could feel the tiny vibrations between her cells, feel the exhalation of her pores. “Really glad.”

“And why is that?” The dank air pressed heavy on my skin. The basement walls shivered forward.

She breathed a quick laugh. “You haven’t listened at all, have you?”

I arched an eyebrow, fought the urge to check behind me because that would give her the power, and Delilah needs power like a child needs attention, like a dictator needs fear.

“I told you we missed you,” she said. “I wasn’t lying.”

“You missed me, so you came to Baltimore to try and ruin my life. To ruin my marriage.”

She knocked away the comment as if it was a gnat. “Marriage is just a legally binding contract.”

“Not to me.”

“There are things that run deeper than that. And besides,” she offered me a cigarette and I actually declined, “you could’ve told us no.”

“What? Really?” I opened and closed my mouth like a dog chewing air. “How many times did I say no?”

She shook her head. “Saying and telling are two different things.”

“So you came to Baltimore for me. Not because of Endor, not because of housing.” I didn’t know where Paddy was and fought to keep my voice down. “And certainly not because Chance is in the Russian fucking Mafia.”

“All incidental. And he’s not really in the Mafia. They just have similar interests.”

“You came here for me.” The words were bile in my mouth, or maybe it was just the crushing sensation of nostalgia, of belonging, of being near someone who knew everything I’d done and still held my hand if I was ill.

“You’re family, Cole,” she said. “‘No contract changes that.” Her lips parted, just enough for breath to pass between them, for her exhalations to carry the strands of memory and seep through my cavities, absorb into my bloodstream, assimilate to my body and my mouth began to move without my brain as governor.

“The night we stole the swan boats in the Common, and Chance rocked back and forth to make you sick, and when you tried to tackle him and he moved and you fell overboard, I remember the way your hair shimmered. It looked like the girl in that movie we used to watch. What was her name?”

“I have no idea,” she whispered.

“She had the dust of jewels, or fairy dust or something, and enchanted everyone who touched her.”

“I don’t remember that.” Her voice was distant, lost somewhere in the past.

“And I remember holding your hair back while Chance yelled at you because you were puking out the window of his car—that Honda he bought, his first car, the one he we waxed every morning—because the guy who worked the counter at the duckpin place under Fenway gave us free beer because you showed him your tits.”

A smile spread like a stain. “I do remember that.”

“I was jealous,” I said. My fingers tingled as if I’d slept on them for weeks. “‘Riding in that car during the summer, with the windows down and Run DMC blasting, hurtling from one disaster to the next.” I trailed off, something like tar boiling inside my stomach, threatening to bubble up my throat until it consumed my mouth and spilled over, making me a shadow, nonexistent. I was either about to vomit or kiss her. I said, “I miss home.”

She blinked and a single tear made a wet streak through the dust on her cheek. She brushed her lips on my ear and set my flesh to flame.

“Come home, Cole,” she breathed. “‘Come home.”

She moved her mouth from my ear to my cheek. Needles shaped like lips. I shuddered at her touch. She walked upstairs, heels clicking above me. The house was silent, but for the thrashing of blood in my ears. The walls wavered, a mirage, fumes. The studs bent and contorted, groaning under the weight of whispers. The cement floor I’d spent two days pouring and leveling, it wept. Clouds swirled over the city in dizzying patterns you could feel without seeing: the horsemen come early. Heels clicked again, faster this time. She was hurrying back for more, racing back to finish off the scraps. To my side I saw the nail gun and the phantom whump of driving nails echoed in my skull. Her temple or mine, I wasn’t sure.

“Holy shit!”

Amy’s voice, slicing through the air.

I blinked.

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit!”

Arms extended like a heron about to take flight, she hurried across the floor. She wore a grey skirt and black boots that licked at her knees. Usually, she never wore them unless we were role-playing.

“t worked!”

I mumbled something as she wrapped herself around me, crushed her face against mine. I tasted the salt of her tears.

Breathing ragged with sobs and giggles, tiny flecks of spit touched my ear as she whispered.

“I’m pregnant.”