Page 90 of Torch Songs

Her voice cracked a little. “He said he was sorry. He said he cared for Guthrie when Guthrie was little, and letting Guthrie’s dad turn him away made him feel awful. And…. And that’s what made Guthrie break. Sounded like Jock was the one who cared for Guthrie when he was a kid—worried about food and clothes and such. Guthrie couldn’t… couldn’t let him do it alone.”

Tad’s eyes burned. He wasn’t sure which felt worse, that Guthrie had gone back to help a man who’d rejected Guthrie out of hand or that he’d gone back to help someone who’d failed him, but Guthrie seemed to have forgiven anyway.

“He’s such a good man,” Tad said, voice thick.

April turned a little in the recliner and actually looked at him for the first time since she’d awakened from her sedation-induced nap. “He’s the best,” she said. Her voice was steady, but her eyes were red-rimmed. “Took you long enough to find someone this good.”

Tad snorted. “He’s the only boyfriend you’ve even talked to,” he said.

“Sam was such a douche,” she muttered. “I mean… he kept checking his phone during Mom’s funeral. I wanted to kick his teeth in.”

Tad grunted. So much had been wrong with Sam that he’d forgotten their bitter fights about Tad’s trips to Bodega Bay to help April take care of their mother. In the end, all they’d done was strengthen Tad’s resolve to not let a man, any man, tell him what he could “get away with” doing or not doing.

Guthrie didn’t need to tell anybody where his duty was. And he hadn’t needed Tad’s permission.

Of course Tad had given his blessing.

“What about you?” he asked, hating himself for it, but it was something that hadn’t even come up in the last year. He knew what April had done on the streets to get high—he’d been a beat cop for five years before moving up to detective. He knew what drugs did to people, what they made them do. He knew that coming to terms with what she’d done versus the true person she was had been something the counselors at the halfway house had been supposed to help her deal with, but they’d been supposed to take care of her too, and that hadn’t turned out well.

“What about me what?” she asked, but she looked away from him, face flushed.

“Are you… thinking about seeing someone?”

She shrugged. “I, uhm, have a friend. Someone I’ve been texting. He, uh… he’s got some damage too. I met him in Colton.”

Tad grunted. “And the great part of that is I was so out of it when you were in Colton, I’d have no idea who it would be.”

She laughed softly. “Remember Olivia and Elton’s housemates? Berto and Jaime?”

Tad blinked. “Barely,” he apologized. “Jaime, yes. The kid was like pure energy. They should bottle him. But not his brother.”

She shrugged. “Iremember his brother.”

Tad smiled. “Good,” he said softly. “I, uh, like that it seems to be slow.”

“We’re texting,” she said mildly, stroking the cats on either side of her. “He’s got a gentle soul. Like Guthrie, sort of, but without that… that wandering star in his heart, I guess. You’re stronger, big brother. You can handle the wandering star. I just want the gentle soul.”

Tad’s eyes burned some more. “Well, right now, we’ve got each other. And the cats.” He stared at his phone again and saw that another text had popped up—this one, a sound file.

He hit Play and then turned the phone up so April could hear it. The opening chords of “Iris” filled the room, and Tad gave it up, leaned his head back against the couch and let the melancholy of the song fill him.

“And Guthrie’s fuckin’ music,” April said when the final chords—played acoustically they practically tinkled to a delicate close—faded. Underneath them, Guthrie said something, and Tad fiddled with the phone to hear the last words again. Holding it up to his ear, he hit Play and heard Guthrie saying, “Love you. Don’t forget it.”

He sent back, “I won’t,” but whatever magic had carried the first text had died because the text didn’t get delivered.

He closed his eyes and sighed. “It’ll be enough,” he said hopefully. “Until he gets back.”

“Yeah.” But she sounded resigned to the wait and not hopeful it would be over soon. He reflected sourly that sometimes April was very wise before he hit Play again. For tonight that was his song, and he wanted to hear it a few more times.

“HE’S WHERE?”Chris asked a week later, after taking a pull on his oat-milk decaf and sighing. “The oat milk is good—sort of sweet, and the dash of vanilla is nice—but decaf coffee is Satan’s piss in a travel mug, and there is no way to put lipstick on that pig.”

“I’ll post that inJava Review,a totally made-up website I’m suggesting you create so we can stop dissecting your poor life choices in the car,” Tad told him, cradling his own iced caramel frappe reverently. Most of the time he made his own iced coffee and nursed it throughout the day, but today he got to go intothe office and do paperwork like a real boy, and the coffee was a celebration. It was also, oddly enough, the first time he’d been in a vehicle for any length of time since Guthrie had brought him home from the hospital, save doctor’s visits, and he was so happy his trusty donut pillow was doing the job of shielding his ass from the bumps of the road that he wanted to cry.

“You’re avoiding the question,” Chris said. “Don’t we have a wedding to go to in two weeks? Isn’t heplayingat that wedding?”

Tad grunted. “He’ll make it,” he said. “That was part of his negotiation. We haven’t hashed out any plans for how we’re going to do it, but his cell service is spotty as fuck. I checked with Olivia, though, and she said he’s been emailing her for specifics and he’s on point. All he needs is his suit from my closet.”

“Why Olivia?” Chris asked, surprised.

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