The man himself appeared from the side of the house as Noah got out. He carried a ladder with both hands and balanced a tool belt over one arm. He wore a faded pair of jeans with a crease down the middle because the man still couldn’t leave the house without ironing everything into military precision.

Marsh leaned the ladder against the side of porch as Noah walked up the sidewalk. “What’re you doing here?” he asked, wiping a gloved hand across his brow.

Noah had to bite back what he really wanted to say. Since when do I need to ask your permission to come over? “Came to talk to my mom. Where is she?”

“Inside with Zoe. Help me put up these lights, will ya?”

“I really need to talk to Mom—”

Marsh ignored him. He gestured vaguely toward the top of the garage. “Put the ladder over there, and I’ll hand you shit.”

“I’m not sure I actually know what to do here.”

“Hammer. Nail. It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

Noah resisted the natural urge to make an obscene gesture and instead did what Marsh told him to. He took the hammer and a bag of nails from Marsh’s outstretched hand. Gripping both in one hand, he held tight to the ladder as he climbed to the highest possible rung. “Start here?”

“Yeah. That should be good.”

Noah leaned just far enough to press the tip of the nail to the wood and damn near toppled off the ladder trying to bang it in.

Marsh snorted from below. “Jesus, who the hell taught you how to use a hammer?”

Noah answered with a hefty whack at the nail. “Well, as you know, my father died when I was young, so . . .”

“You’re going to bend the nail doing it like that.”

Noah hit the nail again, and as Fate would have it, it bent in half. The flat top became lodged in the wood.

“Fuck, I knew it,” Marsh grumbled. “Get down from there.”

Noah descended the ladder.

“Give me that,” Marsh griped, grabbing the hammer. “Wouldn’t have asked you to help if I’d known you didn’t know what the hell you were doing.”

“I’m not any good at this shit. I usually just hire a contractor.”

“A man should know how to hang Christmas lights at his own goddamned house.”

“This isn’t my house. It’s my mother’s. When I need something done at my house, I call a contractor.”

Marsh glared. “Can you at least hold the ladder and hand me shit?”

“All MIT graduates can do that.”

Marsh’s face turned the color of canned cranberry sauce. “You want to keep that attitude in check, boy?”

“I’m an adult, not a boy.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

The front door swung open then, and his mom walked out wearing a surprised smile and carrying a weathered cardboard box with the words Christmas Outdoors scribbled in Sharpie on the side.

“Noah! What are you doing here? I thought you guys were heading down today for the surgery.”

Noah jogged up the porch steps to take the box from her. He bent and kissed her head. “Hey, Mom.” He peeked inside the box at the tangle of lights and garland inside. “This for the front porch?”

“I was bringing them out for Marsh. What’s going on? Where’s Alexis?”

“No, she’s, uh . . .” Noah let out a pained breath and a lie. “The surgery’s been delayed. Let us know when dinner is ready.”

His mom went back inside with one last look over her shoulder. Noah set the box down and returned to the base of the ladder. They worked in silence for fifteen minutes, speaking only when Marsh grunted out an order.

Finally, they’d managed to attach nails to the entire length of the garage. Marsh backed down the ladder, and Noah stepped aside to make room for him.

“You need to learn how to do shit like this, Noah.” He nodded toward the box on the porch. “Get me them lights.”

Noah stomped toward the front porch, but his suppressed emotions got the best of him. He turned back around. “Is there anything I do that you approve of?”

Marsh looked over from the ladder, eyebrows tugged together in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t invest my money the way you think I should. I don’t have relationships with women the way you think I should. And hell, I can’t even hammer nails the way you want me to. So I’m genuinely curious if there is anything I do that lives up to your standards.”

Marsh reached for the box with the lights. “It’s not my standards I’m trying to hold you to.”

“I don’t need this shit.” Noah turned on his heel and stomped toward the door, but his hand paused over the handle at Marsh’s next words.

“I saw the news. Did you do it?”

It shouldn’t hurt after all this time to have Marsh doubt him, but it did. It hurt like a motherfucker. Almost as much as to have Alexis doubt him. Noah turned around, jaw clenched. “I came here to talk to my mom, not get interrogated.”

Marsh came down from the ladder and walked toward him, his steps weary and his face tired. He suddenly looked old. The porch light turned his grayish hair a dark silver and deepened the grooves in his forehead. Noah suddenly swayed with the realization that this is what his father would look like now.

Marsh nodded toward one of the two Adirondack chairs on the porch. “Sit down.”

Noah trudged to one of the chairs like a kid who’d just been sent to his room. And the fact that Marsh could still make him feel like that only fueled the fire inside him. He dropped into a chair. Marsh stood at the bottom of the porch steps, stance wide and confident. His father used to stand like that. It was a military thing, a manly thing, an I know how to take up as much space as possible thing.

“I asked you a question, boy. Did you do it?”

“No, I didn’t fucking do it!” Noah shot to his feet. “But you know what? I wish I had. Everyone assumes it was me anyway, so I might as well get the satisfaction of bringing down another company with blood on its hands.”

Marsh shook his head. “You haven’t learned a goddamned thing, have you?” He gave Noah a sad once-over. “Look at you. Hands clenched. Jaw clenched.”

“Because you’re annoying the shit out of me.”

“No. Because you’re still a pissed-off kid with a computer and a need for vengeance.”

Noah’s knuckles cracked under the strength of his curled fists. “What the hell do you want from me? I went to college, consulted for the fucking FBI, and make millions now. Isn’t that good enough for you?”

Marsh raised his eyebrows. “You think you’re successful? You’re not. You may have turned your life around, but you’re still just as mad and reckless as you were then. And until you get over that anger, everything else—the money, the company, your celebrity friends—it’s all just window dressing.”

Noah inched closer, compelled by a need to lash out at something, anything. “You’re right. I never got over the anger. I hope I never do. Because the day I stop being furious that my father was killed while the crooks responsible for it got rich is the day I stop breathing.”

“And that attitude is exactly why I should have let you rot in prison like I wanted to.”

Oxygen escaped Noah’s lungs in a giant whoosh.

“And I did want to,” Marsh continued. “As far as I was concerned, you were an ungrateful brat. Trying to bring down the country your father died fighting for was a disgrace to his legacy. If I’d had my way, you would have gone to trial and let the chips fall where they may.”

Betrayal burned Noah’s throat. “What changed your mind?”

“I made your father a promise,” Marsh said, voice thick. “He died in my lap and made me promise I would look after you, raise you to be a man.” Marsh’s lips thinned. “You have no idea what responsibility is, Noah. Not until you realize you’re the one thing that stands between life and death for another human being. And not until you realize that someone made that choice for you, and you’re all that’s left behind.”

Noah pounded down the steps until he was inches from Marsh’s face. “Is that what we are to you? The shit that got left behind? The heavy burden of responsibility on your shoulders? This is not what my father wanted. He didn’t want my mother to never move on with her life because she’s trapped in yours, dragged down by your own guilt. He didn’t want me to live my entire life trying to live up to some version of manhood that no person alive could emulate. The only disgrace to my father’s legacy is you.”

The punch came out of nowhere. Pain exploded in Noah’s cheekbone and radiated across the planes of his face. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth as he stumbled and dropped to the ground.

Marsh loomed over him, fists clenched and breathing labored.

“Oh my God! Noah!’’ The front screen door slammed open and shut, and his mother ran down the steps. She crouched next to him on the ground, her worried face hovered over his.

Noah held his hand to his nose and came away with bloody fingers. “I’m okay, Mom.”

“What the hell is going on here?” His mother shot to her feet and glared at Marsh. “What is wrong with you?”

“That boy is a disrespectful liar.”

“That boy is my son!”

Marsh’s hand began to shake. “You’re coddling him. You always have.”

“And you’ve treated him like a no-good loser!”

“I’ve tried to treat him like a son.”

To Noah’s shock, his mom got in Marsh’s face. “You’re not his father!”

“Really? Because I’ve spent far more time raising him than anyone else. Including you.”

“Hey!” Noah rose on woozy feet. “You can say whatever you want to me, but do not talk to her like that.”