“Fuck!” I cussed again, clenching my teeth together for all of a minute before I made myself think of Miss Pearl and what would have happened if I hadn’t intervened. My hand for a life. My hand for a life and the life of a cat. It hadn’t been for nothing.

But, I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid to touch the doorknob with my right hand. Fuck.

“Aunt Di?” Josh’s voice came from the doorway.

I swallowed hard and plastered a smile on my face that wasn’t completely fake. He was still in his pajamas from the night before, and he looked like he’d been awake for a while. “Hey. I just woke up.”

Josh glanced between the hand I was holding and my face. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, not trusting my words.

“Does it hurt?”

I didn’t like to lie to them, so I nodded again.

“A lot?”

“I’ve had worse,” I told him softly, also still not lying. It was the truth. I’d been in worse pain. It hadn’t been physical, but that didn’t matter.

He didn’t look like he entirely believed me, but he let it go.

“Did you eat already?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did Louie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Cereal and a banana.”

“Good.” I gestured toward him, calling myself an idiot for what had happened. “I’m pretty hungry,” I said.

Josh walked alongside me toward the kitchen, watching as I put my slippers on and watching even closer as I cradled my hand to my stomach again. But he didn’t say anything. Louie smiled at me when I spotted him in the living room sitting on the couch in front of the television playing video games. If he wanted to act like yesterday hadn’t happened, so be it. The last thing I’d been thinking about before I’d fallen asleep was what I would tell my parents and the Larsens when they saw my hand. I thought I could just not tell them, but with these two big mouths, it was going to come out at some point.

I was already dreading the comments they’d make.

“Morning, Goo,” I greeted him, taking two steps forward before I stopped in place directly in front of the television and glanced back at him.

He’d been sitting pretty high up in the air, but as I gave him another good look I realized why he seemed to be taller on the couch than usual. It was the Iron Man blanket under him that hadn’t made me look too closely at the couch, but now that I did… I realized he was sitting on something.

Sitting on someone.

It was a long man with short, dark hair, asleep faced down on the couch with a bicep covering the side of his face. And Louie was sitting on what I could only assume was his butt as he played video games.

“Are you sitting on Dallas?”

The five-year-old smiled and nodded, whispering, “Shh,” at me. “He’s sleeping.”

I could see that. When the hell had he gotten into the house? I didn’t care that he was over—of course I didn’t—but I was confused. I figured I would just ask Josh but told Lou instead, “Get off him, Lou. He’s sleeping.”

“He told me it was okay,” he argued. “Stop talking so loud.”

Oh my God. Was this kid telling me to be quiet? I opened my mouth and closed it again, taking in the sleeping man beneath him. Shooting Lou a look he didn’t see because he’d turned his attention back to his game, I kept going into the kitchen where Josh had disappeared to.

He was already waiting for me, immediately handing me the box of my favorite strawberry cereal and peeled my banana for me as I got out the milk, watching me with those brown eyes so much like Rodrigo’s and mine.

“When did Dallas get here?” I asked him in a quiet voice.

Josh hesitated for a second before reaching to take the gallon of milk out of my hands, going to pour it into the bowl for me. “Around eight. Louie woke me up when he heard the knocking.”

“Did you check to make sure it was him before you opened it?”

He shot me a look as he put the cap back on the milk. “Yeah. I’m not a baby.”

“I’m just making sure,” I muttered back. “What did he say?”

“He came inside and asked if you were okay. Then he said he was really tired and was gonna take a nap on the couch.” With his back to me as he set the milk back inside the fridge, he asked, “Are you mad he’s here?”

Plucking a spoon from the drawer, I stuck it in my mouth as I moved my bowl of cereal to the edge of the counter. “What? No. I was just surprised… he was here. Did he say anything about Miss Pearl?”

“No.” Had Josh’s tone gotten husky or was I imagining it? He seemed to think about something for a second before adding in a weird voice, “He called you stupid last night.”

With the spoon in my mouth, I realized he was right. He had called me stupid and an idiot. A stupid fucking idiot or something like that. Huh.

“You were dumb,” Josh whispered, his words making my head snap around to tell him not to talk to me like that. But the expression on his face made me keep my comments to myself. If rage and grief could have a child, that was what would have been reflected on my nephew’s face. It made me want to cry, especially when his eyes went wide as he battled the emotion inside of him. “You could have died,” he accused, his eyes going shiny in the time it took me to blink.

The scare from last night seemed to swell up inside of me again, the possibilities fresh and terrifying. My own eyes went a little watery as I shoved the bowl away from the edge of the counter and faced Josh head-on. There was no point in lying to him or attempting to play off the situation as anything less than what it had been. It was easy to forget sometimes how smart he was, how mature and sensitive this eleven-year-old could be.