Chapter 12
12
JOE
I keep Lenny busy by looking through his drawings in the same scrapbook that Isaac flicked through while interviewing. Now I pause over pages he skipped over.
There’s a timetable in here, a schedule showing the work Isaac fit in around school drop-offs and pickups, no time off for good behaviour. Another page shows a shopping list of school uniform items that Lenny has grown out of. Christmas lists too. Another list details items to take on prison visits.
Lenny’s so proud of a pink drawing that he stops me from turning the page, and I take a guess. “Are they socks, mate?”
He nods. He also flashes a look at his tablemate, and I can guess why he doesn’t say this aloud but snatches up a crayon instead to print the word COLD . His lips move to sound out the letters, and it’s a reminder of a missing twelve months that I didn’t know how easily he could do that.
“Yeah, I see.” It guts me that he is seven but he already knows there’s no turning up the heat in prison if you feel chilly. “Fluffy socks are good for cold days.”
He shivers as if agreeing with me, and I hate that knowledge for him. And for his mum. What I hate more is that there’s nothing on these lists for Isaac.
I scan crowds who are here to celebrate potential futures and spot him. He can’t know that I’m watching. There’s no way he’d let me see that he has to steel himself before approaching Luke Lawson. That’s what I watch him do while straightening a tie he didn’t need me to knot for him today. He’s gathering his courage, I guess, to ask for what Lenny needs most.
Do it.
I get a perfect payoff for my staring: Luke Lawson lands a hand on Isaac’s shoulder and leans in to hear what has to be him asking for that trial spot.
Lenny regains my attention. He pulls at my sleeve and thrusts a Sharpie at me. His blond friend speaks for him. “Visitors can add a wish too. Everyone gets to plant one today. Our teacher said so.”
I keep my voice low like we’re sharing secrets. “Plant a wish. Like what? A seed? What’s gonna grow, Len?” I tickle his ribs. “More weeds like you?”
Lenny crumples into laughter, and yeah, Isaac is well and truly tuned into his brother’s wavelength—he cranes his neck to look for him, I assume, only his gaze lands on me, and for a first time, Isaac’s smile is pure summer.
Fuck me, I want to kiss him again. I would if we were alone. I want a repeat so much that I have to duck my head and get busy doing some scribbling of my own to keep from staring, but I can’t resist taking a second look, which means I have a ringside seat for this headmaster’s happy announcement of his new team member.
Applause echoes that Lenny’s tablemate joins in with. Lenny copies, and that’s who Isaac searches for this time, still grinning.
Once he’s given his brother a thumbs-up, his gaze lands on me again, triumphant, and that’s a first. It’s also a lot. I can’t look away until his brother tugs at my sleeve again.
“What do you need, Len?” The envelope he clutches is a clue. “You want to go plant your weedy seed?”
He cranes his neck in another action replay of his brother, and I take a guess at his hesitation.
“Only there’s too many people in the way?”
He nods, then points and whispers, “And a giant.”
He isn’t wrong about that. They breed them big in Cornwall, and the bearded guy with a shovel ready to bury this time capsule is a good example. He towers over children and adults. “I bet we’d be even taller than him if you sat on my shoulders.”
It’s a good thing Lenny really is a shrimp. He’s easy enough to carry through crowds then set down beside a hole in the ground that will hold the tote, where he deposits an envelope of his own. That box already contains a map drawn by his brother that Noah posted. Isaac won’t need it again now that he’s found his way here. Luke Lawson doesn’t let Lenny doing the same pass unnoticed.
“And let me introduce our newest student. Everyone, please welcome Lenny Webber!”
Him hiding behind me at all this attention isn’t a sign of weakness. There’s plenty of his brother’s triumph in how quickly he rebounds, his own skinny arms raised. He’s faster at healing than I ever managed, and I love to see it. It should make it easier to leave these Webbers to their happy ending instead of outstaying my welcome.
Lenny stops me doing that by grabbing my hand, then grabs Isaac’s, a happy link between us, and man…
I’ve done what I came here to accomplish.
Got a laptop full of the reports I need and set eyes on a kid who has a tough road ahead.
Noah doesn’t have to walk that road without an advocate, but walking away to let him process and come to his own decision is tough. Walking away from Isaac and his brother will be even harder.
I ignore the buzz from my phone, reminding me I should head home soon.
I turn it to silent and slide it back into my pocket.
Leaving can wait a little longer.
In hindsight, maybe putting off leaving until the sun sinks and a yawning Lenny asks for a bedtime story is a mistake.
Isaac sees me check my watch. So does the houseparent who chivvies Lenny expertly through face washing and tooth brushing, all smiles and swollen belly that is a reminder of Meera.
“There. You’re all set. Tor, it’s your turn for teeth.”
Lenny must like Ruth to speak aloud around her, even if this is aimed at me instead of her. “Are you staying?”
“I can’t, mate. I’ve got to get back on the road.”
Fuck my life, his doe eyes give Isaac’s a run for their soulful money. His chin trembles, and this is fainter. “Why?”
“Because I made a promise to help my brother.” Christ, that sounds weak.
At least it distracts Lenny, and this question has more volume. “You got a brother?”
I nod.
“Is he old like you?”
“Len—” Isaac starts. He stops when I crack up.
“He’s exactly the same age as me. Or almost. Josh is a minute or two older.” Lenny mouths the word, “Twins,” and I nod. “That’s right. We’re twins. Identical ones. And his missus has a baby on board like Ruth does.” She’s returned with Lenny’s minty-fresh roommate, then she stands in their bedroom doorway, hand on the baby bump that is a Meera reminder, and guilt twinges. “Josh is going away for work. Can’t leave her all alone, can I?”
His chin trembles again, so I quickly fish out my phone and make an offer. “How about I give Isaac my number, so you can send a photo from time to time of what you get up to, yeah? Check in if you feel like it.” I couldn’t have given out my personal number when I was his caseworker. Wouldn’t have. A beat too late, I realise I also can’t force his brother to take it, but Isaac already has his phone out to type my number in one-handed.
Lenny still has a hold of my hand, not letting go yet. “You going right now?”
“Soon.”
He’s so like Isaac, wide eyes telling me that soon isn’t a word he trusts. Can’t say I blame him—all I’ve proven is that it might as well mean almost never . That makes me hurry to be clearer. “I won’t go until after I’ve read your story.” This isn’t the ending I expected to theirs, but I get on my knees and try to read another, only to fuck up before I finish the first line.
Lenny has zero problem finding his voice then. “That isn’t how the story starts.”
Isaac intervenes. “This is the good thing about other people reading, isn’t it? They make old stories feel new.” He kneels so close our legs touch, a firm point of contact that is hard to ignore as he gives me storytelling guidance. “But maybe not tonight, yeah? I’ll show Joe how you like to hear every single word.” He demonstrates by reading out the title on the cover, following each word with his finger for Lenny. And for Tor, who abandons his bed for Len’s to get closer. “ Every Scar Tells a Story , by Owen Bailey.”
Him reading my dedication next gets me right in the chest. “See you soon, Lenny!” Isaac says, bright and breezy, as if he didn’t hate me every single time he read those words when I was absent.
I turn to the next page for him, blind to words and pictures. I only see Lenny silently recite the promises an author wrote as if he knew me. “Some scars show on your surface.”
Lenny’s gaze drifts to me, and I nod. I also take over reading. “Others hide someplace deeper.” I’m not a born storyteller, like his brother, but I can say this firmly. “Scars aren’t a sign of weakness. Even heroes have them. If you want to meet some?—”
Lenny finishes for me, parroting the next line, his voice the strongest I’ve yet heard it.
“Turn the page and keep reading!”
I do, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be until Isaac finishes this storytelling session with a list of private hopes and wishes.
“Tomorrow’s cross on the calendar is a day less, not one more, Len. We got through today. We’ll get through tomorrow.”
“Together,” Lenny whispers.
Isaac leans over his little brother. “Here’s your kiss from Mum. She’s waiting in your dreams, even if you don’t remember in the morning. And I’ll be here when you wake up tomorrow.” He crosses his heart, and once we’re downstairs, Ruth makes a promise of her own.
“If you two want to get back to the celebration, I’ll ring you right away if he doesn’t settle.” Laughter drifts downstairs to us, and she smiles. “I don’t think you’ll be hearing from me anytime soon.”
I can’t stay any longer.
I should go right now instead of watching Isaac rustle up tea for Ruth before we leave her with her feet up. Music meets us outside, the party still in full swing. In comparison, Isaac is quiet on the way back through the woods. Silent. He matches me step for step all the way to the car park, then stops between a willow and a van full of books I’m pretty sure I’ll see in my own dreams later.
This is where we first kissed a year after he first asked me.
It’s also where we did a whole lot more.
This evening, he doesn’t push aside branches or slide the van door open. He walks me to a car I wish I didn’t share, even if it did bring Josh and me back together.
He finally says, “You’ll be back to see Noah?”
I wish.
“Maybe.” Right now, it seems like a long shot. “I’ve done the court-ordered part of my job.” My laptop is already stowed, holding what I came for. “The rest is down to time. The wheels of justice?—”
“Turn slowly?” Isaac’s head drops like Lenny’s did when I said I was leaving. He’s easily as defeated. “Yeah, they really do.”
Of course he knows that. He needs to know this more. “You’re doing amazing.”
His head rises.
“You are, Isaac.” I can’t help but add my own wishful thinking. “If I knew anyone who could make those wheels turn faster for you, I’d ask them to make it happen.”
“I don’t think anyone can help. Not without new evidence. But thanks.”
Fuck knows why I keep my voice low. No one is going to throw acid at me for having the police-adjacent contacts that I mention. “I could ask my brother.”
“Because?” A penny drops, and he stiffens. “Wait. You told Noah that you weren’t on the force. Are you saying?—”
“That Josh is? Nope. I mean, tangentially, I suppose. He’s a consultant. An analyst.” I shrug. “I don’t speak his computer language, but he doesn’t seem to have much trouble nosing around in my court calendar. I can ask if he can tap into any new info about cases mentioning her name. Emma Webber, right? Find out ahead of your prison visit, maybe? Might set your mind at rest.”
He’s streaked with sudden brightness, lit by the headlights of a car leaving. It highlights surprise. “You’d do that?”
For him?
“Mate, I’d do it in a fucking heartbeat.”
Yes, I should have left already—should get in my shared car now instead of getting in Isaac’s space, but here I am, chest-to-chest in a way that is starting to feel habitual.
We’re so close that I feel and hear his breathing pick up. There’s no one else in the car park to see me repeat what only a willow tree and a van full of books have already witnessed. I kiss him until a wasp buzzes in my pocket. Then I leave to break my own rule by asking my brother work-related questions.
And if I use the long drive home to come up with a plan that might get me back to Cornwall without Noah as a reason?
That’s no one’s business but mine and Glynn Harber’s headmaster.
I’m still thinking about how to convince Luke Lawson to invite me back when Meera greets me much later with a plan of her own.
I’d expected both of them to be in bed already—had planned to slip the car keys through the letterbox and leave—but she has the front door open before I finish locking up the car.
“Thank everything holy that you’re here to tell him I don’t need babysitting. I was this close to pushing him out the window to stop his nagging.” She holds her thumb and finger millimetres apart, then shouts behind her. “This close, Joshua!” She also gives me a tight hug and whispers, “Thanks for coming. He was worried you wouldn’t.”
I can’t help thinking that’s stretching the truth. When it comes to me, my brother’s emotional range is limited to annoyed and exasperated.
“Come in,” she urges.
I linger on the doorstep. “Maybe I don’t have time. Perhaps I have a hot midnight date.” I do. With my laptop.
“You’ve got a date?” Her delight is surprising. I’m more used to Meera taking the piss out of me like she used to when we were on the same school support team. Instead, she studies my face, then squints. “You do look better.” I’d take offence if she didn’t hug me again. “Come in.”
I still hesitate and listen out for my brother. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs packing. But wait.” She can move fast for someone with swollen ankles. She grabs one of my hands. “Feel me up first.”
“Careful. Your neighbours will talk.”
“At this time of night? And about what? Me getting physical with you on the doorstep? They’ll only assume you’re Josh. Don’t tell me you didn’t ever swap places with each other to mess with people.”
“I would have at school if Josh hadn’t insisted on sticking to the rules. Could have done with him taking my exams for me. He’s always been too law-abiding.”
She positions my hand on the swell of her stomach before wincing. “Sorry, I’m still a bit bruised there. Tripped over my own feet. Could happen to anybody, and everything was fine,” she adds, like she’s made this argument already. She repositions my hand, and, in an unexpected reminder of Isaac, she knits our fingers together. “Feel that?”
I do, and yeah, Josh spat plenty of facts and figures about my nephew-to-be, but I had no idea he’d be this active. “Hmm, seems like someone’s already in training for the ring.”
“That’s what your dad just said!”
“He’s here?” I let go in a hurry, hands safely in my pockets. “Bit late to repaint the nursery isn’t it?”
“No, he came for dinner. Josh did ask him to help out, but he said no.”
Because he heard I was on my way here?
I shouldn’t sag at that. Shouldn’t let Meera see me do it, or let her lead me upstairs instead of dropping off the car keys and leaving. I listen to her repeat to Josh that she doesn’t need watching over while he is away, all while rubbing her bruised belly, and I can’t help insisting.
“I’m coming over after work every night this week.” I replay Isaac handing tea and the TV remote to Ruth, taking care of her like I bet he learned when his own mum was pregnant. “And you’re gonna put your feet up and criticise my painting.”
She folds like the world’s worst poker player. “Oh, if I must,” she grumbles, but she also goes to grab paint samples that all look the same shade of grey to me, and I catch a glimpse of my brother in the wardrobe mirror.
For once, I don’t see da Silva frown lines, like our father’s. I’d forgotten Josh could mirror Mum’s smile too, and fuck me, I prefer it.
I also prefer coming back to their place every evening rather than heading alone to my studio flat.
We both spend evenings sewing. Not literally, although Meera does keep herself out of trouble by stitching the hems of nursery curtains while I mentally stitch together a project that could be a good reason to return to Cornwall. I do that while painting a nursery grey, and the whole time, I overthink whether it’s the best idea I ever had or my very worst one.
Those evenings are the reason I discover I can also mirror Josh—I have to watch his wife like a hawk, even while I’m in the same room as her, like he used to watch me from my hospital bedside. He wasn’t kidding about her being drawn to ladders.
The only problem with suggesting she sit down instead of touching up my painting efforts like she keeps attempting is that she gets good and comfy nosing through my love life. “You met someone.”
“I meet a lot of people.”
The hard-faced kids I spend my working hours supporting would crumple under her cross-examination—she pokes holes in my silence the same way prosecutors want to poke holes in their stories. Gotta be honest, I enjoy our banter. What I don’t enjoy is fending off the subject she keeps coming back to night after night.
“What’s he like?”
“Who?”
“Your new man.”
“Imaginary. That’s what he’s like. A figment of your imagination.” And that’s how it feels now that I’m in a city that never stops pitting kids against criminals who only want to use them. It’s wild that Isaac is from the same streets and yet is somehow…
Good.
That’s what I revisit each time I go home to a tiny flat with a view of where we both came from. I shower off grey paint, then crawl into a bed beside a window where I don’t see stars. I don’t see Wintergreen’s tower blocks in the distance either. Instead, I stare at the message I keep typing into my phone and then erasing.
Hey, how are things in Cornwall?
I can’t press Send. Not when I left the ball in his court. And not during a first work week that has to be busy for him. I stare at my bedroom ceiling with more than my dick aching at a distance that part of me hates. The rest of me channels my brother by listing these facts:
Isaac needs to stay the fuck there.
They both do.
Josh has always been bossy. So is Meera the next evening. “Time’s running out. Get busy, da Vinci.”
This little nursery is hardly the Sistine Chapel, but her eye for detail means I have to repaint the ceiling twice before she’s happy. I also get to listen in to another nightly phone call from my brother, which is almost as much of a mindfuck as wondering whether Isaac would welcome contact from me or find it distracting.
Lenny needs to be his focus.
Josh is my sister-in-law’s.
Her smile when she snatches up her phone tells me so. So does her teasing greeting. “Hello. This is your baby’s incubator speaking. Press 1 to bypass pointless chitchat. Press 2 to interrogate me about ladders. Press 3 to—” She cackles at whatever Josh tells her, and this glimpse into their relationship does something to me.
Yes, I wish I was in Cornwall instead of London, but this? I wouldn’t have missed getting to see how she never stops pushing for Josh to relax. To communicate. To laugh like I get to hear more often this week than I have in years.
I don’t tell her that she’s worked wonders. Her head would only get as big as her belly. I do ask her something else that has been on my mind. “Can I pick your brains?”
“About what?”
“Autism. The high functioning kind.”
“Yes!” She’s out of her nursery rocker in an impressive hurry for someone who just ate their own dinner and half of mine. Meera risks breaking her neck by thundering downstairs before I can stop her. I follow in time to see her practically skip across the living room with a folder. “I already put this pack together for you.” Her eyes are huge. “He talked to you about it?”
I’m gonna need to talk to Josh. Him nosing through my court calendar is one thing. He has the clearance for that. Him reading the report I filed on Noah, then talking about it with his missus is another matter. “No,” I tell her. “My client won’t talk to anyone. That’s one of the things his family are struggling with. Think they’re beating themselves up a bit too about not spotting that he might need support with wrapping his head around a potential diagnosis.”
There’s nothing between us for Meera to trip over. I still need to catch this folder when it slips from her hands. It opens to a page full of intersecting circles, their sunny yellows a much better colour for a nursery in my opinion, but there’s no way I’m about to suggest more painting, so I stick to what might help Marc Luxton support his little brother.
“Be good if this pack has any tools for, I dunno, when it’s late presenting?” I’m not sure that’s even a thing. My wheelhouse is gang-related crime avoidance, not neurodivergence. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes. Yes, I do know, Joe.” She sits heavily on the sofa, and I make a mental note to find more cushions for her. “Let that family know they won’t be the first who didn’t realise. There’s nothing wrong with that, just a whole lot of potential once everyone’s on the same page. Tell them to let your client set the pace, yes? Let him steer. It’s his story. He gets to choose who he tells it to. And when.” Her voice thickens. “And tell them I said welcome to the family.”
My phone pings an interruption, then pings again, over and over.
“That your imaginary boyfriend?” She pats the seat beside her, which feels like a trap, but I go ahead and show her the photos my phone fills with. Of Lenny. Of a library Isaac has been busy reorganising. Of him and Len together. “Looks pretty real to me.”She eyes me. “You know I had to tell your brother to put a ring on it, yeah?” She shows off my Mum’s old engagement ring. The diamond sparkles like her eyes do at me. I’m surprised she has to blink away sudden dampness that floods them out of nowhere, but that’s pregnancy, I guess, so I just do what Josh always refused to do for me—I stand in for him by giving his wife a good, long cuddle.
She sniffs against my shoulder. “He didn’t think I’d say yes, so he didn’t ask me. Josh could handle now, but not knowing what might come next stopped him in his tracks. I would have had to wait forever if I left popping the question to him. Sometimes you have to ask out loud for what you want, Joe. Manifest what you need most in your life into happening.” She wriggles out of my hold to tap my phone screen where a photo shows Lenny writing my name under a silvery drawing. “Looks like someone sees you in their life right now. What happens next is up to you.”
I don’t stare at my bedroom ceiling later.
I follow my sister-in-law’s example by manifesting what I want most, then press Send on an email to Luke Lawson.