Ari sighed. “Oh, right. Um, I was saying that Tom Miller never came for me, but I think that now, if it happened again, Tom Somerset would.”
Luis frowned. “I’m confused.”
“That’s understandable. It’s one man pretending to be two people... sometimes I still don’t understand it myself.”
“No, not about that. We’ve had a year to wrap our minds around the whole Tom Miller–Tom Somerset thing. I mean, I’m confused about the part where you said Tom Miller never came for you.”
“Exactly,” Sebastian nodded, “I lost the plot around there too.”
Ari paused, looking at her two friends. “Tom never came for me,” she said flatly. “We all know that.”
A beat of silence went through the room, and Ari watched as Sebastian and Luis exchanged a look.
“Um,” Luis said slowly, “except that, uh, we don’t know that because Tomdidcome for you.”
Something inside of Ari went still.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“He came for you, love,” Sebastian said patiently. “A little late, granted, but he came for you.”
“No, he never did, he never came—”
“Ari,” Luis cut her off gently. “He came here. When Reine was a toddler. I saw him with my own eyes.”
Ari stared at him. Inexplicably, her eyes filled with tears. “What?”
“I didn’t see him,” Sebastian chimed in. “But Luis told me about it later. Attractive man, kind of distracted. Turned up at the flat across the hall when you were living there.”
“I was watching Reine for you while you were at a wedding,” Luis added. “He asked after you, but when I said you were out, he nodded and looked... well, kind of sad.”
“To be fair that’s kind of how he looks most of the time,” Sebastian rinsed his mug in the sink, putting it next to the dishwasher. “So that part you don’t really know.”
“No, he looked sad,” Luis argued hotly. “I’ve had time to think about this, to remember what happened. He looked sad — gutted even — and said ‘nice kid’ before walking away.”
“He came for me?” Ari whispered, brushing one of the tears from her cheek. “Hecamefor me? You mean he kept his promise?”
“Yeah.” Luis shrugged. “He came for you.”
At this point, Ari stood, her cup spilling coffee over the countertop. “Well, why didn’t you tell me!”
“He looked like a delivery man!” Luis replied, while Sebastian got a cloth from the sink. “You had a baby. People were always delivering toys or wipes or nappies to you. How was I supposed to know he was Tom Miller? It’s not like he was wearing a name tag!”
Ari blinked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Fine, okay, well, why didn’t you tell me recently then?”
“We thought you knew,” Sebastian cut in, wiping up the coffee and throwing the cloth over the counter into the sink. “We figured Tom had told you.”
“Well, he didn’t,” Ari said, exhaling hard. “He didn’t say a thing.”
For a moment, silence fell.
“Well, that’s just odd, isn’t it? Of everything that happened, out of everything he did, the one redeeming piece of Tom’sstory is that he came back for you, just like he said he would.” Sebastian sat in his chair again, looking thoughtful. “Why didn’t he tell you?”
Ari shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He came back for me,her mind repeated, clear and calm.He came back for us.
“So, he just... left again? Never came back?” she asked Luis.
