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“So?” Devra ushered him eagerly into the living room. It felt like she’d been waiting for days to see him again. “How’d it go with my father?”

For a split second, his expression caused the high in her chest to drop, but the look was brief, quickly replaced with an optimistic grin.

“Good, I think.”

“How did he seem to you?” She was almost afraid to ask. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Is he well?”

Bradley squeezed her shoulders. “He seemed really good.”

“Really good?”

“Really good.”

“Like, really, really good?”

He laughed. “Healthy as a horse. He said so himself.”

“He always says that. He was saying that when he was confined to a hospital bed with monitors attached to his body.”

“Well, I’m telling you, as a person with a very poor verbal filter, your father looked good to me. A few aches and pains. But the man swears he’ll live to be a hundred, and I’m inclined to believe him.”

Devra eased forward and nuzzled her cheek into the crook of his neck. He wrapped his arms around her, cocooning her.

“Thank you for going to see him,” she said, slipping her own arms around his waist. “You have no idea how much it means to me.”

“Of course.”

He held her close, and she relished in the calm and security she felt when surrounded by his strength, his unwavering confidence. Her safe place no longer restricted to these four walls but slowly becoming this unflappable man. She hadn’t realized a person could be a safe space before now.

“Meeting the father…kind of a serious step.” She said it as a joke, a tease, but she also felt herself hold her breath, waiting to see how he’d reply.

“I suppose it is.” Bradley rubbed her back. “Good thing I’m pretty serious about you.”

Was this really happening? Everything about her relationship with Bradley was steeped in a dreamlike quality, and yet he was solid in her arms, firm and real and right here. With her.

“Me too,” she breathed out.

He kissed the top of her head. “Your father may have given us a lead too.”

“He did?” Devra popped out of the embrace.

“Yeah. He provided some aliases your mother might use. I still feel like she could be the key to this whole thing.”

He buzzed with contagious energy, and so her only possible reply was “I think you could be right. Let’s get to work.”

Devra took up residence at one end of her desk while Bradley dragged a stool over from the kitchen island, dropped it to its lowest setting, and settled in behind her. They took turns hovering anxiously and typing in variation after variation of her mother’s possible pseudonyms. They enlisted Squally’s help too, since the VA’s algorithms could sift through various combinations of the names more quickly than they could. But Squally came up as empty as they did—although the cloud sounded much more cheerful about it. An hour or so passed to the sounds of a clicking keyboard, as twilight thickened outside and dimmed the room.

After a final long-shot attempt, Bradley leaned back with a slow exhale. “Nothing. There’s nothing here. I thought for sure…” He stood up and paced the room.

Devra noted the tension in his shoulders. He was trying so hard.

“What do you think we should do next?” she asked.

In the pause that followed, it occurred to Devra for the first time since Bradley’s sweeping declaration about breaking the curse that they might not actually find the answers. Or maybe there were no answers. Maybe this joyous haze she’d been dancing around in was nothing but a smokescreen that would dissipate and leave her vulnerable to attack.

But as soon as the negative thoughts appeared, Bradley rushed over to her. Perhaps drawn by the creases in her forehead, knowing her thoughts without her having to say them aloud.

“Don’t worry. We’re going to figure this out.” He knelt before her and took her hands in his. His thumbs rubbed over her palms. “I promise.”