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“Does she?”

I fold my arms across my chest. “Yes. He says Maggie has left before. But not like this.”

“What’s different?”

“She always calls eventually. Or texts. Or posts something dramatic and vague online so everyone knows she’s alive but emotionally superior.” My voice thins. “She’s never left Lucy before.”

Briggs’s frown says he could break a man’s jaw with one blow but remember a child’s favorite cereal. “Lucy doing okay?”

The question is so direct, so unexpectedly gentle, that I almost answer honestly.

No. She's not okay. She asks where her mother is constantly, and I have nothing to give her. She carries a stuffed rabbit like a life vest. She thinks her mother may have forgotten her. She deserves someone better than me.

Instead, I say, “She’s asleep.”

Briggs nods as though he hears the real answer anyway. I hate perceptive men. I’ve met too many this week.

“What else do you know?” I ask.

“Not enough.”

“That’s rapidly becoming everyone’s favorite useless phrase around here,” I say, frustration leaking out.

“I know Tom has debt. Ashby’s looking into it.”

“Of course he is. I mean, he walks around like a man with a contingency plan for organizing falling leaves.”

“He does,” Briggs agrees.

I sit again, because standing feels too much like preparing to run. “Why are you doing this?”

He looks at me for a long moment. “Ben was family.”

I want to reject that. Not because it isn’t true, but because it hurts. Ben had family. Actual family. Blood family. Apparently, we were not the people who showed up enough to earn the title in his adult life.

“He didn’t tell me much about you,” I say.

“Figured.”

“That wasn’t meant to hurt.”

“Didn’t.”

I’m not sure I believe him.

I look down at my hands. “Ben didn’t tell me much near the end. About anyone. Or anything.”

“He didn’t like worrying people.”

“Ben loved worrying people,” I counter. “It was his favorite sport.”

“Not people he loved.”

That shuts me up.

Briggs shifts forward, forearms on his knees, hands clasped loosely. There are scars across his knuckles. Old ones. Pale lines cutting through tattoo ink.

“He talked about you some,” he says. I look at him. “He said you were the smart one. The one who got out.”