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“I don’t want to sit down.”

“Do it anyway.”

My head snaps up. He doesn’t flinch. A wild, inappropriate laugh almost bursts out of me. “Do you give orders to everyone?”

“When they’re about to fall over, yeah.”

“I'm not about to fall over.”

“Laurel.”

I sit.

He crouches in front of the coffee table, big hands resting loosely between his knees, gaze on the note instead of my face. “What’s the song?”

“I don’t know.”

“What songs does Lucy sing?”

“She doesn’t. Not really. She’s barely been speaking.”

“Could be one Maggie sang to her.”

“Yes, thank you, I’ve reached that conclusion with my own underfunded detective agency of a brain.”

His mouth twitches. “Good.”

“Don’t smile. I’m spiraling.”

“I noticed.”

I drag both hands through my hair. “Ben hated locked things? What does that mean?”

Briggs looks toward the shelves. “Ben hated lots of things.”

“Helpful.”

“Authority. Overcooked eggs. That one chair in the kitchen.”

“The chair?”

“Said it pinched his soul.”

Despite the terror sitting behind my ribs, my mouth trembles. “That’s him.”

“Yeah.”

Emotion passes over Briggs’s face. Pain, but controlled. Locked down.

I lower the note to my lap. “You miss him.”

He looks at me. “Every day.”

My eyes burn again. “I wish I’d known you when he was here.”

I think of Ashby by the river. Torin on the plane, not knowing who I was, holding my hand when the sky shook. Briggs standing in my living room with Ben’s book open, and Maggie’s warning hovering between us.

Ben built an entire life here while I was busy trying to keep my own from falling apart somewhere else.