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Setting my briefcase and purse on the dining-room table, I slipped off my heels and walked outside. An ever-widening circle of slate pavers led to the most secluded part of the garden. Lock’s grandmother had built it. A sanctuary where she could smell her roses and look out at the water. From here, you could hear the foghorn from the Inner Lighthouse, due south of us.

He was there. Sitting on the wrought-iron bench wearing only a pair of black drawstring pants. He was barefoot. Sweat glistened on his shoulders. His hair was wet. He must have come here from the weight room upstairs. I knew his knuckles would be scraped raw from working the medicine bag without gloves. On a scale of one to ten, it meant we were at about an eight tonight.

“Lock?” I said gingerly. He sat with his knees drawn up to his chin, staring at the water, as still as the mermaid statue beside him.

He was having one of his bad days. The kind where he felt like he was drowning under the weight of everyone he felt responsible for. The hundreds employed by the Manning Foundation. Me. His wretched mother, tucked safely away in Monaco, putting an ocean between us. Even Ben, the brother who was already dead.

“Lock.” I came to him. Sitting on the bench beside him, I put a light hand on his shoulder. “What happened?” Except I could already guess.

He squeezed his eyes shut. A muscle jumped in his jaw. When he opened his eyes, I saw how red they were. His pupils shrank to pinpoints. Anyone else might have thought he was drunk. I knew better.

“There were so many,” he whispered. “Forty, I think. Maybe more. I could see in their eyes that each one of them had a story I couldn’t bear.”

When his father died, Lock could have taken over the family foundation and left it the way it was. He could have gone to dry board meetings and allocated money for Great Lakes conservation efforts and local artists. Both were worthy causes. But that wasn’t Lock. Instead, he created Bennett’s Place and built a sanctuary for kids who had rough childhoods like his, but not his resources. Young boys who felt they had nowhere else to go. Who had been abused, neglected, taught they were worthless. At Bennett’s Place, they had a safe roof over their heads. They had access to a good education, counselors, and ultimately a scholarship that could make college a reachable goal. Lock insisted on reviewing each application himself, interviewing each young man, and hearing their stories face to face. It took its toll.

He nodded. “The planning’s going well for the fundraiser. We’re under two months away. But today, those scholarship applicants. There was this one boy. Terrence.”

Lock took out his phone. He pulled up a photo of a dark-haired boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. He had haunted eyes. Eyes I’d seen in the man sitting beside me.

“His father killed his mother,” he said. “Right in front of him. Terrence tried to protect her. He ended up with a skull fracture. He has problems with his vision. His balance. But he’s bright, Mina. So smart. He wants to be a doctor. I want to help him.”

“Then you will.”

“I want to help them all.”

“You are. You’re giving them a safe place to be. Stability they’ve never had in their whole lives. A chance.”

He shook his head. “Sometimes it isn’t enough. Sometimes I can’t save them.”

Though the success stories of Bennett’s Place far outweighed the failures, it was the handful of failures that stayed with Lock the most. Those few young men were so broken they could never be mended. The ones who ended up knowing nothing but institutionalization once they left.

His body went rigid. Lock clenched his fists. I reached for him, slowly prying them apart. He looked at me, then crumbled. I pulled him toward me until his head rested in my lap.

Only one thing could soothe him when he got like this. I would gently stroke his ear, tracing the curve over and over. As I did it, I knew Lock was retreating to the darkest place in himself. To the little boy who craved a loving touch from his mother. Instead, Olivia Manning would turn away. Close her ears to her son’s cries for help as his father hurt him. As he called out to her, he would remember her taking her long red coat from the hall closet and going straight out the front door.

The red ribbon he gave me poked out from beneath my smartwatch as I stroked his ear. The day he asked me to wear it, was the first day I learned about some of the horrors he faced. He’d asked me never to wear the color red. Not even red lipstick or nail polish. It was too painful a reminder of every time his mother walked out on him. But the ribbon was a promise. A token. If I wore it, he said he knew I’d never leave him. It was just a piece of fabric. A coincidence. Of course, it was.

As I held him and Lock tried to find himself again, how could I ever think that ribbon meant anything else?

“I’m okay,” he said, his breathing settling into a normal rhythm. I wanted to ask him what he saw behind those beautiful eyes of his today. I knew the answer would tear my guts apart.

He sat up. “Mina, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so dreary. How can you even stand to be near me?”

“Stop,” I said.

“I didn’t even ask you how your day went. It was important to you.”

“Did you eat?” I asked.

He shook his head. “My assistant sent me home with some kind of pasta dish. You must be starving.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“How did it go?”

I couldn’t shake Corinne Egan’s words out of my head. It was just a ribbon. A strange coincidence. That’s all it was. As Lock looked at me with those tortured eyes, I knew I’d been an idiot to get upset about the thing.

This was Lock. My Lock. How could I or anyone think for a second he was capable of hurting anyone? He’d never harmed a spider. While I was always ready to smash them with my shoe, he’d gently cup the ugly little things in his hands and carry them out to the garden.