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“Please,” Greer barely choked out. “We’re sorry. We weren’t trying to defile anything, promise. It’s just that our friend here, Jack, he needs the ten dollars to get home. He was visiting his grandmother, who’s very sick, and he used up all his bus money buying her flowers.” She was sobbing now, snot streaming in time with her tears.

Mrs. Sullivan’s frown creaked open and shut for a moment with nothing decipherable coming out. Finally she gave Greer’s shoulder a brusque pat. “There now.” She pulled a tissue from her sleeve and offered it to the crying girl. “That isn’t dignified. Wipe up, child.” Then, barely perceptibly softening, “Very well. I suppose the yard does need another raking. And if this is all as you say…”

“I swear on my grandmother’s life,” Jack said somberly. “However much of it she has left.”

“Fine. Ring for me when you’ve completed your duties, then.”

Jack nodded and Mrs. Sullivan disappeared. As soon as the door closed, Greer wiped her face with the tissue and turned to the boys as if nothing had happened. If Jack had to pinpoint it, he would say that was the moment he fell in love. Of course he wouldn’t say it out loud, not to Greer or to anyone else. But it didn’t matter, because from that moment on, his love for Greer became one of the things that made Jack, Jack. For the rest of his life. And then some.

7

And there she was. It was Greer who opened the door of apartment 3A. Greer who stood in the doorway. Greer who’d returned from the ether like a ghost. Which, Jack realized, was ironic considering his present circumstances, but still. Greer had vanished from his life over a decade and a half ago, and now, just like that, there she was.

“Wow,” she said before he had the chance. But her “wow” wasn’t filled with the awe his would have been. Hers was a stale pastry stuffed with disbelief and a trace of revulsion. “Okay.” She stepped aside, effectively ushering Jack in, but he couldn’t move, not yet. Somehow he was more confused to see Greer here than she was to see him in someone else’s body.

She’d changed, of course. Her face was sketched with new lines and creases, like a treasure map that could lead you to the secrets of her recent past if only you knew how to read it. Her sand-colored hair held streaks of gray where faded pink had once been. The lankiness of youth was gone, replaced by soft flesh that had grown and shrunk and grown again over the years. Something panged deep inside Jack. He’d missed so much. He found the hazel eyes that looked out at him with the same scrutiny they’d held the day they met.

“Hi, Greer.”

She tipped her head. It wasn’t a nod, really, but it was an acknowledgment, and for now that would have to be good enough.

Jack uprooted Margaret’s sensible heels and went inside.

As the door clicked shut behind him, Jack found himself looking between Eli and Carter, who both sat fidgeting on the corduroy couch. Greer swept past him and perched herself on the arm of the sofa. They all stared at Jack, wearing varying degrees of discontent.

Okay. This wasn’t quite what Jack had expected when Greer had called, but then again, he couldn’t really bring himself to expect anything in particular from that call. Did this mean they’d all come around to the plan? Their faces said no, but what else would bring them all together again like this?

“What’s up?” He swung a plastic chair from what passed as a kitchen table into the center of the room and sat down, instantly regretting the seating choice. An octogenarian body required cushioning, Margaret’s hips and lower back instantly reminded him. But it was too late, he’d committed to the chair. The silence in the room was too heavy and awkward to start making adjustments. He tried daintily crossing a leg.

“We need to talk to you.” It was Greer who spoke first. It always had been.

“Sure,” said Jack. “Is this about the plan?”

“It’s about all of this.” Carter waved a hand up and down Jack’s body.

“This is fucked up,” Eli added. “You get that, right?”

“Eli told us,” said Greer. “Eli told us everything.”

This was as good an excuse as any to get out of that medieval torture chair. Jack struggled to his feet with indignation and relief. “Wait, what is this? Some kind of…intervention?”

“You can’t go stealing a body, man,” Carter said. “Shit. It’s low even for you.”

“I didn’t mean to steal anything, it just kind of happened,” Jack protested.

“Just happened,” Eli repeated. “Right. Like taking the principal’s car for a joyride just happened. Like leaving me to take the rap for the bank thing just happened. Like Jules just happened.”

Greer immediately got to her feet at that. The air in the room hung uncomfortably for a moment before vacating it altogether. No one seemed to remember how to breathe.

“You went through life dragging everyone into your bullshit,” said Carter. “Now you’re trying to do it in death and it just…it has to stop.”

Jack forced an inhale. What the hell was he talking about? “I didn’t…I didn’t drag anyone into anything. We all wanted to be there, to do the things we did.”

“You think I wanted a rap sheet by sixteen?” Eli said. “Fuck that. Someone had to take the blame for all your schemes, and somehow nothing ever sticks to Jack McCoy.”

“I—” Jack tried, but in truth he had nothing to finish that sentence with, so it was almost a relief when Greer interrupted.

“You need to move on, Jack.”