The Good in the World
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AfterThe Mystery of the Bones
POV: Calvin Winter
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I tapped the key fob. The Ford Fusion’s headlights blinked, the locks engaged, and the alarm chirped. That one note seemed to bounce off building façades and ricochet throughout the East Village. Even in the most populated city in the country, late-night blizzards had a way of silencing humanity. Like a television set to mute. Wet, heavy snow had been blanketing the roads, sidewalks, cars, and fire escapes for hours, and it had a way of making a man feel very… alone.
As if I were the only living human on the island of Manhattan.
With memories as my only company.
And wasn’t that a special kind of hell? Just me and my nightmares, walking the beat on deserted streets. Forever, maybe.
All those atrocities that I couldn’t escape, that therapy didn’t erase, only tempered. The cruelty, the abuse, the death that humans inflicted upon one another. Horrors experienced firsthand, resting below the surface, waiting for the cold sweats and midnight tears to lower my defenses so that they could make me forget that where I was in the here and now was safe and secure.
I shook myself violently, like a dog coming in from the rain. I tried so hard to never bring that sense of hopelessness home. I took a deep breath and let the cold air expand my lungs, clean out the darkest corners inside me. I watched the falling snowflakes reflect in the tungsten glow of the overhead streetlamps, listened to the rumble of a street plow a block away, felt the weight of my holstered pistol pressing against my ribs. And when I was as close to human as I’d be that night, I unlocked the front door of the multiuse building and made my way up to 4B.
The living room lamp was on as I let myself inside our apartment.
Dillon, comfortable in his dog bed, raised his head. His tail thumped against the hardwood, but I made a motion for him to remain where he was, and he obeyed.
I quietly shut and locked the door, hung my winter and suit coats up, then crouched to untie my wet oxfords and leave them behind so I didn’t track melting snow across the front room.
Sebastian was asleep on the couch, leaning sideways against the back cushions and hugging an overstuffed pillow to his chest. He looked as if he’d spent the night staring out the window behind the couch.
Taking careful steps across the room, avoiding the known floorboards that groaned with age, I stopped in front of the couch, leaned over Sebastian, and tugged the curtains shut. I took a moment to study my husband, touch his bristly jaw with the pad of my thumb, trace the tungsten band on his left hand. The ring sat a little loose on his finger, but was held in place by his big knuckle.
Sebastian had beautiful hands. I mean, aesthetically they were nice—soft from a lifetime of handling nothing more dangerous than an antique book of questionable poetry with cloth gloves. “Because cotton is a neutral material,” he’d once explained to me. “It doesn’t react with the surface or leave fingerprints.” But his hands were beautiful to me because they had never known violence. The preservation of history didn’t stain his hands, didn’t leave remnants like blood and gunpowder did. I’d caught him making comparisons in the past—that his hands weren’t masculine enough, thathewasn’t masculine enough.
But I don’t think Sebastian realized just how much courage it took to not fall into the cesspool of toxicity that exists for most men. By refusing to hide who he was, being unapologetic of his interests, and pursuing an education and career my own father would have tossed me to the curb for, Sebastian really was a living embodiment of strength. And if strength was an indicator of masculinity, then he had it in spades.
I enclosed my hand around Sebastian’s, leeching warmth from his skin and into my numb fingers. It was nights like this, when I came home after midnight, feeling battered and broken, knowing that no matter how many awful scumbags I put away, it would never stop, that there would always be someone worse, someone more depraved. That another knife was driven into me, blade wedged into my back, and my armor so heavy that I felt like I couldn’t take another step, like I’d finally collapse and not get up again….
I think how lucky I am that Sebastian saved my life. I think how I’d take a million more knives to the back if it meant shielding him from everything awful. And then I think…. I’ll fight again tomorrow.
Because there’s still a little good in this world.
