***
Another week. Another Thursday.
Amani was behind the bar at eight PM when Harold came in again. He didn't take the seat next to Nero. Instead, he sat in the middle of the bar and waved Amani down.
"I have an update," he said. "Thought you'd want to hear."
Amani set aside what he was doing. Nero, who had arrived twenty minutes earlier and was already on his first screwdriver, slid down to join them.
"Jack wrote a letter," Harold said. "Through his attorney. Officially, it's been added to his file as a statement. Unofficially, the attorney forwarded me a copy because she thought you should see it. Nothing about this is obligatory. You don't have to read it."
He pulled an envelope from his jacket and set it on the bar.
Amani stared at it. His name was on the front, in Harold's handwriting. The envelope was sealed. Inside was something Jack had written, in response to what Amani had written, and whatever it was, Amani was not required to read it.
"I don't—" Amani started. His throat was tight. "I'm not sure I want to."
"You don't have to decide now. Sit with it."
Nero didn't say anything. He drank his screwdriver and watched Amani's face and his hand, under the bar, moved an inch closer to Amani's hand but didn't touch it, not yet, waiting to be asked.
Amani took the envelope. He held it. Felt the weight of paper and ink and the years of a stranger's life reduced to whatever words were folded inside. He did not open it that night. He took it home and put it in a drawer and slept. When he woke up in the morning it was still there. He opened it over coffee at his kitchen counter while Nero slept in the other room.
The letter was brief. Jack's handwriting was small and careful. It said:
Amani,
I got your statement. I've read it a hundred times. I'm not going to pretend I deserve to write back to you, and I'm not going to ask you to read this or respond. But I wanted youto know that I think about that night every day. I think about the way you looked in the cage. I think about the way the old man smiled when he saw you. I think about how easy it was to do what I did, and how hard it was to do the one right thing afterward, and how long I waited before I picked up the phone. I wish I had called before, instead of after. I wish I had never gotten in the van. I wish a lot of things. But the thing I wish most is that you never have to think about me again. I'm sorry. I know sorry doesn't mean anything. I am anyway.
Jack
Amani read it twice. Then he folded it up and put it back in the envelope and put the envelope in a different drawer, a deeper one, the one where he kept old receipts and tax documents and other things he needed to keep but didn't need to look at. He did not throw it away. He also did not reread it.
He went back to bed. Climbed in next to Nero, who stirred and made a sleepy noise of acknowledgment, and pressed his face against Nero's shoulder and closed his eyes.
"The letter?" Nero asked, still mostly asleep.
"He said sorry. I'm not going to write back."
"Okay."
"I'm okay."
"Okay."
Nero's arm came around him. Amani settled into the curve of it. Outside the apartment, the Las Vegas morning was starting, the city waking up for another day, and inside, the room was warm and quiet. The person next to him was breathing steady and slow.
Harold had brought the letter because he thought Amani should have the option, and Amani had taken the option and made his choice, and the choice was: yes, and then back to sleep.
It was not closure. It was not forgiveness. It was just another morning in a life that was, against all odds, still his to live.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lady Leo's house on a Sunday afternoon.
Amani let himself in with his key and the first thing he heard was Bethany arguing with their mother about the curtains. It was the kind of argument only these two women could have, high-volume, low-stakes, both of them entrenched in positions that were not actually the point, the point being that they were lionesses in the same pride and periodically they had to demonstrate that fact by snarling at each other over something meaningless.
"They're too long," Bethany was saying. "They pool on the floor."
