"How's Ava?"
"Pregnant."
I looked at him.
"Yeah."
"Brian."
"Boy this time. Twenty weeks on Tuesday."
"Brother."
"Thank Christ." He shifted the bag again. "I needed an ally in that house. Sofia and Ava tag-team me. They take notes. They compare notes. I lose every argument by lunch, and the only reason I get to vote is they let me think I'm voting."
"And in twenty weeks, you've got somebody on your side."
"In twenty weeks. I do. I'm countin' the hours."
He grinned at me. I grinned back. It was the closest I'd come to feeling something I recognized since I'd crossed the bridge.
Then Garrett came through.
He had his gear bag over one shoulder and his coat over the other arm. He saw me from the entry. He set the bag down. He crossed the bay at the pace Garrett had always crossed a bay, which was the pace of a man who didn't waste any motion.
"Ford."
"Stone."
We shook hands. He held it a beat longer than he'd held the hands of the other men in the bay this morning. That was as much affection as Garrett gave at the lockers, and I'd known him long enough to know it counted as a lot.
"How long you been back?"
"Tuesday."
"You unpack?"
"One box."
His mouth did the small, almost-smile he didn't give away. "Sounds about right."
"How's Sloane?"
"Working too hard. She's good. Said to say hi if I saw you." He shrugged. "I saw you."
"How's Theo?"
"He's seven. He lost both front teeth in the same week. He looks like a hockey enforcer in a Spider-Man T-shirt."
"He still on the bike?"
"He's on his second bike. He outgrew the first one in nine months."
"Sounds about right."
He stood there a beat. He took me in the way Garrett took in a thing he was running scenarios on. Nobody else in the bay was looking at me that way. I felt the look land.
He didn't ask.
