“I don’t wanna hear about it, OK? I’m going to my death tomorrow. I deserve a hero’s evening. OK?A hero’s evening.”
“Hey, Dad!” Lex yelled from the alley door. “Mom’s here!”
Shepherd looked up to the sky, eyes squinting in the sun, glancing around for signs of the end times. “Just shoot me already.”
Max held up his hands and backed away. “That’s Noah’s department. He called dibs.”
“On my murder?”
“On shooting you. I got piano wire. Chris got dropping a refrigerator from a high window.”
Shepherd glared hard enough that if he had use of The Force™, Max would be choking at his feet. “You’re all fired.”
Chris popped his head out of the food-truck window. “After we commit the felonies, though—right? Just checking. I’m really looking forward to that part.”
Lex was wrong. Sure, Hayley was there, but so was her husband, Oscar. Oscar, Shepherd’s long-time best friend. Oscar, who served as the inspiration of Shepherd’s Forbidden Binder.
The only bright spot was that the strange toothless boy and his snake were missing.
Unless they had escaped into the wilds of his restaurant. In which case, there would never be a bright spot again. Only darkness.
“Hey, man!” Oscar greeted, affable as ever, unaware of both the C-4 Shepherd had out back and Step Seven in the red section of the Forbidden Binder. “How’s it going?”
“Dad’s been learning to ride a motorcycle all afternoon,” Lex said. “He’s bad at it. I took videos.”
Hayley looked him up and down, her brow furrowed in either confusion or disgust or both. “Why?”
“Because they’re hilarious,” Lex said.
“No. Why are you learning to ride a motorcycle?”
Ginny appeared at his side, seemingly out of thin air. She wrapped her arm around his back and rested her head against his shoulder. “For me. It’s always been a dream of mine, to go … ride a motorcycle. Out west.”
Hayley and Oscar exchanged glances. Oscar looked thrilled; Hayley looked like she might vomit. “Out west?”
“Yeah, you know,” Shepherd said. “The Grand Canyon and the desert.” What the hell else was out west?
“There’s that big biker run, honey,” Oscar said. “Looks like fun. Sturgis, I think.”
Hayley made eye contact with Shepherd for the first time that day. Possibly for the first time in years. It struck him, then, just how little he missed her. What felt like the most important relationship of his life, and he barely even thought about her anymore. Only when she was directly in front of him, and then only as Lex’s mom. She didn’t even have a single step in a binder. Forbidden or otherwise.
“What the hell is Sturgis?” she asked him. “Like, a fish?”
Shepherd had genuinely no idea what was happening. Not at the moment, not in his life, not in the world. But Ginny puther hand on his chest, just over his heart and said, “It’s a town. In South Dakota.”
Hayley clucked her tongue. “OK, well, good luck.” The eye roll was present in her voice, if not in her eyes. “Make sure you give me a heads-up so that we can make sure things are all set with Lex at home.”
“Of course.” He turned to his daughter and opened his arms. “Bye, sweetheart.”
She did not move into his embrace, and instead patted his bellybutton. “Bye, Dad. Don’t get crushed under the weight of your bike. Or the weight of your disappointment in yourself. You made me proud out there. Being bad at something you’ve never tried before.”
“Thanks.”
“Can we stay for dinner?” Lex’s brother, snake and all, appeared at Shepherd’s elbow. He did not scream, but he did shout in surprise. Ginny screamed, though. He patted her hand to calm them both down.
“I already made dinner, buddy,” Oscar said. “Let’s get home. Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and then you both start day camp the next morning. Bye, Shepherd! You call me, OK? Let me know how the motorcycle thing is working out. I’m rooting for you.”
“Get off my property.”
