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“I’m glad. Simon will bring you home.”

Simon was waiting at the door when I came out. He opened the passenger door for me, and once we were on the road I asked, “Did Seb say anything to you on his way out?”

“To me? No. He stepped out of the way for one of the dancers in the hall, then went straight to the street.”

“You were watching him that closely?”

“Wren.”

I looked out at the harbor lights and let him have that one. He’d been protecting me since I was nineteen. I wasn’t going to talk him out of it in one car ride.

“He didn’t cause trouble,” I said.

“I was ready for him to.”

“You can stand down a little. I asked him to meet Sparrow today. He was good with her.”

Simon glanced at me, then back at the road. “You all right with him seeing you dance?”

“I was, once I got over the shock.”

“Good.” He drove for a while before he added, “You were brilliant tonight.”

I smiled. “I know.”

The house was quiet when I got in. Nick was asleep on the couch with the game on and his phone on his chest. The baby monitor sat on the table beside him, its little light blinking. I turned the game off, pulled the throw over him, collected the monitor, and went upstairs.

Sparrow was asleep in the travel crib beside my bed. I stood there looking at her, still warm from the shower I’d taken at the club, my hair damp against my neck. This afternoon Seb had held her and cried. Tonight he’d stood in the back of a room and watched me do something I loved. He hadn’t come backstage or asked me to leave with him. He’d gone home and left me to enjoy the night.

I thought again about the poster. Moff had spent a week trying to work out why Seb had found us now. I had a gut feeling Blondie had led him to Kettlewell. I wanted to tell Moff, but he’d ask who’d seen the poster and who’d passed the name to Seb. Then he’d ask how Seb had gone from a stage name to finding me. I couldn’t answer any of that yet. Moff worked on proof, much like Seb.

I was seeing Seb on Friday. I’d ask him, then tell Moff what I learned.

Sparrow stirred. I laid my hand lightly on her back until she settled, then got into bed. I should have been thinking about what I’d ask Seb on Friday. Instead, I kept seeing him at the back of the room, watching me dance.

Chapter 12

❧

— Glitch —

At eleven forty-eight, I was still on the first page of Portland’s renewal. I shut the laptop and poured a whiskey. On the table beside it, my phone showed the last photograph Wren had sent me: Sparrow with a fist around my nose, me laughing.

The screen went dark. I woke it and looked at her again.

This afternoon she’d been in my arms. I knew the weight of her now, the strength in that little fist, the noise she made when she got hold of something she wanted. The collar of the shirt I’d worn to the boathouse had dried stiff where she’d tried to chew it. I’d left it over the back of a chair and put on a clean one before I went to The Hot House. Every time I glanced at the old shirt, I could feel her small hand tugging at my hair again.

Wren had called me Sparrow’s daddy. She’d taken photographs of us and asked me back on Friday. I could have spent the whole night on those facts alone. Instead, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Wren under the lights.

Blondie.

I’d seen the poster before I came to Kettlewell. Last week I’d stayed away. Wren hadn’t agreed to see me then. Today she had let me meet our child, and I had gone to watch her work without asking. I bought a ticket, stood at the back and left when she finished. None of that changed the fact that I had turned up uninvited.

I took a drink and tried to decide whether I should apologize for it on Friday. She might be angry. She might not bring it up at all. Robin had known I was there, and Simon had followed me out. Wren would know by now too.

When she came onstage, I had nearly failed to recognize her. The mask covered the top of her face, but that wasn’t it. She’d walked into a room full of people waiting for her and looked pleased to find them there. My Wren had been quiet in public. In the clubhouse she’d send me the filthiest code she could fit in a text, then sit quietly beside me with a straight face while I worked it out. She’d look up when my phone went down. That little smile was usually where my concentration ended.

Blondie smiled like that at the whole room.