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“I think you have to get through the door before you see that,” Connor tells him. “Being divided is kind of like being storked on the welcome mat.”
Lev considers it and nods. “Interesting. I believe the door would have opened if the master of the house knew you were there to stay.”
Connor smiles. “It’s good to believe that.”
“What do you believe?” he asks.
As much as Connor wants to avoid the question, he wants to give Lev an answer that’s true. “I believe I’m here,” Connor tells him. “I’m here even though after what happened, I shouldn’t be. There’s got to be something to that, but right now I’m not going to unwind my brain again wondering what that something is. Let me think of water for a while before I have to think about it turning into wine, okay?”
He thinks Lev might smile at that, but he doesn’t. “Fair enough,” he says.
The kinkajou—a literal monkey on his back—now peers out from behind Lev with wide innocent eyes, but clings with claws that can kill. It reminds Connor that as much as Lev has changed, he’ll always carry the wide-eyed tithe somewhere within him. As well as the clapper.
• • •
Una and Cam escort Lev back to the Rez before leaving for Molokai. Out in the front yard before they go, Risa hugs Lev so tightly, she actually lifts him off the ground. Then suddenly she gasps, and apologizes, realizing she might have hurt him. But instead Lev is smiling. He smiles so rarely that when he does, it holds such joy that Connor can feel it from five feet away. He hugs Lev a little more gently.
“This way you won’t blow up, and I won’t fall apart,” Connor says. He finds his eyes welling up, and sees a tear on Lev’s cheek roll over Justin Levitz, to Marla Mendoza, to Cedric Beck, and off his chin.
“Thank you for saving me, Lev,” Connor says, barely able to get it out. Maybe he’ll fall apart after all.
“You saved me first.”
Connor shakes his head. “I used you as a human shield.”
“You could have let me go once you got to the woods, but you didn’t,” Lev points out. “Because you didn’t want me to go back. You didn’t
want me to be tithed.”
Connor can’t argue with that. He might have grabbed Lev out of desperation, but he held on to him out of compassion, although he really didn’t know it at the time.
“Do you still have the scar from where I bit you?” Lev asks.
Connor looks to his right forearm. Of course the bite mark isn’t there. “Sorry, the scar went with the arm.” But he notices for the first time that the shark’s teeth are almost exactly where the scar from Lev’s bite would have been.
The kinkajou, apparently wanting some attention climbs from Lev’s hip to his shoulder, and starts pulling at Lev’s ear. He seems impatient for Lev to get on with his day. To get on with his life.
“Take care of him,” Connor says.
“I will,” Lev answers.
“I was talking to the monkey.”
And Lev smiles, big and broad.
• • •
At the insistence of CyFi, Connor and Risa stay the night. The day has been hard on Connor’s healing body, and as he lies in bed, Risa gently rubs all his wounds with a special healing ointment that Cam gave them before he left.
“An early Christmas gift,” he said. “My second-favorite Proactive Citizenry product.”
Connor had been dense enough to ask him what his first favorite was.
“Me, of course,” Cam had answered.
The ointment is soothing. Warming. But it’s not just the ointment; it’s the touch of Risa’s hands.
“Remember back at the Graveyard, when I would massage your legs?”
