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They walked around the outside of the house, the day’s heat hammering them. Hot enough that everything had a slight shimmer to it, and sweat ran down the back of Theo’s neck. The sides, the back—no sign of damage, although on the deck, Theo could see where the sliding door’s frame was warped from whatever tool their attacker had used to gain entry. Fingerprint powder covered the exterior of the door, and Theo took it to mean that he didn’t have to worry about messing up prints.
Inside, the stench of the fire was overwhelming, and Theo and Auggie went about opening windows. Theo remembered, like an old nightmare, doing all of this in reverse. After they’d first learned about the intruder. The way he’d walked the house. Patrolled. Policed. The way he’d checked every lock. How he’d made sure Auggie knew. And Auggie, because he was so smart and so sensitive, had known without Theo having to say anything that it was a punishment.
With the windows open, currents of thick, soupy air began to move through the house, and Auggie brought the fan from their room and started it going. Theo inspected the living room and kitchen first. A spot of blood on the tile suggested where Jem had been cut, but otherwise, the room looked untouched—the rumpled blanket on the couch where Jem had kept guard and, in the process saved their lives; the little bulb under the built-in microwave was still on, probably because Jem had kept it on as a nightlight; one of the accent chairs was pushed slightly out of place so that Lana and Tean had more room to play.
Together, they moved down the hall toward the front of the house. This was where the fire had caught, and the signs of it were everywhere: the floorboards blackened, the plaster charred, a wall light melted. The gasoline had burned fast and hot, but the fire had actually—in this case—been the lesser of the two evils. Even though putting out the fire had been a necessity, the water that the firefighters had used had destroyed the front of the house. It would be, Theo guessed, a gut job. Months. His heart was beating too fast, and his head had started to hurt. He wondered if he had high blood pressure; his dad and Jacob had high blood pressure.
“It’s not so bad,” Auggie said. His voice echoed back weirdly from the soggy plaster and warped boards. “It’s actually not as bad as I thought.”
Theo nodded.
“Want to go back to Emery and John-Henry’s?” Auggie said.
“No, I’m going to—” Theo didn’t finish the sentence, but he gestured at the hallway.
Auggie waited a beat, nodded, and took out his phone. “I’ll call around, see if I can find anyone who can come out and give us a quote.”
Theo nodded, and Auggie’s steps moved toward the back of the house.
For a time, Theo just looked at it all, taking in the smell of char, the first hint of mold. His heart was beating so fast he felt sick. He moved into the office, not because he had any idea what to do, but because his vision was starting to go black around the edges. He had the weirdest feeling—non-feeling, actually, because he couldn’t feel his legs. He dropped into Auggie’s chair, which had been rolled over near the shredder, and leaned back. He closed his eyes. After a while, the hammering in his chest slowed. He rubbed his thighs and felt silly, immediately, even though his thoughts were syrupy and slow. Silly, but gratified, too, that he could feel his legs again.
He sat up, and he looked around the office—not looking for anything in particular, just taking in Auggie’s typically neat workspace, the sense of something familiar and safe and normal. The thick packet of pages next to the shredder caught his eye, and he picked them up, turned them over.
AGREEMENT, it said at the top. And then, below, with blanks left to be filled in:The following is an agreement made and entered into between ________ and ________ (Intended Parents), a married couple, and ________ (Gestational Carrier) and ________ (Gestational Carrier’s husband), a married couple.
There was more, but Theo couldn’t read it. The words swam together. The headache was back, and he could hear his pulse in his ears, too loud for him to hear anything else.
Which was why when he realized Auggie was standing in the doorway, mouth moving, Theo couldn’t tell what he was saying. After a while, Auggie stopped, and he looked more closely at Theo. Looked at the pages in his hand. And something rippled across Auggie’s face. It made Theo think of something opening in the wind. A flag. A bedsheet. The way the wind caught it and hurled it out, snapped it so hard you couldn’t read what it said.
“What is this?” Theo asked. That’s what he thought he asked. The pound of his pulse in his head made it hard to tell. He had that feeling again that he was looking up at Auggie from somewhere else, the world narrowed to a circle like the mouth of a bag drawn shut. The bad old days. And bad old Theo.
“It’s not—” Auggie stopped. He swallowed. “It’s a template, Theo. It’s a sample. That’s all. I just wanted to know what it said.” It all sounded so rational, so normal, until he blurted, “I’m sorry.”
Neither of them said anything. The headache seemed twice as bad, and Theo wondered if there was still some sort of particulate matter in the air, something left by the smoke, maybe. Or perhaps some sort of toxic chemical that had been released when the paint had heated, or that cheap light fixture in the hall, or the old plaster. Something was wrong, that was all he knew. Something in the air. He couldn’t seem to get any air.
“Please don’t be mad,” Auggie said. “I downloaded that before—before everything happened, and before I knew how strongly you felt about—about kids, and you’ve been really good about explaining your feelings, Theo, and I want you to know that I hear you, and you’re the most important person in the world to me, and I respect you, and I love you, and it matters so much to me what you feel and what you think, and I wasn’t trying to send any other kind of message by—by looking at that stuff. And I think you make a lot of really good points, and I’m with you, I really am, I mean, I understand, and I agree, about—about the kids thing, about not having more kids, about—” He looked lost. That emotion was still pushing against him, that invisible force rippling and snapping. When he finished, his voice was small. “—about everything.”
Theo leaned forward. The chair creaked. The pages whispered against his knee.
Auggie flinched.
It was small. It was barely anything, and he was so good at controlling himself, so good at being whoever you wanted him to be—and, still too often, doing it without really thinking about it, without, possibly, even meaning to—that the movement was swallowed up a moment later in the earnest look he turned on Theo.
“I realize I shouldn’t have ever downloaded that template—”
It was like Theo was hearing him from the next room. They lived here. This was their home. They could be at opposite ends of the house, and Auggie would be on the phone, and Theo could listen to his voice, not the words, just the sound of his voice, and think, This is home. This is my home. And he thought again that in stories, a home was never just a home. It was always a symbol of something else.
“Auggie,” he tried to say.
“—and I never should have done it without telling you, without your permission—”
“Auggie, stop.”
“—because I want you to understand that I understand that this is a partnership, and you’re so smart, Theo, and you’re so loving, and I know you want what’s best for me—”
“Stop!”
The word came out louder than he intended. Harsher, too. Because it had been ripped from him. Because no matter how it sounded, it had hurt more coming out. The thunder in Theo’s head was suddenly gone, and the nausea was back. His hands were trembling. He told himself to hold on to the pages, but he couldn’t, and they fluttered down, one by one, to snow across the floor.
