February 17, 2016

I pulled into the driveway of 292 Springhill Drive and stepped out of the car. It was cold, but not unbearably so as I made my way up the concrete path. I glanced around as I knocked on the mahogany door of the large white house in a newly built subdivision in Trenton, waiting a respectable amount of time for someone to answer it before knocking again. Past life experience meant I knew no one would answer the unlocked door and what I would find inside once I opened it, but I still waited just in case neighbors were looking out their windows. After knocking a second time, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. The house was quiet, and the combined odor of emptied bowels and gardenias made my eyes water and nostrils burn.

"Bond enforcement," I said loudly, once again covering my bases as I tried not to breathe. I walked through the two-story entryway to the living room where Parker Messi was hanging from a wooden beam that crossed the ceiling. He had liked rock climbing in his spare time and was hanging from the end of one of his own ropes. His bloated face and soiled trousers should have elicited some sort of sympathy, but I decided to reserve those feelings for someone who didn't scam dozens of people out of their life savings.

I called 911 and reported my findings, stepping out on to the porch to wait for the police. Morelli would be the detective catching the case, especially when someone noticed that there was nothing nearby for Messi to have stood on to hang himself and the dark purple handprints around his throat. There would be a long list of suspects because he had defrauded so many people along with his business partner Magellan Meadows, though without Messi's testimony, Meadows's charges would be dropped due to insufficient evidence. Which was why he had killed his partner, knowing that there were so many people to be investigated for the murder that he could skip town before they zeroed in on him too much. By the time the police had figured it out, Meadows was in Dubai living his best life with the money he stole from hard-working people.

Carl Costanza was the first on scene with another patrol car pulling up behind his. "Are you the guy that called?" he asked as he approached the porch.

I nodded. "Carlos Manoso."

Costanza consulted with the other cop and went inside to confirm my story.

"Yep, he's dead," he announced to the other officer in a strained tone from holding his breath.

"Someone did a poor job trying to make it look like a suicide," I said. Costanza and the other officer gave me suspicious looks.

"Why do you say that?" Costanza asked.

"Nothing under him to stand on and handprints on his neck."

The other cop took the opportunity to go inside and emerged a minute later with a hand under his nose. "He's right," he said nodding in my direction.

"Were you on the job?" Costanza asked as more cars and an ambulance arrived.

"Ex-Special Forces."

Costanza took my statement and asked me to wait for the detective to arrive in case he had more questions. Considering I was blocked in by three police cars, I wasn't going anywhere fast. I leaned against the car and took in the scene around me. I had officially started dividing my time between Trenton and Columbus at the end of December, though I'd been laying the groundwork for my Trenton office since September. My Columbus office had won the Muscogee County School District security contract and had taken over the role at the beginning of the year. Everything was going well, and I had been able to offer Tank a job. I'd told him he didn't need to start until April, when he was officially out of the Army, but he hadn't wanted to wait and had showed up in Columbus a week into his terminal leave. He was in Columbus most of the time, getting used to how the business worked so he could help me get Trenton off the ground. I was in Trenton Monday afternoons through Friday mornings, devoting what time I wasn't using to apprehend criminals to set up meetings and make connections in the community. I spent Friday afternoons through Monday mornings in Columbus, where I had to divide my time between Julio and the office. Thinking of Julio, I glanced at the time and realized he would be on his lunch break. Morelli hadn't arrived yet, so I figured I had a few minutes to talk.

"Any updates?" I asked when he answered.

"I just got off the phone with Mom. She said he got worse overnight. The nurse doesn't think he'll make it to the weekend. I'm heading in to tell my boss I need the rest of the week off and get my flight changed to the soonest one possible."

Julio's grandfather Hassan was almost ninety and had suffered a fall in January which had shattered his pelvis. Given his age, he had decided to go home on hospice rather than attempt major surgery and rehabilitation. The family had hoped he would have longer, but he seemed to give up once he was back home. Amira called on Sunday to say he wasn't doing well and if Julio wanted a chance to see him, he should come up to Chicago soon. We had planned to meet in Chicago on Friday and spend the weekend with his family, but had known things could change fast and we might have to leave sooner.

"I have to deal with this dead FTA and get a few things settled at the office, but I'll be out there by tonight."

I talked to Julio for a few more minutes until Morelli arrived on the scene. I promised to check in once I had a flight and hung up. Morelli was wearing jeans and a dark green coat, and I was surprised to see how much younger he looked than the last time I saw him in my past life. Maybe years of dating Stephanie had aged him more than I'd realized.

"Detective Joe Morelli," Morelli said, extending a hand.

"Carlos Manoso."

Morelli pulled out a notepad and wrote my name. "How do you know the deceased?"

"I'm doing bond enforcement for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds and Parker Messi was FTA. I came here to apprehend him," I said, handing Morelli the paperwork. He reviewed it quickly and nodded.

"Walk me through what happened when you arrived," Morelli said, and I spent the next few minutes repeating the same story I'd already told to Costanza and answering the same questions he'd asked.

"Observant," Morelli commented when I told him about the efforts made to make it look like a suicide. "Costanza said you were ex-Special Forces. Which branch?"

"Army. 75th Ranger Regiment."

Morelli made more notes and took my contact information. "I'll need you to come down to the station soon to write out your official statement for me."

"I'll be leaving for Chicago this evening. I don't know exactly when I'll be back. Probably sometime next week," I informed him. "If you need it before then, I can stop by the station this afternoon."

Morelli raised an eyebrow. "You're leaving town the same day you find a dead body?"

"My husband's grandfather is dying. We'd planned to go out on Friday, but he's declining and we need to get there as soon as possible."

I saw a subtle look of surprise that was quickly replaced by his neutral cop face. I fought back a smirk. It wasn't easy to surprise Morelli. "That's fine. I have fifty-nine pissed off people to investigate, so I'll be busy. If I have any questions, I'll call you. Let me know when you're back and we'll arrange for your statement."

We shook hands and Morelli told the cars blocking the drive to move so I could leave. I pulled away from the neighborhood and headed straight to my office.

My current Trenton office was in a building just north of downtown and less than a mile from where I would eventually purchase the building on Haywood. I'd managed to build a decent amount of business in the short time I'd been in Trenton. It was nothing compared to my Columbus operation or what I knew Trenton could be, but it was a far better situation than I'd been in at this point in my last life. The Haywood building would be empty by May, and it would stay that way until I bought it next year. If business kept going as well as it had been, I'd be able to buy it sooner.

I spent the next two hours in my office getting my flight changed, reviewing files sent by Kim, responding to emails, calling people to reschedule meetings over the next week, going over assignments with the men who worked for me in Trenton, and checking in with the Columbus control room. I employed over two hundred and fifty people in Columbus now that we had the school security contract. The school security office had a separate location near the school administration building, but even the main office was outgrowing its current space. My realtor was currently looking for a building to buy that I could set up the way I'd set up my old offices. I wanted a place like my future Trenton building where I was in complete control.

It was almost midnight by the time we arrived at Amira's house. She lived in a small, two-story house that was dwarfed between a three-story brick apartment building and a larger two-story home. Half the houses in the neighborhood were duplexes. The remaining single-family homes were grouped so close together they may as well be connected. We parked our rental car at the curb and headed up the walkway to the wooden porch, where the front door opened to reveal Amira's boyfriend, Lamar.

"Glad you could make it," he said as we entered the living room. "He's been asking about you ever since he found out you were coming."

Julio set his suitcase down and hurried into the family room, which had been converted into a bedroom for his grandparents when they'd moved in three years earlier. Lamar picked up Julio's suitcase and gestured for me to follow him.

"I'm hoping to convince Amira to come up to bed for a few hours tonight," Lamar said quietly as we climbed the stairs. "She's refused to leave Faiza alone with Hassan all night just in case. I don't think she's had a good night's sleep in two weeks."

"We'll stay with them," I said as we placed our suitcases in the bedroom that overlooked the street. "If you can't convince her to go to bed, we'll knock her out and carry her upstairs."

The family-room-turned-bedroom had been rearranged to accommodate a hospital bed and a rolling tray table. Hassan was propped up slightly in bed and speaking to Julio in Moroccan Arabic, which was different enough from the Arabic I'd learned in my military training that I could only understand snippets. Amira was sitting with her mother on a loveseat, both women clad in warm robes and slippers. Amira was awake, but her mother was dozing with her head against the back.

"Hey," Amira whispered, standing to embrace me. "I'm glad you came."

"Of course. How are you doing?"

Amira glanced over her shoulder at her sleeping mother. "Okay, I guess," she said, letting out a sigh. "Just tired."

"Lamar told me you've refused to sleep upstairs for two weeks. Julio and I'll stay with them tonight. You should go up to bed."

"I don't want to leave them," she said, her voice breaking. "You know, just in case."

"Amira, come to bed, honey," Lamar said from behind me. "You need to sleep."

She cast a nervous glance at her father. "Please come get me if anything even looks like it's changing," she pleaded.

"I promise."

We talked for a few minutes before Lamar could finally get Amira to go to bed. I pulled a chair over to sit next to Julio. Hassan had fallen asleep, and Julio was stroking the back of his hand. He'd kept it together when his grandfather had been awake. Now he was wiping at tears with his other hand.

I kissed the top of his head before I sat down. "I told your mother we'd stay with them tonight so she could get some sleep."

He nodded and sniffed. "He was sort of with it when I first started talking to him, but then he kept thinking I was my uncle Mohammed. I tried to tell him I wasn't, but he just kept telling me he was sorry for kicking me out. He wouldn't relax until I told him I forgave him."

The next few hours passed with the only sounds in the room coming from Hassan's raspy breathing and the IV machine providing him with morphine. Julio was lost in thought while he watched his sleeping grandfather, tension lines forming at the corners of his mouth. Even before his grandfather's fall, he had become withdrawn and apathetic in the last few months. He used to go to the gym after work several days a week. Now he just laid on the couch watching television until bed. He didn't visit with Jenny and Mike the way he used to, though he said it was because they were busy getting ready for their new baby. He rarely read and when he did he seemed to only be able to handle a few pages before he'd put the book down. I hadn't heard a dirty pick-up line since before Thanksgiving and could count on one hand the number of times we'd had sex since then. He tried to hide it when I was home, but it took a lot out of him. Every time I suggested he might be depressed, he denied it. He claimed he was just in a funk, and he would get over it. I hadn't been convinced before and sure as hell wouldn't be convinced now.

I got up around five to use the bathroom and grab a bottled water. When I went into the kitchen, I found Faiza putting water in the coffee pot. She was a tiny woman, and gray streaked her black hair. The strain of her husband's condition was etched on her face, but she still gave me a small smile when she saw me.

"Hello, habibi," she said, reaching out to me as I approached. I wrapped my arms around her frail body and kissed her on the cheek. "I like this beard on you," she said, pulling back so she could put a hand on my cheek. "It looks good on you."

"Thanks, Jedda," I said, using the name her grandchildren called her. I hadn't met Faiza and Hassan before Julio and I had come out to our families, but upon meeting them four years ago, they'd insisted I call them Jedda and Jeddi like their grandchildren. "Julio likes it, which is the only reason I have it. How are you doing?"

"I'm as well as I can be," she replied in her heavily accented English. "We knew this day would come. We just didn't know who would go first. We've had seventy years together. I'm grateful for that. Some people don't even live that long." I saw her lips quiver as she touched the silver bracelet on her wrist that had once belonged to her son. She went back to her coffee preparations, and I thought about the seventy years she had spent with her husband.

Julio's grandparents had immigrated to the United States in 1967, when Amira was six and her brother Mohammed was sixteen. They had arrived in Chicago for Hassan's new job as an engineer with a large manufacturing company. Mohammed had been a twenty-year-old sophomore at Northwestern when he came out to his parents. Despite not being practicing Muslims by that point, their reaction had been a common one in 1971, especially for immigrants. Their upbringing in a conservative Muslim culture had influenced their views on homosexuality just as it had people who had grown up Christian in America. Amira had been forbidden from seeing her brother after that, which meant she did everything she could to see him, even as a ten-year-old. They had stayed close over the years as she finished school and started college while he had been forced to drop out of Northwestern and get a job with the sanitation department after his parents cut him off financially.

Mohammed hid his AIDS diagnosis from her for over a year until he was so sick he couldn't hide it any longer. Amira had just learned she was pregnant with Julio and had wanted to take care of her brother, but he had refused, insisting she take care of herself and her unborn baby. He'd moved into a hospice for people dying from AIDS and she had visited him almost every day. She begged him to let her tell their parents so they could say goodbye, but he'd refused. In the last week before he died, he confessed that the reason he didn't want her to tell them was because he didn't want to die knowing they'd rejected him again. Amira told her parents anyway, not telling Mohammed that she had done so until they came to the hospice with her. That had been the last day he had been conscious, and he died two days later with his heartbroken, guilt-ridden parents by his side. Their refusal to talk about him had continued after his death, though their disappointment in him had been replaced with their own shame and grief. Which was why they'd embraced Julio when he came out to them, insisting they only ever wanted him to be happy. I met them a few months later and had been warmly welcomed into their family.

I helped Faiza carry coffee into the family room for the three of us and handed a mug to Julio. I offered her my seat and noted the change in Hassan's breathing as I settled on the loveseat. It was rattling and more ragged than it had been when I'd left the room fifteen minutes earlier. I'd seen enough death in two lifetimes to know it wouldn't be long now. I headed upstairs and knocked on Amira and Lamar's bedroom door.

"I don't think it's going to be much longer," I said when Amira answered the door. She had opened it so quickly I had the feeling she wasn't getting much rest. She nodded, relayed the information to Lamar, and headed downstairs.

Hassan died less than an hour later with Faiza, Amira, and Julio by his side. A mixture of grief and relief filled the house over the next couple of hours as the hospice nurse arrived, followed by Nora and her husband, and finally, the mortuary staff. Once Hassan had been taken away, Amira had insisted Julio and I get some sleep while she and Nora took care of calling family and friends.

"Is it bad that I'm kind of glad it's over?" Julio asked as we laid in bed.

"No. I get it. So would he."

"You're sure you don't know about Jedda?" he asked. He had asked me more than once when it became clear Hassan wouldn't recover. Unfortunately, I hadn't been close enough to Julio back then to know exactly when his grandparents died. The only thing I knew was they were all gone by the time he got married in 2022.

"Sorry. But even if I did, would you really want to know?"

"Good point."

I had been about to fall asleep when I realized Julio was crying. He was facing the wall, and it was clear he was trying to be quiet by hiding his face in his pillow. I put an arm over him and kissed the back of his neck as I moved close to him. I breathed in his scent as his body shook with muffled sobs. He fell asleep twenty minutes later, but my mind had been too busy thinking about my own family for me to drift off with him. I dreaded the day Grandma died, especially since I didn't know when it would happen. She had still been alive when I'd died, and even though I'd never experienced her death before, I knew it would be even more painful in this lifetime because of how much closer we had become. My thoughts left Grandma and moved onto my parents. Watching Amira hug Julio as they grieved Hassan made me miss my mother. I'd never responded to her letter, though I had dug it out of the hotel room trash can before we left for the airport. Julio had not-so-subtly hinted that he thought I should sit down with them, but also said he had my back no matter what I decided. I'd thrown myself headlong into my work once we'd gotten home from the wedding and hadn't given my parents much more thought. Between opening a new office, dividing my week between New Jersey and Georgia, preparing my life for Stephanie's reentrance, and now Julio's declining mental health, I didn't foresee having time to consider my parents' apologies anytime soon.

Julio and I parted ways on Monday morning at O'Hare airport. I offered to go back to Columbus with him, but he told me to stick to my regular routine. I suspected he needed some time alone before going back to work on Wednesday. Morelli had texted over the weekend to say he needed to go through a few details with me and get my written statement for the investigation. We had originally made an appointment for ten-thirty on Tuesday at the police station, but he'd called me that morning to say he would be running behind and could we meet at Pino's at noon so he could eat lunch while we talked.

"Thanks for meeting me here," Morelli said once we'd gotten a table and placed our orders. "I've been swamped interviewing all the people Messi scammed. I can't remember the last time I ate something that didn't come out of a vending machine."

"Not a problem."

Morelli had me run through the timeline of my arrival to my discovery of Messi's body and if anything had stood out to me upon my arrival other than the obvious. He also handed me a body receipt for Messi, saving me the trip down to the police station. By the time we'd finished going over everything, our food was being placed in front of us. Morelli took the time eating to ask me about my time in the army and my business. We were discussing the security concerns in Trenton when I saw Stephanie walk in the door and go up to the counter. She was dressed in black pants and a gray wool coat. She said something to the person behind the counter and they disappeared around the corner while she stood there waiting.

"You know her?" Morelli asked, glancing over to see what had caught my attention.

"Yeah, we were briefly involved freshman year of college."

Morelli raised an eyebrow as he bit into his sub. "I thought you were gay?"

"My husband is the only guy I've ever dated. Things might have gone somewhere with her, but she didn't want to be exclusive, and I wasn't interested in sharing a girlfriend."

I watched Stephanie accept a bag from the person behind the counter and head back out the door into the chilly February day.

"You dodged a bullet," Morelli said once she was out of sight. "She had a nasty divorce a few years back. Married some scumbag lawyer who couldn't keep his dick in his pants. Fought him tooth and nail over everything. The divorce lasted longer than the marriage. Kept my grandmother's beauty shop gossip line in business for a year."

"Were you two ever involved?" I asked. I hated pretending not to know these things.

"Hooked up once right before I left for the navy, but that was the last time I talked to her. I've only seen her like this since. From a distance, no contact. Probably for the best since I wrote a poem about her on the bathroom walls after we had sex."

"I bet she took that well."

Morelli shrugged. "Don't know that she ever found out. Given her temper, I figure she would have run me over or set my house on fire if she had."

I kept my expression neutral as I processed this information. She hadn't run him over this time. How had I managed to change that by being involved with her for a few weeks?

I wrote out my statement for Morelli on a legal pad while he finished his food. "Any idea who might have done it?" I asked as I slid the pad across the table to him.

Morelli stuck the paper in a leather portfolio. "I just finished the last victim interview this morning and have people checking alibis. Should have some updates when I get back to the station."

"What about his business partner? I read in the papers that his charges relied heavily on Messi's testimony and there was speculation that he might cut a deal with the feds by telling them where to find some of the money."

Morelli nodded. "I read the same thing. The charges are federal, so we aren't involved in the case. I'm waiting to hear from his attorney about an interview."

"Hopefully before he's cooling his heels in some country without extradition."

After we paid the bills and headed to our cars, Morelli called out to me before I climbed in.

"Do you play poker?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"I have a standing Tuesday night game. We're down a couple of guys. You interested?"

This had to be one of the most disconcerting moments of my second life. The same man that had barely tolerated my existence and tried to beat the hell out of me in Hawaii in my last life was now asking me to a poker game.

"Just text me the details," I said, not exactly sure why I was agreeing. He gave a wave before we climbed into our respective vehicles.

I stopped by the bonds office and gave Connie the body receipt. "Is this your first dead skip?" she asked as she made out a check.

"I had a couple down in Georgia, but they were both natural causes."

"I don't think anyone's gonna miss this guy. I heard a rumor that one of the people he scammed was a cousin of an enforcer and they took him out."

I knew this wasn't the case but shrugged to indicate that it might be possible. "I'm just glad it's not my problem."

I finished out my day hauling a couple of repeat offenders back to jail and meeting with the manager of a staffing agency that Kim contacted about getting help at the office. I signed a three-month contract, agreed to the recruitment fee should I end up hiring someone they sent me and outlined the expectations for the office's needs. Morelli had texted me the time and address for the poker game and I knocked on the door exactly at seven. It was the apartment he had lived in when Stephanie had been trying to apprehend him when he was FTA. I'd only been in it the once when I'd helped Stephanie search it. I decided last summer I wanted to keep Morelli from shooting Ziggy Kuleza, but hadn't decided how much I wanted to intervene. There were a lot of moving parts in the case, and I could either stay as small as impeding Morelli's arrival to Carmen's apartment by a few minutes, which would give Ziggy time to be gone with Carmen's body, or to go as far as bringing down the drug ring and Benito Ramirez and Jimmy Alpha with it.

"Come on in," Morelli said when he answered the door. He was freshly showered and wearing jeans and a Rangers t-shirt. I stepped into his apartment and saw four other men sitting at a round table in the dining room. I knew three of them, though I had only encountered Carl Costanza so far in this life.

"You'll remember Carl Costanza from the Messi house. That's my brother Anthony, my cousin Mooch, Eddie Gazarra—he's another cop, and Leo Rizzi. He's a cousin somewhere along the line but we aren't sure where the family tree meets up."

I shook hands with the men and took a seat at the table. I declined Morelli's offer of a beer and the group made small talk for a couple of minutes while Costanza shuffled the cards.

"Joe says you own a security company," Mooch said as Costanza dealt. "And you were in the Army. Our little Leo here is about to head off to basic training."

Leo Rizzi looked to be in his early twenties and resembled Morelli with slightly lighter hair and skin. He flipped Mooch the bird at being called Little Leo.

"Where are you headed?" I asked Leo as I examined the cards in my hand and compared them to what Costanza had laid on the table. Not great.

"Fort Benning. I'm going in as an 11B. Where were you?"

"I spent most of my time at Benning in the 75th Ranger Regiment," I said. "My other office is down in Columbus, and I spend half my week down there."

"I wanted to do Special Forces, but my ASVAB score wasn't high enough," he said, tossing some poker chips in the middle of the table. "The recruiter said I could test again, but I decided to wait and see how much I like the Army before making it harder on myself."

"Good call."

Morelli won the first round and dealt the second. I had better cards that time and upped my bet. "What kind of services do you offer?" Mooch asked.

"Both offices offer residential and commercial alarms, on-site security guards, personal protection, bond enforcement, and my Columbus office just started a three-year contract as the security provider for the Muscogee County School District."

"Damn," Mooch said, impressed. "How long did that take you?"

"Couple of years. Started small when I first got out of the Army while I was working security at a hospital. Bond enforcement was a good way to make fast money and the business grew from there. The school contract was a big boost. Helped me head up here to open my office sooner than I'd expected."

"Why Trenton?" Gazarra asked. "Hell, why New Jersey?"

"I'm originally from Newark, and I've always wanted to come back. As for Trenton, it's an ideal market. Being the state capital means access to a variety of people and industries. It's small enough not to be oversaturated with providers, but large enough to build a solid business. Columbus has grown enough that I'm in the early stages of planning for an Atlanta office once I get Trenton running smoothly, and hopefully I'll open a couple of other offices up here someday."

I won the second round and Mooch got up to get another beer before we started the third.

"How long you been married?" Anthony asked, nodding at my ring.

"Eight months."

"Newlyweds," Anthony replied. "I remember those days. Sort of. By the time I'd been married eight months, we had a two-month-old baby screaming its head off. Got any kids?"

I shook my head. "Not yet."

"Don't do it," Gazarra said. "My boys are fucking terrorists."

"And all you do is spend money on them," Anthony added. "Every day it's something else. Toys, school shit, doctors. They're sick all the time too. Not to mention your wife gets all wrapped up in kid stuff and starts to forget you exist for more than taking out the trash. And her tits start to sag after breastfeeding. It's a damn shame. Angie had great tits when we met."

Mooch and Eddie made noises of agreement and lamented the loss of their wives' attractiveness after kids. The other three married men spent a few minutes complaining about the demands their wives put on them. Anthony talked about a woman he'd been seeing on the side recently and showed us a picture of her in a bikini. I thanked the universe that no matter how annoyed we might get with each other, Julio and I would never talk about each other the way these men talked about their wives, and neither of us would dream of cheating.

"What does your wife do?" Leo asked. "Was she in the Army too?"

"Husband, and yes, he was. Now he's a physical therapy assistant."

Anthony had just taken a swig of beer and choked on it. "Hold up. You're gay?"

"You don't look gay," Gazarra added.

"Bisexual, if you want to get specific about it, but since I'm married to a man, gay works too."

Everyone but Morelli stared at me in stunned silence. "You look like that," Anthony began, gesturing vaguely with one hand. "You could have all the pussy you want, and you're with a guy?"

"Yes," I said, placing my cards down to fold.

"How did you figure out you were gay?" Anthony asked. "Did you just wake up one day and think 'I want to try dick'?"

"Dude, you met him less than an hour ago," Mooch said.

"Do not feel like you need to answer this dumbass," Morelli said to me while smacking his brother on the back of the head.

"I swear I'm not judging. I'm just curious," Anthony protested.

"Julio was my best friend in high school. We got together the last couple of years of school, but broke up a few months after graduation. Didn't talk for four years. He reached out, we started being friends again and got back together two years later. Been together since," I said, hoping that would satisfy Anthony's curiosity. I wouldn't be going into detail about my sex life, but also didn't want to make the game awkward by telling him to mind his own damn business.

"Huh," Anthony said, sitting back and staring at the ceiling as though I'd just presented him with a complex physics theory. "I mean, it's probably not bad. No dealing with PMS and you probably like a lot of the same things. I wouldn't mind being gay if I didn't have to suck dick."

"I think that's kind of the point of being gay," Costanza commented. "Otherwise, you're just roommates."

"Maybe that's what I need," Anthony said. "Just live with a roommate. Then I wouldn't have anyone nagging at me for leaving my towel on the bathroom floor. And I'd be able to bring women home whenever I wanted."

"What about your kids?" Leo asked.

"They'd come over and stay. I wouldn't bring anyone over when they were there," Anthony replied, offended that Leo was questioning his parenting. "Damn, dude. I'm not a monster."

"Just a shitty husband," Morelli replied as he added to his bet.

Conversation flowed between sports, work, and local politics for the next hour and a half while everyone but Gazarra took turns winning rounds. The game broke up around nine and Morelli walked us all to the door. I shook hands with everyone, wished Leo luck with basic training, and thanked Morelli for inviting me.

"Sorry about Anthony," he said. "I swear he was raised with manners."

"It's fine. I could tell he wasn't being malicious and just—,"

"A nibshit?" Morelli offered.

"Exactly."

"Well, if he hasn't scared you off, you're welcome to join anytime. Same time, same place, unless I'm working."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said. We shook hands and I headed to my car. Once I was on the road, I called Julio.

"How was your day?" he asked.

"Weird. I had lunch with Morelli to go over my statement and saw Stephanie come into grab takeout while I was there. We got to talking about her and I found out she never hit Morelli with her car. I don't know how I managed to change that. Then he invited me to his weekly poker game. I just left."

"The same Morelli that tried to beat the shit out of you when he found you in Hawaii?"

"Yeah. We had only interacted a few times before Stephanie started in bond enforcement, but it had always been civil enough. Things got more hostile once we both started getting more involved with her."

"You and Morelli might get along this time around," Julio said, his tone unnaturally neutral." Unless you plan to get back with Stephanie again."

"Obviously not," I reminded him. "It feels strange to say out loud, but I think Morelli and I could end up being friends this time."

"Will that change things too much?" he asked. "You're always worried about that."

"I can't keep avoiding it anymore. I can't let Morelli get arrested for murder, and I don't really want to stand by while a woman gets murdered and a serial rapist wanders the streets. I'm going to be changing a lot of things. I just have to hope it doesn't bite me in the ass."

"Do you think it'll change enough that you won't have to look after Stephanie so much?"

"Not sure. Morelli was a big motivator for her when she entered bond enforcement, and it's how she got a taste for the whole thing. If she gets stuck with just a few dull, low-paying cases she might get bored and move on. Or she could get wrapped up in something else. It's hard to say with Stephanie."

"So I can't get out of moving to Trenton?" he asked.

A flash of annoyance hit me, and I bit the inside of my cheek to curb my impulse to tell him off. He made comments like this from time to time. I knew he didn't want to live in Trenton, and he had known this was my path since before we got together. But it didn't stop him bringing it up whenever he got the chance.

"I guess if you like this arrangement, you can keep doing it," I said with only a slight edge to my tone. "I personally hate it."

There were a few seconds of silence before Julio pushed the conversation on. "What time do you tour that house tomorrow?" he asked.

"One."

I'd been renting an apartment in downtown Trenton since December while I got the office set up and Julio and I looked at houses. We would check places out online and I toured them in person, since I was the one with the long list of requirements. Julio's only requirements were a decent backyard and a garage. I'd checked out a few places in Trenton, but none stood out to me. We had recently expanded our search into Hamilton Township, which was where tomorrow's tour would take me.

"Text me when you're done," he said. "It looks nice." He sounded exhausted. Not physically, but mentally.

"Will do. How are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm okay. Not really looking forward to going back to work tomorrow."

"Do you need another day off?"

"Nah, I'll be alright. I'm already in bed, so I'll get to sleep and hopefully feel better in the morning."

We talked for a few more minutes until I arrived at the apartment. I promised to text him about the house, and we disconnected. I felt guilty for my earlier irritation with him. He was going through a lot, and I knew I needed to be more appreciative of his willingness to follow me wherever I needed to go, even if he complained about it. I tried to not get wrapped up in work to the point that I neglected to consider his feelings, but found myself falling into old habits more often now that I was back in Trenton and my company was growing into something resembling what Rangeman had been. I would need to make a concerted effort to do better. Julio deserved a better husband than I was being, and the most important thing in my life was his happiness. I added a couple of items to my list of required house features that I thought would make Julio more comfortable in our new place. He may have to live in a city he doesn't like, but I wanted him to be happy in our home.