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I wokeup a lot more sore than I had been, which was saying something, but Taavi and Elliot both managed to get me—very slowly—downstairs for brunch around eleven. Mom was up and moving around the kitchen, getting out several kinds of cheese, a whole bunch of eggs, as well as a package of ham, green onions, and mushrooms.

She’d also pulled a container of frozen croissants—unbaked—out of the freezer. When she made them, she would always make sets of frozen unbaked pastries so that she could do exactly this.

Elliot and Taavi got me settled in a chair at the kitchen table, and Elliot went to see if Mom needed help while Taavi made all three of us cups of coffee—Elliot’s black, mine with creamer, his own sweet and black. I sipped my delicious caffeine, feeling vaguely more like a person. A beaten-to-shit person, but still a person.

Taavi had showered, but I hadn’t had the willpower to bother, but I had let him drag a chair into the bathroom to wash my hair in the sink. It was still damp, hanging around my jaw, reminding me that Gregory Crane wasn’t here because he couldn’t be. I kept that thought to myself.

Elliot had his tied back with another bandana, this one red, and was speaking softly to my mother as he helped her chop things for what were apparently going to be omelets. I was surprisingly hungry, given how little sleep and how much pain I was running on.

I’ve been in worse pain, mind you. Getting beaten by the MFM crowd in Richmond had left me a lot more achy overall than I felt now, and definitely being shit-kicked by Nico the goon for the better part of an hour had been much, much worse. I was a little sore all over, with a nice, deep, cutting pain in my side where some asshole had plunged a knife.

I looked up. “Taav?”

He came over, running his fingers lightly across the back of my neck. “Yeah?”

“Did you tell Detective Smith what you saw yesterday?”

He let out a soft grunt. “Is he in your phone?” he asked me.

I nodded, and Taavi went back upstairs, taking his coffee with him, presumably to call Smith from my phone.

I’d thought that sitting at the table would be fine, but the pain in my side was getting stronger, and my weak attempts at shifting my weight didn’t so much ease it as cause it to spike higher.

I heard paper rustle as my dad lowered his newspaper.

“You want to move into the other room, Val?”

I grimaced. “No, but I probably should.”

Dad stood up, waving at Elliot, who was presumably coming over. “Oh, keep chopping. I’m not so old that I can’t haul this kid’s scrawny butt into the living room.”

I suppressed a smirk, despite the pain.

It was faintly ridiculous that anyone else in this house was trying to move me anywhere, since Elliot was the tallest of them at just under six feet, with my Dad about five-nine and my mom and Taavi bringing up the rear at five-four.

But I also wasn’t going to reject my dad, so I let him help me up, politely—yes, I can be polite when I really want to—ignoring the slight grunt as he hefted me and got himself under my left side. He managed to get me over to the couch, then settled me down on it before going back into the kitchen and coming back with both our coffees and his newspaper. He then joined me, sitting in his recliner and putting his feet up before turning on the TV.

Once I got back to Richmond, I was never going to watch TV again. Maybe streaming shit, because then I could control the content, but Jesus fuck was I getting sick of local news stories.

“With WERA passing the state legislature yesterday and headed for the governor’s desk, where he’s promised to sign it into law, protests turned violent all around the badger state,”an inappropriately pleasant newscaster told the cameras.“Protests took place outside the capitol building in Madison, but also in government centers and at courthouses in Milwaukee, Green Bay, La Crosse, Oshkosh, and Superior, as well as in other towns and cities all over Wisconsin,” she continued.“Local officials in multiple cities reported violence accompanying the protests, including right here in Shawano, where at least nine people were taken to the hospital yesterday, including several members of law enforcement. In Milwaukee, more than thirty protestors received medical treatment, with twelve still hospitalized and two fatalities. In Green Bay, things were even more deadly, with three fatalities, one of whom was a member of law enforcement. More than a dozen people were taken to the hospital, six still in serious but stable condition.”

“Shit,” my dad said softly.

I agreed, although I didn’t say anything.

He picked up the remote and flicked through the channels until he found some nature thing on one of the cable channels. “Val?”

“We’re not mentioning the news?” I guessed.

“Your mother doesn’t need to be any more worried.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

I just hoped things weren’t going to get any worse.

20

I was ensconcedon the couch again the next day when Smith paid us a visit to take everybody’s statements, starting with Taavi. I couldn’t hear exactly what was said, although I could tell from the lower pitch of Taavi’s voice that he was unhappy. Not that Smith sounded particularly chipper, but I couldn’t read his gravelly tones the way I could Taavi’s.