The apartment Grant shares with his wife, Leena, isn’t much. Their place’s floor plan is open. The space clean, uncluttered, and well taken care of. It consists of a single bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchen way too small for Grant’s needs.

  Most of what Grant wants to take with him is in there. The first thing he grabs are his chef’s knives, which are wrapped up in a Kevlar bundle in a drawer. He unrolls them on the counter by the stove, a glittering, stainless steel row that reminds me somehow of soldiers on parade, each in their positions, waiting for orders. His quick fingers check each sheath for its occupant then, satisfied, he wraps them all up again, like a priest will his stole. It makes sense, I guess. Cooking is his calling and these are his tools, his holy weapons of war, all of which serves very well to unmix my metaphor.

  We pop his clothes into a series of trash bags.

  There’s a bad moment when I realize Grant is staring into his wife’s underwear drawer, but he closes it again with nobody having mention it, much to my relief. There are some other things I see him contemplate, but each time, whether it’s that cookbook, that snow globe from Yosemite, the alarm clock, whatever, he sets it back down with nothing more than a clenching of his jaw muscles and gives it a pat to say goodbye. He does it with each object he considers, like he’s set himself a rule. When in doubt, leave it be.

  He moves from room to room using his whole concentration, though he isn’t drunk anymore. But because this is awful and tragic but must be done. I can see by the look on his face that he wants to fall into a corner and howl, but it’s better to finish fast.

  And we do.

  We get him all packed up within a couple of hours. James reminds him to leave his copy of the key to the apartment and Grant pulls a ring of them out of his pocket to stare.

  “Car key, key for here, key to her mom and dad’s…,” the big man says in a trance. “Everything here unlocks something I shared with her. All of them.” He drops the whole bundle and walks out the door, five heavy trash bags full of his stuff slung over his shoulder like some sort of backwards Santa Claus.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  We sit in the car. James is in the driver’s seat. Grant’s too huge for the back, so I volunteered. It’s cramped, but I’ll survive. Most of the big guy’s crap is in the trunk, but I still have to elbow aside much of his wardrobe and the plastic of the trash bag is sticking to my arm in that way it does, keeping my skin from breathing, and making it sweat.

  I’m not sure why we haven’t left, but then it occurs to me that Grant hasn’t told James where to go. I assumed he’d be staying with James, but now that I think about it, James hasn’t offered, and Grant hasn’t asked.

  The thump, thump, thump of a basketball draws my attention to a park across the street where a group of teenagers are playing under a couple of flickering streetlights. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re all on the local high school team. All four of them are taller than any of us, even the girl. They all move in that graceful way that natural players have, like gazelles, that doesn’t always translate to life off the court, where everything’s too small for them, especially when they’re young. Just yesterday, they were reaching up for the doorknob and they aren’t yet used to being giants.

  I get out of the car and start walking over.

  I hear the doors open behind me.

  “Ben?” James sounds uncertain.

  I don’t answer. It should be fairly obvious what I’m doing. Grant’s a physical guy, and I bet he’s got a familiarity with most sports. After a day of being humiliated, embarrassed, and demeaned, and maybe there’s a way to balance some of that out.

  “Hey!” I call out to the players. “Can we play?”

  The kids all fix us with grins, but they don’t laugh. I was half expecting some incredulity, if not outright nastiness.

  The tallest kid, six foot six, if he’s an inch, shrugs. “Why not? Gotta go soon, though. It’s a school night.” He’s black, sweat shines on his skin, and his smile is pleasant and open. His hands are the size of paperback novels.

  The girl hunches over, hands on her hips. She’s tied her dark braids behind her head, and her grin is more predatory than any of her friends’. She lifts one shoe off the court and then the other, like a sumo wrestler before the match. Her white sports bra is soaked through with sweat, but her breathing is unlabored.

  The other two might be black or Latino, or maybe even Eurasian. Both are just past Grant’s height, six foot three or four, and are probably brothers. They have the same lop-sided smile, the same brown eyes, and both have crossed their arms at me in the same manner. They’re both wearing baseball hats turned around backwards and their shorts reach below their knees. One’s in all gray, the other in all blue. I realize maybe a bit later than I should that they’re identical twins. They both nod at me. The blue kid’s got the ball. He’s dribbling it, one, two, three times with his right hand, a pass through his legs to his left, then one, two, three more, then back again.

  I look behind me to see Grant and James approaching, looking confused. I shrug and turn to the kids.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “I’m Ben,” I say. “This is Grant and James.”

  “Jimmy,” says Jimmy. “Friends call me Jimmy.”

  The tall kid says, “I’m Ernie.” He nods at the girl. “That’s Teresa.” A long finger angles over at the twins. “And that’s Grigori and Ivan, the genuine Mongolian Rushin’ Russian twin forwards of the mighty BHS basketball team.”

  “Honored,” I say. Nodding hello.

  Ernie’s easy smile broadens. “What made y’all decide to lose to us this fine evening?”

  I hook a thumb over my shoulder. “My buddy Grant is having a bad day. I thought this might help.”

  Teresa snorts. “Getting trounced in b-ball always helps me feel better.”

  “The trash talk starts early around here,” I say. “Us three versus you four?”

  Ernie blinks. “Masochists, I see. Yo, are you from the geriatric league or something?”

  “Dude, I’m not even thirty yet. I don’t think Grant is either. Jimmy’s twelve.”

  “I’m twenty-six!”

  I look over at Grant, who nods solemnly, clearly expecting my disbelief.

  Grant says, “We’ll go skins.” He takes off his shirt.

  “That’s not—,” Teresa starts, and I get it. They all know each other and won’t have any trouble knowing who is on what team.

  But Grant’s up to something else. I thought he might’ve been wearing a work shirt that was a bit too small out of vanity. Now I think maybe they don’t make shirts that fit a torso like that. He’s as ripped as I’ve ever seen.

  Then I look at Jimmy, who’s tossing his own shirt onto the grass beside the street. He’s one of those scrawny-looking guys you’d never expect to have seen the inside of a gym until you see him changing his clothes. If anything, his musculature is even more defined than his friends.

  I’m no slouch. Where I was skinny before, after training with the FBI, I’ve been gaining some weight, just about all of it muscle, but nothing like either of them.

  Teresa’s blushing and Ernie’s mouth is hanging open. The twins are snickering.

  Ernie says, “Why do I get the feeling this is gonna be an odd game?”

  When we start playing, I don’t think anybody expects much of a contest, but somehow, wink wink, everything seems to go right with us. I’d always been a decent outside shooter in gym class. Jimmy is fast and tireless. He flickers across the court, dodging this way and that, like one of those old timey movies where everybody’s sped up, only with frames missing in the sequence. Grant is a powerhouse. A tank. He moves in fits and starts, getting a kick out of stopping short to bounce a kid off him. Pretty soon, they hesitate to get too close. His face flushes bright red as he worked, and he roars as he stutters his way to the net, startling giggles out of all of us.

  It doesn’t take long to settle into our roles. I feed the ball to Jimmy, who works it in and then passes it to Grant, who bellows and goes for the layup. Whatever Ernie can’t block gets sunk.

  Teresa is lightning, intercepting the ball, moving to the outside, handing it off, or taking the shot. The twins are all over us, slowing our approaches, making us pay for every inch. Since we are a player short, anything we do has to be in their faces. And if Ernie so much as touches the damn thing under the net, he scores, slam dunking it with great flair, eliciting whoops of joy from everybody.

  It’s a good-natured game, but the kids have already been playing for hours, and even though they are younger, our side is all fit, fresh, and I am Pushing. Especially for Grant. Anything he does that remotely hinges on probability goes his way. Nothing unlucky could happen to him. He never stumbles, never bounces the ball off his shoe to send it caroming off into the grass, never bulldozes one of the twins into a red smear on the cracked concrete. Every shot he takes that isn’t crazy or blocked makes it in. Grant can do no wrong. He’s having the game of his life.

  Our successes push the kids harder. They leap and run like ballet dancers, swear like sailors, and giggle like children half their age.

  They beat us twenty-two to twenty-one, with Teresa sinking a three pointer, two feet past half court.

  We all collapse, groaning and laughing, most of us right there on the asphalt, but the twins fall over in the grass, onto their backs, everybody’s chest heaving.

  “Oh my God, that was a good game.” Ernie can barely heave the words out.

  There were some breathless nods and some laughter.

  I get up and stagger away, fishing my phone out of my pocked. Something occurred to me as I played, and now it’s time to make a call. I dial the number and move off out of ear shot.

  “Ben?”

  “Myra?” I say. “I’m fine. There’s no emergency.”

  “Well, it ought to be. It’s fucking midnight!”

  “I know.” I’m gulping air, trying to manage my breathing. “Sorry.”

  “You’re out of breath. Have you been running? Who from? What’s wrong?”

  “No, no. Basketball game. Did I wake you?”

  “No, I—. Basketball game?”

  “Yep. Myra, you know about Dr. Linn’s Shelter, right?”

  “Yes. I helped her find the property. Alex went over the lease—.”

  “The FBI’s doing that, right? Managing the place?”

  “Through some grants and survivor groups, yes, that’s my understanding. Why?”

  “Could we do it better?”

  Myra’s quiet for a bit, thinking it over. “Maybe.”

  “Would it make money, or would we have to operate it at a loss? And if it’s a loss, could we absorb it?”

  “We could contract with the government maybe, or take it over,” she mumbles to herself. “Specialize or diversify? Include women’s shelters? Hmmm….”

  “I was thinking regional centers packed full of specialists and mental health experts? Maybe offer those services to existing shelters and similar programs?”

  “I’ll have to look into it, Ben.”

  “If it’s workable, I want to do it, okay? I’ve got all this money, you know?” I glance over at the teenagers sprawling on the ground, breathing like a bunch of beached fish. “And I want to start a scholarship program, too. I want to be able to point at a kid and say you’re going to college or a trade school or an apprenticeship or whatever.”

  “Are you okay? What’s got into you?”

  “How much money do I lose compared to how much I get, Myra?”

  “Depends on the day. Once you lost about three-quarters of everything, but within twenty-four hours you’d replaced it and expanded by about ten percent.”

  “Yeah, so this way I control how I lose it.”

  “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that,” says Myra after a moment.

  “You can’t tell me you aren’t okay with this, right? Doing some good with stock market money?”

  There’s a longer pause. “You know, you’re right? Old habits, I think. For a long time, Alex and I were just skating by, and now we’re not, and it hasn’t even been a year since we met you. You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. Fuck!”

  I laugh. Myra doesn’t swear much and when she does, it’s almost always at herself. “You’re in then?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Yes, I mean. Yes. In fact, we’ll do it even if we both operate at a loss. I want to lose money on this, right? Let’s take care of those people. There are plenty of bastards out there hurting them. Do you suppose the school is big enough? I can find—.”

  “I don’t know about any of that,” I say. “And neither do you. Talk to the experts, pay them for their time, and listen to their advice.” I look over at Grant and Jimmy. Grant’s bent over with his hands on his knees like he’s going to be sick. Jimmy’s got a hand on his shoulder. “And whatever we do end up getting, make sure the place has a first-rate kitchen.”