This was supposed to be a celebration, and now I was getting depressed. I needed another drink. I’d set my last beer somewhere and couldn’t find it now.
“Hey, Kitty!”
I turned and saw Peter Gurney standing by the door. His appearance was the same as always, kind of scruffy in his army jacket and biker apparel. But he looked better now: stood a little straighter, smiled a little more. He wasn’t so angry anymore.
After the confrontation with the Tiamat cult, I’d asked him what he’d planned on doing. Turned out Paradox PI made him an offer—they could use another person on the team, and Peter passed the audition. He brought his investigative skills to the show and played the part of their junior member in training.
“You made it!” I said, standing to meet him as he came over to join us. We hugged briefly, and he waved at the others, who all waved back. “Come on, sit down.”
He did, then pulled something from his coat pocket. “I brought this for you. Just to say thanks.”
“Thanks for what?”
“For filling in the blanks about Ted. For being his friend.”
He handed over a snapshot. It was T.J. A younger, cockier one than the guy I’d known. He was thin, with rough-and-tumble hair, looking very James Dean in a white T-shirt, tight jeans, and biker boots. Arms crossed, he was leaning against a motorcycle with lots of black and chrome, an older model I didn’t recognize, not the finicky Yamaha he’d had when I knew him.
“This was right before he left home,” Peter said. “He was eighteen. Just got his first bike. Looking back, I think he planned it all out. He worked, bought the bike himself. Bought himself a way to escape when Mom and Dad kicked him out. He expected them to kick him out. I know he never could have taken me with him. But I still wish . . . I don’t know. I wish he’d stayed safe.”
I had to smile, and I had to cry a little at the same time. I had a little piece of T.J. outside my memory now.
“Thank you very much for this,” I said.
“It’s the least I could do. It means a lot to know there’s someone else who feels the same way about him.”
“That your brother?” Tina said, craning her neck to look over the table.
“Yeah,” Peter said, and I handed Tina the picture, which she studied.
“Hm. Cute,” she said. “We could use more like him batting for our side.”
I almost laughed at the joke, but I had to stop and think: Had any of us mentioned to her that T.J. was gay? Had she overheard Peter and I talking about it? Before I could ask, Peter was talking.
“I know it was stupid of me to think you could talk to him on cue,” Peter said, shrugging inside his canvas coat. “I was assuming he’d have something to say to me.”
A thoughtful expression pursing her features, Tina slipped the photo back to me. Then she reached in her purse.
She said, “Peter, what do you know about automatic writing?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
But Gary raised his eyebrows, and Jules dropped his jaw.
“You’re not serious,” Jules said. “Are you serious?”
“What?” Peter said. “What is it?”
“Just open it,” Tina said, handing him an envelope.
We watched him intently as he tore open the envelope. He pulled out a sheet of paper, slowly unfolded it, and went a bit ashen. Looking over his shoulder, I could see mostly white, with just a line of handwritten text. He must have read it a dozen times, his eyes flicking back and forth.
Then he dropped the page, covered his eyes, and took two or three deep, shuddering breaths.
“I’m sorry. This probably wasn’t the time or place for this,” Tina said.
The page was lying there on the table. I couldn’t help but read it. It said: “Petey. Let it go.”
My eyes instantly teared up. It was like a Pavlovian reaction. I couldn’t control it, the tears just happened, in response to the implication of the note. If Tina could do what she said she could, these were his words. This was as close and as real as he’d been in over a year.