Chapter 40 – Visit
Luke stood outside the apartment door with two paper bags, cutting into his fingers.
One bag held pastries from a corner bakery that opened before dawn.
The other held a cheap stuffed fox he had bought at a convenience store because he remembered—no, because the original remembered—that one of the girls used to drag a fox-shaped pillow through the house until the stuffing tore.
The hallway smelled faintly of detergent and boiled rice.
Somewhere, a television was playing quietly behind a closed door—morning ads. Bright voices. A world pretending to be simple.
Luke looked at the door in front of him.
Then looked away.
He could walk into a warehouse full of armed smugglers without hesitation. He could hold his breath inside a collapsing strategy and find the one line that kept him alive. He could look Arthur Pendleton in the eye while fire tried to turn him into ash.
But this—
This was different.
He shifted his grip on the bags and forced his breathing to slow.
Three seconds in.
Three seconds out.
He raised his hand.
Knocked.
No answer.
For a moment, he wondered if Emily had changed her mind and taken the girls somewhere else.
Then he heard footsteps. Light, uneven.
The lock clicked.
The door opened halfway.
Emily stood there in loose home clothes instead of Bureau black. Her right arm was in a sling, wrapped under a dark cardigan. Her hair was tied back with no effort, strands falling around her face. She looked tired in the way people looked after painkillers wore off and sleep failed to do its job.
Her eyes went to the paper bags first.
Then to him.
"You're on time," she said.
"I said I'd come."
A pause.
The air between them was not cold, exactly. It was controlled.
Emily opened the door wider and stepped aside. "Come in before they hear you and sprint into the wall."
Luke crossed the threshold.
The apartment was warmer than his. Smaller than he expected. More lived in.
Blankets were folded over the couch. Colouring pencils in a mug on the table. Two school backpacks by the wall, one with a broken zipper repaired with blue thread. A half-finished drawing clipped to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a moon.
The smell of ginger and milk tea sat quietly in the kitchen.
From the bedroom hallway came a muffled voice.
"Mom? Was that him?"
Then a second, sharper one: "Don't run, you'll trip—"
Too late.
Small footsteps hammered across the floor.
A little girl burst into the room like a thrown spark, hair messy, socks mismatched, eyes too bright for this early. She skidded to a stop three steps from Luke, stared up at him with fierce concentration, then launched herself forward and wrapped both arms around his waist.
"Baba!"
The word hit harder than any blade.
Luke froze for half a heartbeat, then set the paper bags down quickly and bent to hold her.
His hands were careful. Almost uncertain.
She smelled like shampoo and sleep.
Behind her, another girl stepped out from the hallway and stopped near the corner of the couch.
Same face. Different posture.
Sara and Sera.
He could distinguish them now by instinct and memory layering together: the one in his arms was Sara—quick, impulsive, loud with feeling. The one near the couch was Sera—still, observant, the one who watched before deciding.
Sera folded her arms.
"You're late."
Luke swallowed.
"I'm here."
"That's not the same."
Sara twisted in his arms to glare at her sister. "Don't be mean."
"I'm not mean. I'm right."
Emily let out a quiet breath that might have been a sigh, might have been a warning to both girls, and moved toward the kitchen.
"I'm making tea. No fighting before breakfast."
Sara released Luke and immediately grabbed one of the paper bags.
"What's this?"
"Careful," Luke said. "There are pastries."
Her eyes widened. "From the bakery near school?"
He nodded. She made a tiny triumphant sound and ran toward the table like she had won something. Sera stayed where she was.
Luke met her gaze.
He had faced killers less intimidating than this ten-year-old with narrowed eyes.
"Hi," he said.
Sera tilted her head. "You look different."
"Different how?"
She considered this with almost clinical seriousness. "Like… you're trying not to move too much."
Luke almost smiled.
"That obvious?"
"To me, yes."
She stepped closer, stopped again, then looked at the stuffed fox still sticking out from the second bag.
"That's for me?"
"I wasn't sure which one of you would want it."
Sera's expression flickered. Not a smile. Something smaller.
"I don't sleep with toys anymore," she said, then reached out and took it anyway. "But she does."
She tossed the fox to Sara, who caught it and squealed.
"Mine!"
Sera rolled her eyes with exhausted dignity and walked to the table as if she had done everyone a favour. Luke stood there for a second too long, watching them.
Petra's voice came quietly through the ring.
"Your pulse is erratic."
"I noticed."
"You have entered many dangerous places. This appears to be the one that unsettles you most."
Luke ignored that and followed the girls to the table. Breakfast was loud in a way combat never was. Sara talked with her mouth full despite three warnings from Emily.
Sera corrected her vocabulary twice and then mispronounced "cinnamon" while doing it, which Sara noticed immediately and weaponised. Emily poured tea one-handed with surprising precision despite the sling.
Luke mostly listened.
He responded when spoken to. Passed plates. Cut pastries in half for smaller hands. Wiped jam off Sara's cheek when she made a face and pretended not to notice.
The routine was ordinary.
That was what made it almost unbearable.
Because nothing about him in this room was ordinary.
Every gesture came with a double sensation.
One part was his own, immediate and raw.
The other came like an echo from the original Luke's memories—how to hold the cup so Sara wouldn't spill while reaching, where Sera preferred to sit because she hated the draft near the window, how Emily tapped the table twice when she was in pain and trying not to show it.
Borrowed instincts.
Borrowed tenderness.
But the ache in his chest wasn't borrowed.
That part was new.
After breakfast, Sara dragged him to the living room rug and demanded he "judge" a card game with rules that changed every thirty seconds. Sera sat opposite with dignified annoyance and a hidden delight she refused to display.
Emily stayed in the kitchen longer than necessary, washing dishes that were already clean, then wiping the same counter twice.
Luke watched her from the floor while Sara explained that foxes could be lawyers if trained correctly.
Emily felt his gaze and looked up once.
Not long enough to be called a look.
Long enough to say she knew he was looking.
She tilted her head toward the kitchen doorway, subtly.
Later.
He nodded once.
An hour passed.
It felt like five minutes.
The girls eventually migrated to the bedroom to "show Baba something important," which turned out to be a cardboard city made from old cereal boxes, bottle caps, and colored tape.
"This is the station," Sara declared, pointing to a lopsided block with three windows drawn in thick red marker.
"This is not a station," Sera said. "This is a courthouse. You forgot and changed it."
"It can be both!"
"It cannot."
Luke crouched beside them. He noticed one drawing taped above the desk. Crayon lines, hard pressure, thick strokes.
A giant bird made of orange and gold, swallowing dark buildings in spirals of smoke.