Chapter Text
ASTORIA - September 25, 2004 - 3:32 AM
Talia eased the Mustang to the curb outside her rowhouse on 33rd, the engine dropping into that low, satisfied growl it made only when she coaxed it home. The block was in that pre-dawn silence that isn’t quiet at all, pipes clanking alive in old buildings, a late N train groaning on the elevated, the wind rattling someone’s plastic lawn chair down the sidewalk. Her shoulders still held the case like armour. Four months at SVU and she was already learning which horrors learned her name and stuck around.
She killed the engine, sat a second, then slipped out with her heels hooked in two fingers. Asphalt was cool under her feet. In the building across the way, an Armenian auntie peered through lace curtains, decided it was only Talia, and let the drape fall. Astoria had eyes; they were gentle.
The front door opened with that familiar iron sigh. The scent inside; thyme, laundry soap, the ghost of incense, met her like a hand to the cheek. The living room lamp had been left on low. On the rug: three German Shepherds in one catastrophic pile. Ramses snored with a whistle. Anubis’s paw twitched like he was chasing something glorious. Little Heka, the youngest, tucked his nose under Anubis’s chest like a child hiding in a brother’s coat.
“Idiots,” she whispered, smiling despite the weight in her bones.
On the stove: a heavy pot, lid slightly askew. Ameen had been by. There was a scrap of paper under a magnet:
Fed them. Walked them. Sleep. Eat. Call me in the morning, dummy.
She lifted the lid; steam lifted with the smell of lamb, cumin, and the kind of patience that makes rice an act of love. Uzbek plov. Ameen always tried to pass it off as his, but the aluminium takeout lid in the trash betrayed him. Astoria alchemy: bought with love was still love.
She ate at the couch with the TV off, the silence loud enough to fill her ribs. The first bite was too hot, the second perfect, and then Heka’s ears pricked. He slid from the dog heap with the stealth of a thief, thumped onto the cushion, and set his chin on her thigh. Those eyes, devotion dressed like manipulation.
“No,” Talia said, firm. Heka did not move, except to lean harder.
“No,” she repeated, and Heka blinked very slowly, a saint suffering.
She ate and didn’t taste it because in the same mouthful she was still hearing a little girl’s voice cracking through a 911 line, crying I can’t find the windows, and Olivia saying calm, impossible things like Okay, sweetheart, tell me what you can smell. Fin had run the streets with her for hours, triangulating sound and faith. Monsters felt closer when they were quiet. Their quiet was always deliberate.
She finished and left two lamb-slick grains of rice for Heka, because she was only human. He licked the bowl with cathedral reverence and then collapsed, satisfied, half on her lap like a warm living scarf. She sat until the clock had no more minutes in it. Then sleep came sideways, the kind that isn’t sleep so much as the body giving up.
ASTORIA - September 25, 2004 - 7:52 AM
She woke to a patch of sunlight stabbing her eyelids and a dumb, heavy weight pressing down on her ribs. Somewhere between awake and gone, she’d migrated to the floor and joined the tangle. Ramses had chosen her midsection as his pillow. Anubis was draped over her shins like a very determined throw blanket. Heka had his face tucked against her neck, breathing dog coffee.
“Move, Anu,” she muttered into fur, pushing at an unmoving flank.
Anubis answered with the slow, operatic yawn of a man on vacation and stretched until his toes shook. Ramses followed with a full-body shiver. Heka, affronted, tried to crawl onto her shoulders, failed, and settled for her lap.
“Okay, okay. Shower. Then the park. Democracy.”
Three heads cocked at the word park. Three tails made soft thuds on hardwood.
Upstairs, they followed her because in this house privacy was theoretical. Talia stood in the bathroom and stared at her reflection while the shower beat steam against the mirror. The case lingered behind her eyes, the kind of residue no soap cuts. “Not the church of grief today,” she told herself, unconvincing. She glanced at her back when the glass cleared: saints and serpents and script; her mother’s name, her father’s; ink stitched over bone like a quilt of the things no one could take.
She thought about the painting again, Christ in Gethsemane, head bowed in that terrible, tender surrender. She’d been circling it for weeks, how to carry a garden at war on her shoulder. “Not today,” she said to the mirror. The mirror kept her secrets.
She dressed for anonymity: an oversized grey hoodie with a faint bleach constellation on the cuff, matching sweats, battered Jordans. Hair up. Gold hoops because she never left the house without something that shone. Keys, phone, bags, treats, patience. Collars and leads clicked; Ramses tolerant, Anubis dignified, Heka so excited he sat because he could not possibly stand.
Outside, the morning had remembered itself. Stoops sprouted grandparents. Kids chalked galaxies on the sidewalk. A Greek bakery worker hosed down the curb; a Yemeni bodega owner coaxed his cat inside. A woman in a housecoat watered basil and blew Talia a kiss. “Kalimera, Talia!” (Good morning / Greek)
“Sabah el-kheir, Mrs. P.” Talia lifted a hand. The dogs pranced like a small parade. (Good morning / Arabic)
The park was already patchy with dogs and people who loved them. She unclipped the leashes and watched Ramses transform into an agricultural philosopher, nuzzling grass, while Anubis angled for a tug-of-war and Heka made a beeline for the least dry patch of mud. Talia sat, spine long, on a bench that had seen a century of backs. She let the city move around her; a film she could watch without sound. A jogger in a Mets tee. A man dragging a Radio Flyer full of bagels. A teenage girl practicing fouettés on the gravel because sometimes you had to dance where the earth would let you.
“Ostavʹ,” Talia called, not looking, as Heka considered a pigeon. (Leave it / Russian)
He detoured into a puddle and loved it greedily. She smiled. The bench knew her weight. For a precious hour, the grip around her heart loosened. Fin would text later. Olivia would call. Cragen would ask for paperwork in that way that meant and how are you. Elliot would say something direct and jagged and accidentally kind. But for now; dogs, sun, the reliable rhythm of this corner of the world that never forgot anyone’s name.
When the tongues lolled and the sprints collapsed into pratfall trots, she leashed them and crossed to the Egyptian café on the corner. It was owned by her ‘uncle’ Hassan, not by blood, but by the kind of history that counts more. He’d grown up with Talia’s mother in Alexandria, and his son, Ali, had been the one to help fix up her Mustang when she bought it.
In Astoria, everyone was family, and Hassan had claimed her as his own years ago. The place had two wobbly aluminium tables, plastic chairs, and an awning the colour of sweet tea. The chalkboard out front always lied about specials because Hassan preferred to make what he wanted and then bully you into liking it.
“Talusha!” he called from inside when he saw her through the glass, voice a bell that rang down thirty years of friendship. He wiped his hands on a towel and shouldered the door open like it weighed more than it did.
“ʿAmmo,” she said, hugging him one-armed around the tray he insisted on carrying. (Uncle / Arabic)
“What will you eat? And don’t do that little ‘I’m not hungry’ face, I know your blood sugar.” He clocked the dogs. “Three bowls for the princes?”
“Bread, cheese, cucumber, tomato. Tea. And yes, three bowls. Their majesties will dine al fresco.”
He wagged a finger. “You’re too thin. I will add eggs. I won’t charge; you can fight me.”
She rolled her eyes. “You never charge.”
“Because I am a terrible businessman.” He grinned and vanished. A minute later his wife, Nadia, set down a battered stack of bowls from under the counter where Talia kept a Tupperware of kibble. The dogs flopped under the table and ate with the delicacy of jackals at a wedding.
Talia leaned back in the chair and let the neighbourhood wash through her. Cabs braided down 30th Avenue. The N/W rattled somewhere like a distant drum. An old man sold newspapers with the day’s promises banded in ink. She reached for the café bookshelf, dog-eared paperbacks stacked two deep, and pulled down a copy of The Master and Margarita with a split spine. The margin notes in a stranger’s hand had started to feel like cousins. She found the page where she’d left a subway receipt as a bookmark and read the first line three times before the air shifted.
“As-salāmu ʿalayki, Nadine.” (Peace be upon you, Nadine / Arabic)
She looked up into a grin she’d known since they were both missing front teeth. “Wa ʿalaykumu s-salām, Alūsh,” she said, standing to hug him. (And upon you be peace, Alūsh / Arabic)
Ali was tall now, more beard than boy, hands grease-creased from the shop. He crouched to scratch Heka’s head; Heka pretended not to care and thumped his tail traitorously.
“How’s life, Miss Police?” he teased, collapsing into the chair at her side and stealing a triangle of bread so smoothly it counted as tradition.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Too late. I already asked.” He looked at her face properly then, and the grin quieted in the corners. “Bad night?”
“Long,” she said. “Hard.” She left it there, because what could you say that didn’t break something open at the wrong table?
He nodded like he understood the sentence she hadn’t spoken. “I heard they picked up Merza,” he said, voice casual, eyes not. Neighbourhood radar, every story came home, in time.
“Yeah,” she said, taking a sip of tea. “They did.”
“Good.” He put a warm palm on her shoulder for a second, squeezed, then let go. “When are you coming to the mosque? Sheikh Omar keeps asking you to talk to the boys about-” he waved a hand to include the whole chaotic city “-all of this.”
She smiled, lopsided. “You ask like I sleep.”
“You don’t,” he said. “So come on a Friday when you’re already awake.”
“I haven’t even been to church in a while,” she admitted, eyes on the steam rising from her glass. “Feels-” she searched for the word, found six, chose none, “-loud.”
He shrugged, kind. “Allah hears you over the noise. That’s His whole thing.” He pointed at the dogs. “Tell them to come by the shop. I’ll change the oil for free if they say please.”
“They’re greedy,” she warned. “They’ll eat your sockets.”
“Good. I hate those sockets,” he said, and stood, already backing away. He kissed the air near her temple the way the neighbourhood did, public tenderness with the volume turned down. “ʾEḥna benḥebbak, ma tebaʾāš gharib.” (We love you. Don’t be a stranger / Arabic)
She watched him cross the street and vanish into the bright mouth of the auto shop, radio already blaring a pop song that would be haunting every block by afternoon. Hassan came with the eggs he’d sworn to add and a paper cup of extra tea. “For your nerves,” he said, which was code for because I’m worried.
“Shukran, ʿammo.” (Thank you uncle / Arabic)
“Tell your brother he must let me win chess once in his life. I’m an old man; it’s cruel.”
“He’s not capable of mercy,” she deadpanned.
“Like you,” he sighed with love. “Go home before the day learns your name.”
ASTORIA - September 25, 2004 - 12:05 PM
Back at the house, the dogs galloped upstairs like a cavalry and presented each paw for washing because in Talia’s home cleanliness was a sacrament. Paws. Peepee. Butt. The indignity accepted with stoic sighs, because routine was safety and they were safe here.
She crossed the hall and opened the door to what used to be her parents’ room. The air shifted the way it does in spaces that remember. She’d remade it into a small church: icons on the walls in a soft halo, a brass candleholder with beeswax tapers, a low table with a bowl of holy water, a shelf of her mother’s theology texts, and her father’s history books side by side like they were still arguing gently about everything and nothing. The rug was a woven red that felt like warmth under her knees.
She lit a candle. Flame took with a tiny hungry sound. She kissed her fingers and touched them to her parents’ portrait; Miriam’s eyes a lake you could drink forever, Mikhail’s smile like the first chapter of a long story. “Ṣabāḥ el-kheir, Mama. Dobroye utro, Pap,” she said, and the words landed in the room like birds. (Good morning / Arabic & Russian)
The prayer beads were cool in her palm. She crossed herself; forehead, chest, right shoulder, left, and sank onto the rug. The city’s pulse faded to a muffled ocean. She let the beads slide, one, two, three, a rosary of breath. She tried to pray, and what came out first wasn’t a prayer so much as an inventory: Four months. Four months of children talking bravely on phones they shouldn’t have to know how to use. Four months of mothers counting breaths beside ER beds. Four months of men who lied like they breathed and women who apologized for bleeding. She had learned the smell of certain hallways and the weight of certain words. She had learned how to be gentle and how to be steel and how to hold the line when her hands shook.
It was changing her. Of course it was. She felt the case work in the tendons, how she moved, what she carried home. The precinct had its own tenderness, too; unexpected, worn smooth by use. Cragen’s Are you okay? that sounded exactly like Finish your report. Olivia’s steady hands and steady eyes, the way she could talk a storm down. Fin’s humour landing like a wool blanket. Even Stabler, who could set a room on fire by looking at it, had learned to lower his voice two shades when she touched a wall like it might bruise.
And then there was Munch.
She tried not to think his name in this room, but thoughts have their own keys. He’d become a hallway in her head she kept pretending not to walk down. Stupid Munch, sarcastic Munch, cynical Munch, kind Munch when he thought no one was looking. Handsome Munch. Driving-her-home Munch who never asked if she wanted to talk; he just drove with the windows cracked and the radio murmuring late-night jazz no station claimed, and somehow she arrived feeling like she’d spoken a hundred words out loud. That very same Munch she kissed on the cheek; quick, almost nothing, but her lips had remembered the warmth like it was a secret.
Stupid Munch with his stupid big ears and that nose that looked like it had read every book before she did. Stupid four divorces lined up like caution tape he walked past every morning. Stupid comb-over that he pretended was not a comb-over and somehow was perfect anyway, pointing in the exact, infuriating direction she wanted to tug. The stupid holsters. The stupid dress shirts that were always crisp even on days the world wasn’t. The tie knots that made her hands feel very, very unholy.
No. Not these thoughts. Inappropriate. Or if she was being honest, which she rarely was in this room, maybe not the thoughts themselves, but that one perfect, ruinous image: the squad room after hours, blinds drawn, the hum of the city muffled behind glass. His voice low, telling her exactly what line she’d crossed, and exactly how he intended to deal with it.
The weight of his hand settling at her waist, warm, claiming, drawing her forward until her hips brushed the desk. Her palms flattening on the cool wood as he stepped in close. The sound; sharp, metallic, of his belt unbuckling, the slide of leather through denim loops. His breath near her ear, the faint scent of coffee and aftershave, and the unbearable pause before-
“Stop it,” she whispered to the candle, cheeks hot in the empty room.
She pressed the beads to her heart until it hurt a little. “God,” she said softly, not sure which language to choose, so she chose all of them at once. “I don’t know how to carry this and be kind. I don’t know how to want what I want and stay right. If You’re listening, I’m not asking for peace. Just… accuracy. And the strength to keep choosing it.”
The doorframe held her mother’s scarf on a nail. She stood and brushed her fingers over the fringe like greeting a shoulder in passing. Her reflection in the glass of an icon looked like a woman who had not slept and had no intention of lying about it. “I wish you were here to guide me,” she told her mother, voice as steady as she could make it. To her father: “You’d say read more, worry less.” She smiled. “I’m doing one of those.”
She blew out the candle. Smoke lifted and curled, a ribbon of incense and bees and summer kitchens. In the quiet, the house breathed with her. Down the hall, three dogs resettled, dream-whuffing at some perfect park that never closed. Outside, Astoria cleared its throat and began another song.
Talia pressed her forehead to the cool wood of the door for a heartbeat. Then she straightened, rolled her shoulders back, and walked out to meet the day that always, always, remembered her name.
ASTORIA - September 25, 2004 - 8:49 PM
The sun had just gone down, leaving the streets in that soft glow before night fully settles. After the mess of thoughts she’d had earlier in her prayer room, Talia stayed in the living room for the rest of the evening, quietly reading. She hadn’t eaten, didn’t feel like it, and only noticed the time when the dogs started getting restless for their final walk of the day.
Outside, the last light slipped low behind the buildings, painting the sky a muted orange. She clipped their collars on but didn’t bother with leashes, letting them roam around her like they always did. Ramses, Anubis, and Heka trotted ahead as she stepped down onto the sidewalk.
The block was alive in the way she’d always known it, kids running and laughing in the street, teenagers she didn’t recognize smoking next to her building, the older men gathered around their usual backgammon boards on the sidewalk. The sight of it all made her chest loosen a little. This was home.
The dogs led the way toward the Russian Orthodox Church. Evening prayer had ended long ago, and she figured the place would be empty except for one person, Father Aleksei Petrov. He’d been a close friend of her father’s. They hadn’t met back in Russia, but here in Astoria, over countless cups of tea after liturgy, talking about history, exile, and faith.
And of course, when she turned the corner, there he was, standing outside like he’d been waiting.
“Is that a ghost I see?” he called, his warm, rusty voice carrying that thick Russian accent that had never faded, no matter how many decades he’d lived in New York.
She smirked, climbing. “Thought you didn’t believe in ghosts, Father.”
“I believe in the Holy Spirit,” he said, lifting one eyebrow.
The dogs halted at the bottom step, polite as courtiers. They knew this was boundary and blessing both.
“It’s been awhile,” she said, trying for lightness, failing.
“Usually every other week.” He didn’t ask, didn’t push, only waited with the patience of someone who had watched generations argue with God and still come back for a candle.
“Work,” she said, which was true and not the truth. Four months at SVU, four months of rooms that smelled like bleach and testimony, four months of voices that broke in the same place every time. The precinct had its own incense: copier toner and coffee, grief and fluorescent hum.
Father Aleksei stepped close, studying her the way icons study. “Doch’ Mikhaila Volkova ne zabyvayet tserkov’, v kotoroy yeyo vospitala.” he murmured, and the syllables were a hand on her back guiding her through a door she’d been avoiding. (A daughter of Mikhail Volkov does not forget the church that raised her / Russian)
The breath she’d been holding all day slid out. She glanced at the church doors and saw a hundred small ghosts: herself, knees scabbed, whispering to Lana during Liturgy; her father and Aleksei in the parish kitchen after, steam rising off chipped cups; Lana on the steps singing ‘Katyusha’ off-key until the priest himself gave up and joined.
“I should get the dogs home,” she said, already knowing she’d step inside if he asked her twice.
He didn’t. He only touched her cheek, thumb warm and fatherly. “Zazhgi svechu zavtra,” he said softly. “Za Mikhaila i za sebya tozhe.” (Light a candle tomorrow, for Mikhail and for yourself as well / Russian)
“I’ll try,” she answered, because promising felt like a vow she wasn’t ready to keep.
“Khrani tebya Bog,” he said. (May God protect you / Russian)
She descended the steps backward, a half-bow without meaning to, then turned. The dogs rose as if summoned. As they walked, people nodded, called her name, asked about her brothers, pressed pastries into her hands she didn’t remember agreeing to take. Anubis licked a toddler’s face with solemn ceremony; Heka permitted small hands to drum his ribs like a harmless storm; Ramses high-stepped like a show horse he’d never been.
This was home, which meant it was also an archive. Every building held something she could name. The deli with the mural of St. George and the dragon. The bodega where the owner had let Lana run a tab for gum and sunflower seeds. The upstairs window where Mrs. Aziz kept a plant she swore was the Prophet’s favourite. The back lot where she’d broken two teeth and the corner mailbox that still bore a nick from a summer night in 1994 when she’d thrown a bottle at a tall, comb-over detective who’d asked too many questions and not the right ones.
She returned the dogs, bathed them in quick, then took a bowl of plov back outside because September still let her pretend the stoop was a dining room. The night around her cooled into something tender. Down the block, a scuffed football skittered past under a spray of bare knees. Nico, Marianna’s nephew, saw her and waved as if he’d spotted a celebrity.
“Miss Talia! Can we borrow the dogs?”
She didn’t look up from her bowl. “Only if you bring them back uninjured.”
The shriek that followed could have lifted the dead. The dogs exploded into motion. Ramses carved loops like calligraphy; Anubis tripped over his joy, righted himself, howled; Heka performed his favourite play, become a wall, let the ball bounce off, bask in applause. Children became orbiting moons around them.
Across the way, a cluster of teenagers smoked in a corner that did not belong to them. They weren’t from here. The posture was wrong, the glance too sharp. Talia’s eyes slid over them like a warning.
“You have an extra?” she called, suddenly hungry for smoke.
They shuffled, everyone on this block knew the Amari-Volkov rowhouse, knew a detective lived here, knew which side of their own lungs their future was. One kid handed her a cigarette, then abandoned the street entirely. She put the filter to her lip, the cigarette bobbing slightly as she patted her trench pockets for a lighter she no longer carried, partly because she was trying to be better, partly because she kept forgetting she’d promised.
The paper stuck to her mouth when she muttered around it, “Damn kids,” low and almost affectionate, like she couldn’t decide if they were a nuisance or her entertainment for the evening.
“I got a light,” said a dry voice just outside the pool of lamplight.
This time she looked, just enough to catch him leaning on the railing of her steps like he’d been there for hours, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his coat, head tilted in that way he had when he was pretending not to be watching her.
John freaking Munch
Hair a little mussed, tie off-centre, his coat shrugging off the rules of tailoring. The lamplight picked out the tired lines on his face, the ones she’d learned to read as well as case notes. God help her, he looked… dangerous in that quiet, inconvenient way. The kind of dangerous you couldn’t quite outlaw.
It took effort to keep her voice flat. “You shouldn’t be here. Unless you’re here for my leftover rice.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Wanted to make sure my partner was okay after yesterday.”
A lie. And also, true. Which was his specialty.
Four months at SVU had taught her his tells; the way he scanned exits without moving his head; his doctrine of two coffees, one sarcasm, one silence; the brief, almost imperceptible pause when a victim’s story slipped past the barricades he kept around himself.
And in those same four months, he’d learned hers; the superstition in her fingers when they brushed her Nazar charm, the way her jaw went still when someone lied, the razor’s edge between her compassion and her temper, the exact burdens she let him carry: evidence bags, cups of bad coffee, but never the grief she tucked behind her eyes.
“You gonna stand there looking like a suspicious funeral guest,” she said, “or sit?”
He didn’t ask twice. Just lowered himself onto the stoop beside her with a groan that sounded half real, half for show. The space between them felt intentional.
The neighbourhood wrapped around them like a living thing; the deli bell chiming, a couple upstairs arguing softly in Greek, a TV laughing in Spanish. Across the street, the slap of backgammon tiles came down like verdicts.
“Usually, I see this block at three in the morning,” he said at last. “Didn’t know it looked like this when the world’s awake.” He nodded toward the church dome, catching the moon instead of the sun now. “Figures.”
“What figures?”
“That you belong in a place that looks like it remembers things on purpose.”
She offered him the bowl. “Plov,” she said. “Lamb, rice, garlic, pride.”
He made a sceptical face with his mouth only. “I’m familiar with three of those food groups.”
“You cook, Munch?” she asked, and the question was both a test and an invitation.
“I speculate,” he said. “And I’ve been known to build a sandwich that can make grown men cry.”
“I also eat cereal out of a mug,” she said, as if offering a flaw to balance the ledger.
He took a bite, surprised by his own yes. “You look different,” he said, and immediately wondered if that was the wrong line to throw into this precise night.
She tipped her head, letting lamplight braid the dark in her hair. “Good different?”
He studied her for a moment. Not her blouse, not the way her hair caught the light, her. “Real.”
What he meant: You’re not wearing your armour. What he remembered: a younger version of her in 1994, all fire and sharp corners, refusing to be put in the box he’d mentally labelled ‘angry girl.’ What he knew now: she’d forged herself into something stronger, steadier, and it was killing him to realize he liked that even more.
A shout splintered the thought. “Miss Talia!” Hamid, Dunya’s nephew, skidded to a stop, panting. “Heka’s cheating! He’s just laying there like a wall and we can’t get past him!”
She cupped her hands. “That’s strategy, habibi!” (My dear / Arabic)
The corners of Munch’s mouth tugged up without permission. The laugh came low, warm, escaped before he could catch it. He didn’t laugh often in front of her. It sat between them like an unwrapped gift.
He watched her watching the kids and thought: This is what you look like when you’re not bracing for impact. And then, the thought he didn’t want to name: You don’t visit your partner’s stoop. You don’t memorize the way her block smells like bread and incense. You don’t come because you’re afraid a case took too much out of her and you want to make sure it leaves her enough to stand on in the morning.
He looked away before the thought got a name.
On cue, someone upstairs began singing to a baby. Across the street, old men roared at a move on the backgammon board like it had geopolitical implications. Nico shouted that Ramses had scored with his tail. Heka lay on his side and contemplated becoming a saint.
“Your block loves you,” Munch said, like he was stating a line of testimony.
“They loved my parents,” she corrected, but softer. “That’s the thing about church. About people like this. They keep receipts. When the world goes stupid, they show up with soup and cigarettes, and the priest says your father’s name like it never left his tongue.”
He let himself imagine, for just one unwatched second, the way her name might sound coming from a pulpit, wrapped in prayer. His hand itched to find her knee, her wrist, any point of contact, just to see if she’d lean into it, and that was exactly why he kept both hands still. He banished the thought as treason.
“You came to check on me,” she said, watching a lamppost halo his profile like a bad idea. She said it like a fact that wanted no flowers.
“I came because we’re partners,” he said, and neither of them believed that was the whole sentence.
Her lips curved slightly, accepting the fiction. “Then as your partner, you should know Heka’s tactical innovations might disrupt the balance of power on this street.”
“We should open an investigation,” he said. “Stakeout. I’ll bring the sandwiches.”
“And I’ll bring the incense.”
A silence followed, full, not empty.
She reached for the cigarette between her lips. “Got that light?”
He leaned in, closer than he needed to, until the faint warmth of him slid across her cheek. The scent of coffee and his aftershave threaded through the air, enough to make her forget the flame for a heartbeat. He flicked the lighter, its tiny snap loud between them. The glow lit her eyes first, then her mouth.
She inhaled, lips closing around the filter, and the taste of smoke tangled with the trace of his cologne that had stayed on the air between them. It made her want to lean in again, for reasons that had nothing to do with the cigarette. For a second, his pulse betrayed him. When she exhaled, the smoke curled between them like something that knew too much.
She held the cigarette out, and his fingers grazed hers in the handover, not an accident, not quite deliberate. It was the lightest brush, but it landed in her chest like a heavier thing. He didn’t smoke, just tapped ash into the gutter, letting the ember die slow.
“You ever notice,” he murmured, eyes on the church, “how some places keep people from falling apart even when there’s nothing left to hold onto?”
She followed his gaze. The dome, now silvered by the moon, looked like a shoulder you could lean your whole life against. “It’s not the place,” she said. “It’s the hands that built it.”
He nodded. And somewhere behind his careful expression, he was back in ’94 again, remembering the girl who would’ve burned herself down. Wondering if he’d be here when she decided to light another match.
“Miss Talia!” Nico again, triumphant. “Ramses scored three goals! We’re taking them around the block!”
“Be back by ten,” she called. “Or they turn into pumpkins.”
The kids saluted like bandits. The dogs swarmed them like they’d been enlisted.
“You trust them?” Munch asked.
“With my dogs?” she said. “With my life.”
He let that hang. It was heavier than it sounded. A breeze lifted, carrying a thin ribbon of old incense from the church, the memory of wax and myrrh threaded with the laughter of children and the far-off metallic squeal of the subway turning itself inside out under Queens. Talia closed her eyes for one count, one, and opened them steadier.
“Tell me a conspiracy,” she said suddenly. “Not the tinfoil-hat kind. The kind that’s really about grief.”
He thought for a beat, of Rasputin, of men in rooms and power behind a curtain. “Every conspiracy,” he said, “starts because someone can’t accept the randomness of loss.”
She nodded like he’d passed. “My father would’ve argued with you for hours.”
“I would’ve let him win,” he said, and surprised himself with how much he meant it.
“Liar,” she said, but the word softened between them.
The football thudded against the curb; Heka chose to bless the block by rolling onto his back and refusing to move. Old men crowed over a backgammon upset like the world had tilted toward justice. Upstairs, the baby stopped crying. The dome held the moon without complaint.
They stayed until the kids returned with the dogs like an honour guard. Ramses rested his head on her knee, Anubis flopped against her side, Heka just looked smug. The cigarette was long dead in his fingers. Quiet had become the bravest thing to choose.
When he stood, it was slow. “See you in the morning.”
“See you,” she replied.
He made it three steps before turning back. “And Talia-”
She waited.
“Sometimes… standing outside the door is harder than going in.”
He didn’t wait for her answer. Just walked into the night.
She watched him go, the church dome silver in the corner of her eye. Tomorrow could wait. She reached for Ramses’ ears, Anubis’s paw, Heka’s impossible calm.
“Let’s go home,” she murmured.
The block exhaled. The dome kept its watch. And the stoop, for one fleeting moment, felt like the safest place in America.