Karen Cinder recovered faster than anyone expected, according to the updates Alex passed along during our drives — color back in her face within a week, off the heaviest medications within two, talking the nurses' ears off well before anyone thought she'd have the energy for it. I drove Alex to see her most days that month, and more often than not, Law came along too, no longer bothering to invent a reason for it.
I'd watched Law manage people his entire life — parents, business partners, the rotating cast of women his mother paraded past him at every function — and I'd never once seen him do it the way he did it with Alex. There was no performance left in it by the time Karen's surgery had come and gone. He showed up because he wanted to, sat in waiting rooms because he wanted to, and the calculating look I'd grown used to seeing behind his eyes had started softening into something I hadn't seen on him since he was a teenager.
"You're smiling again," I told him one evening, after dropping Alex off and circling back to debrief, the way we'd settled into doing most nights.
"I smile," Law said, unconvincingly.
"Not like this," I said. "Not in years."
He didn't argue the point, which told me more than agreement would have. "Karen likes him," I added, after a moment. "More than I expected, given how briefly they've actually spent together."
"She's lonely," Law said. "It's easy to attach to anyone who shows up consistently when you've been alone that long."
"Mm," I said, noncommittal, though something about the phrasing stuck with me longer than I expected it to.
I'd seen the way Karen looked at Law during that first hospital visit — not the casual delight of meeting a sister's fiancé, but something a shade more intent, lingering a beat too long, asking one too many follow-up questions about his life, his routine, the things he liked. I told myself it was harmless. Plenty of lonely people develop crushes on whoever happens to be kind to them in a hard moment; it rarely meant anything beyond the moment itself.
I should have paid closer attention. I'd spent decades reading people for a living, watching for the small signs that told you who was actually dangerous in a room full of strangers, and I'd let this one slide past me because it came wrapped in a sick girl's smile instead of anything that looked like a threat.
"Keep an eye on her too," I told Law, mostly on instinct, the words out before I'd fully decided to say them.
"On Karen?" Law looked at me, surprised. "Why?"
"No reason," I said, which wasn't entirely true. "Just good practice. You're going to be family, in whatever sense this arrangement actually means. Worth knowing everyone in the picture."
He let it go, the way he usually let go of things that didn't fit cleanly into whatever plan he had running. I let it go too, that night, telling myself there was nothing yet worth raising more than a passing comment about.
I think about that conversation often, now, knowing everything that came after. I think about how easy it would have been to say something sooner, push harder, watch closer. I didn't. None of us did, not really, until it was already too late to matter.