About half an hour later, as Gabe sat on his bed playing a game on his laptop, there was a knock on his bedroom door.

“Can I come in?” Sally asked from the other side of the door.

Gabe shut his laptop and got up to unlock it.

“I’m sorry,” Sally said as soon as they were face to face.

Gabe stepped aside to let her in. “For what?”

She made a face and went and sat down on the edge of Gabe’s bed. “For a lot of things. But I think the biggest thing right now was me never coming back to the hospital to talk to you about what was going to happen.”

Gabe shrugged and used the excuse of shutting the door to turn his back to her. 

“I meant to,” she continued. “I wanted to. I just… I couldn’t bring myself to stand in front of you without any answers.” She waited until Gabe was facing her again before she continued. “I wanted to be able to tell you what I was going to do about this and when it would be safe for you to come back, because you deserve that. But, well… I never did find those answers. And now you’re here again and I still don’t know what I’m going to do to keep you safe. I know none of this is fair and I’m sorry.”

Gabe leant back against his bedroom door. “Well, life’s not fair, right?”

Sally’s expression tightened. “I’ve told you that a few times before, haven’t I?”

Gabe shrugged. Yes, she had. He hated it almost as much as it takes two to tango.

“Life isn’t fair. That’s true. Good things happen and bad things happen and sometimes that’s a result of our actions and it’s what we deserve, but not always. Not as often as we tell ourselves.”

Gabe realised at some point he’d crossed his arms over his chest defensively. He couldn’t bring himself to uncross them.

“My point is that fairness isn’t something that’s naturally occurring. It’s something we create because it makes the world a better place.” When Gabe didn’t respond, she added, “What do you think?”

Gabe let his back thump against the door as he swayed back and forth for a few seconds, thinking. He thought about all the times someone had done something for him when it had really mattered.

When his mum had died and their neighbour had taken him in for months, even though she was too old to be chasing him through the woods that backed onto their houses every time he ran off.

Sally, who had taken him in and given him a permanent home, who had been more of a mum to him than his real mother ever had.

Alice, who had cared for him before she even knew him, and Bee and Sophie who had offered him their friendship without hesitation.

And then there was Trist. Trist, who had never been fair to him, who had honestly been an asshole to him most of the time. Trist who, every single time he’d seen Gabe in need of help, had offered it without hesitation.

None of those people had made anything fair. The things he’d been struggling with couldn’t be squared, and they hadn’t owed him anything so it hadn’t been fair of them to offer him help. It had been kind.

“I think… it’s not really about being fair most of the time,” Gabe said. “You can’t always make things fair, but you can always be kind. Even to people who haven’t earned it. That’s what’s important. And I think, even though things have ended up being a real mess, that you’ve always just been trying to be kind.”

She smiled, but she looked like she was about to cry. “Trying.”

Gabe went and sat down next to her, leant his head against her shoulder. “That’s all we can do, right?”

She wrapped an arm around him and pulled him in close, planted a kiss on the top of his head. It hurt a little with his back, but Gabe didn’t mind. “What if it isn’t enough?”

Gabe shut his eyes and let out a long breath. “I don’t know.”

#

They’d ripped up all the carpet in the basement while Gabe was away and then scrubbed the concrete clean. There was still a faint outline of where the pool of blood had been and there always would be, but once they replaced the carpet it wouldn’t matter. For now, there was a cardboard box they were temporarily using as a coffee table on top of the stain.

“We’re going to get a new one,” Adam said, giving the cardboard box a light kick as he passed. “A wood one this time.”

“Good. No more glass.”

“The ones made from tempered glass are pretty safe, actually. You know, like car windows?” Adam picked up the remote and turned on the TV. “But ours was made from annealed glass, which is just normal glass that breaks into sharp pieces.”

“You looked it up?”

“Yeah. I wanted to understand what happened.”

“Do you?”

“I understand the glass.” Adam offered the Wiimote to Gabe. “You wanna go first?”

#

For the first time, Adam was actually trying, and that revealed something Gabe had never really realised about him before: Adam did not know how to behave like a normal, civil human being. It wasn’t that he wasn’t mostly succeeding in being nice; it was just that he was doing a lot of other random shit as well.

Like, he let Gabe win at video games, which was weird because he wasn’t particularly better at them than Gabe. There had been times in the past when Adam had been too competitive and let it make him angry, but Gabe had never really cared if he won or lost. It was like Adam had some vague understanding that his behaviour around this thing was sometimes a problem, but he had no idea where exactly the issue was or how to fix it.

He also gave Gabe a house gecko he’d captured in a jam jar. He’d poked holes in the lid and put some leaves in with it. After the dead lizard incident, it had understandably freaked Gabe out a little when Adam had come at him with another one, but no, this one was supposed to be a pet. He knew Gabe thought they were cute and that he hadn’t liked the dead one, so…

Gabe had thanked him and then let it go as soon as he wasn’t looking.

It took about a week for everything to go wrong.

Sally was away for a work event over night. She’d been reluctant to leave, and Gabe hadn’t exactly been confident when he’d assured her it was fine, but Adam had been behaving better than ever before and they had to get back to normal life at some point. 

They’d worked together to mix up a batch of cookie dough and now Adam was rolling it out with their marble rolling pin while Gabe did the dishes. They were well into the afternoon and they hadn’t had a single incident so far.

“We should have pizza for dinner,” Adam said as he sorted through a pile of cookie cutters.

“And who’s going to pay for that? You?” Gabe asked.

Adam had no money. He never had any money. He got a weekly allowance but he always spent it immediately.

“No… mum left some money with you, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, for emergencies.”

“Pizza is an emergency.”

“Ha. No.”

Adam smacked the end of the rolling pin against the cookie dough, ruining the perfectly flat surface he’d spent so long creating. “Oh, come on. Why not?”

“There’s a reason she left the money with me and not you. If I spend our emergency money on pizza, she won’t trust me with it next time.”

Adam was silent for a moment, and then, “We’re having pizza.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

Gabe saw movement in his peripheral vision and turned, reflexively raising his arm to block something aimed at his head. The marble rolling pin connected with his upper arm with a loud thwack that seemed to echo through the small kitchen.

Gabe stumbled back, hand pressed over his throbbing arm, but Adam was just looking at him now, confused. The rolling pin dangled at his side from his fingertips. He looked down at it and then released it, letting it clatter to the ground.

Gabe inched towards the kitchen door and then fled back to his room.

Gabe’s breathing was coming in quick, desperate gasps and he couldn’t slow it. He felt like he was going into shock. He wasn’t sure if it had more to do with the intense, throbbing pain in his arm or the sick knowledge of what would have happened if the heavy, solid force of that rolling pin had connected with his head.

There was a blue, expanding circle on Gabe’s arm, the first hints of a future bruise that promised to look as painful as it felt. Adam had never hurt him like this before. Not intentionally. Sure, he’d pushed him or thrown things at him out of anger, but never anything like this.

But maybe that had been purely incidental. Maybe when his frustration peaked, he’d lash out with whatever was closest at hand without thinking. Maybe next time it would be a knife. Maybe next time Gabe wouldn’t realise what was happening in time to protect himself.

About ten minutes later, there was a quiet tap on Gabe’s door.

“Hey,” Adam said when Gabe stayed silent. “Can I come in?”

Gabe made a face to himself. “No?”

“Okay.” Gabe heard Adam sit down, and then the door shook slightly as he leant back against it. “Are you okay?”

“You could have hit me in the head.”

“I know.”

“It looks like it’s turning into a pretty nasty bruise.”

Adam was silent for so long Gabe started wondering if he was still there. “Are you going to leave again?”

Gabe didn’t even know if that was an option, but God, he wanted to. He was scared. He couldn’t keep pretending this wasn’t real. “I don’t know.”

“What if my dad comes back again?” Adam asked so quietly Gabe wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.

“What?” Gabe got up from his bed and walked closer to the door. “Adam, did your dad try to see you again?”

“No, I mean. A few years ago. When you were there.”

That had happened exactly once when Gabe had been… what, twelve, maybe? Adam’s dad had shown up when Sally was out, wanting to see him, and Gabe had intervened before Adam opened the front door. He’d sent Adam upstairs and called Sally and then Sally had called the police, and it had been a whole thing. But if Gabe hadn’t been there, Adam would have opened that door. Gabe hadn’t realised Adam still thought about that.

Gabe sat down with his back against the door. He could just about hear Adam’s breathing. “You don’t need me to protect you anymore, Adam. You wouldn’t open the door now, would you?”

“I don’t think so,” Adam said. “No. I wouldn’t.”

“Good.”

Adam was silent for a long moment. “Gabe?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to open the door?”

Gabe could feel his heart beating in his chest. “Do you think I should?”

It took Adam a few seconds to answer, but when he did his voice was firm, confident. Resigned. “No.”

“Okay.” Gabe felt calm, but in a surreal, distant way. “Okay. I don’t think I will.”

“Okay.”

Gabe heard Adam stand. Gabe heard Adam walk away.