Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Listen,” Louisa said. There was a reluctance, a trepidation, in the way she said that single word which made River instantly tense.

They were in the back of a Service vehicle, heading toward The Park for debriefing. He’d hoped Lamb would appear and save them from that particular unpleasantness, but River rarely got the things he hoped for and today was no exception. And since the events of the last day had Emma Flyte at the end of her rope if the very dangerous look in her eyes was anything to go by, River didn’t even try to stonewall her and instead had grumbled but gotten into the vehicle. He felt wrung out—the adrenaline crash had hit him as they left the station—and battered to the bone. It was an interesting change of pace that today’s battering was more emotional than physical, and for a moment he counted himself lucky. Upon further reflection, though, maybe he would have preferred another beatdown from the Dogs to the emotional evisceration of the last 24 hours.

When Louisa didn’t continue, he raised his eyebrows.

“Okay, I should tell you, when we thought you were…dead. I, um, I called your mum.”

River flinched involuntarily and gaped at her. “Why would you do that?”

“Well because we thought you were dead, River, and if I didn’t do it, Lamb might have, and given that he let Ho break the news to us that you were dead, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

Still gaping, he asked, “How did you even get her phone number?”

“Moira gave it to me. She has the file with everyone's emergency contacts.”

“Yeah, but my mother isn’t my emergency contact; my grandfather is.”

“Well, he was missing, wasn’t he?” she pointed out defensively. “I don’t know how she got it, maybe she called HR or something.”

He still had half of the handcuffs secured around his wrist. He should've asked one of the Dogs to remove it. He’d pulled so hard trying to detach it from the car that the skin around his wrist had broken and bled, soaking into his sleeve. The chain ‘chinked’ softly as he fiddled with it before a memory floated through his mind and he stilled his hands, dropping them into his lap.

“So, what did she say?” He despised himself for asking but he couldn't stop himself, could he? Deep down he would always be that sad little boy, desperate for his mother's love. 

Louisa hesitated.

River let out a humorless huff. “Never mind. I can probably figure it out.”

Louisa sagged a little. “No, she, she just wasn’t really concerned about your granddad, is all. I was surprised.”

River shook his head. “No surprise there; they haven't spoken since before I was born. Their war was the thing of legends." Messing with the handcuff again, he added, "And I was the collateral damage." Louisa's silence made him ask, “What?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “She said to remind you she exists.”

River snorted and Louisa raised her brows. He waved her off. “Just, you know, par for the course.” The words carried an edge; his irritation was building. It always did when the topic of his mother came up. 

“No, I don’t know, do I? I mean, you never talk about her.”

“Are you serious right now?” he scoffed. “I don’t know,” he scrunched up his face, “a single thing about your family. You have literally never said one word about them.”

There was a silent beat in the car. “Okay, that’s a fair point,” Louisa conceded. “And I’m sorry but I was only trying to help.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t, did you?” he shot back.

Her eyes went wide and hurt flashed across her face at River’s sharp tone. The car fell silent.

River brooded, tapping his fingers on his leg and feeling guilty. He didn’t want to have this conversation now—or ever—but he somehow felt like he had to justify himself. “She likes to believe she’s the wounded party,” he told her, avoiding her gaze by staring at the passing lights. “She couldn’t be bothered with me as a child but now that I’m an adult she’s decided that I’m, I’m, I honestly don’t even know—interesting enough or something. She gets tetchy if I don’t answer when she calls. Which she rarely does, by the way.”

“I’m sure she—”

“Can we not talk about this, Louisa?” he bit out angrily. They’d been keeping their voices low, but his got away from him and came out louder than he intended. She looked like she’d been slapped. Lowering his voice, he said, “Look, I, I know that you were trying to do the right thing, and I appreciate that, I do. But after the last 24 hours, I just really, really don’t want to talk about my mother. Can we do that—or not do that? Please?”

“Sorry,” Louisa mumbled, turning her gaze away.

She had poked at a topic that, given the choice, he’d prefer never be part of the conversational lexicon, and yet somehow he was feeling like he was the asshole here. Christ.

River glanced up and caught the driver’s eyes watching him in the rearview mirror before they skittered away. Great. His wretched childhood would be more fodder for Park gossip by morning. 

Sighing deeply, he slumped sideways and leaned his head against the car window, watching the lights pass by but seeing nothing at all.

“I should just give you to him,” his mum muttered, “since he wanted you so bad.”

“Who?” River asked quietly. He saw her shift her glance toward him in the rearview mirror, but she didn’t answer his question. Her mouth was drawn in a flat line and River had plenty of experience to know what that meant.

The car was speeding along a wide road, and he was restless. They’d been driving for ages, and it was hard to sit still for so long. River grabbed the knob next to him and began to turn it. Wind roared into the car.

“Don’t!” she snapped. “Roll it back up and sit still!”

River did as told and put his hands in his lap, squeezing them together to stop them from fidgeting and doing something else he shouldn’t.

“You ruin everything,” she’d said to him when her latest boyfriend had left.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said. And he was. He didn’t want to make her unhappy. He hadn’t tried to make Donald leave, wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done that caused him to.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she’d said. “It’s too much. You’re too much.”

“Too much what?”

But she hadn’t said. He was tall for his age—everyone always said it. Was that what she meant? That he was too tall?

Outside the car, the scenery changed. They’d left the city behind. There were a lot more trees. A lot of green.

“Where’re we going?”

Another quick glance in the mirror. Again, she didn’t answer him. River sighed and leaned his head against the window, watching the scenery speed by.

She’d made him pack his things, told him to bring everything he wanted because he wasn’t coming back. It wasn’t the first time she’d told him that. They’d moved a lot, from one town to another, sometimes from one flat to another in the same town. He was good at packing his things and making sure he had the important stuff.

Most of their moves related to whatever boyfriend his mum happened to be with at the moment. Either moving in with one or moving out. But every other time she’d told him to pack, she’d packed as well.

“River,” his mum said, startling him from sleep.

He sat up from where he’d slumped against the door, rubbed his eyes and blinked, looking around. They were stopped near a house and there was a garden and a long lane behind them. Nothing was familiar.

“Where are we?” he asked.

His mum had turned and was facing him from the front seat, and something in her face shuttered at his question.

“This is your grandparents’ house,” she said. It was her angry voice. “You’re going to stay here now.”

He blinked at her. “My grandparents?” He wasn’t aware he had grandparents.

“Yes,” she said, impatience in her voice.

“But where are you going to stay?” His voice wobbled a little.

His mother turned around, facing away from him, not looking in the mirror. “Not here.”

“But Mum—”

“Stay here,” she said, and got out, slamming the door behind her.

An old man was standing in the garden. He had a spade in one hand and was staring as she marched toward him. An old woman came out the side door of the house and put a hand to her mouth.

The man said something, but River couldn’t hear what.

His mum ignored him and marched up to the woman, already talking. River couldn’t make out the words but at one point, the man and woman turned at the same time and looked in the direction of the car. River wanted to sink down in his seat, hide in the footwell.

The voices raised but they were still indistinct. He could only make out small scraps of it. He started to fidget and then stopped himself.

“…wanted him…”

“…where…”

“River.”

“River?”

Somehow that was very clear. People always frowned at his name, looked at him oddly when he told them what it was. He’d never tell his mum, but sometimes he wished she had named him something else.

The woman reached out and put a hand on his mum’s arm, urged her toward the door. She resisted for a second but then went. The man started to follow but the older woman turned her head and gave a small shake, and he stopped, staring after them, looking unhappy as they disappeared into the house.

Slowly, River unbuckled the seatbelt and slipped from the car. Keeping an eye on the house in case his mum came out, he creeped into the yard to stand behind the man. “Are you my grandfather?” River asked.

The man turned sharply. “Christ,” he said, staring at River. A few seconds later, he shook himself and went down on one knee. He studied River’s face for a long moment, then said, “Yes. Yes, I’m your granddad.”

River nodded and stuck out his hand. “I’m River.”

The man smiled and gripped River’s hand in his own. “I’m very glad to meet you, River. I’m David.”

Behind them, a door slammed, and his grandfather stood up. River turned to see his mum stomping out of the front door of the house. She marched to the car, opened the boot and tossed River’s duffle onto the ground.

He stared at where it lay in the dirt. His mum had let him pick it out in the store and he’d chosen it because the blue of it was the same color of her eyes.

At the driver’s door, she paused and her eyes met River’s.

For a brief moment River’s heart beat wildly with hope. ‘She’s changed her mind,’ he thought.

But before he even finished the thought, she had wrenched the car door open and slammed it as she settled in the seat.

She drove away without him.

River watched the car recede down the lane. When it disappeared from view, his chest felt impossibly tight and he couldn’t breathe. Fat tears welled in his eyes, spilled down his cheeks.

Behind him, his granddad said, “River—" It seemed like he was interrupted, like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.

River couldn’t take his eyes off the empty lane. “Am I going to live here now?” he asked, voice wobbly again.

His grandfather put his hands gently on River’s shoulders and turned him around. “Well, I can’t think of what else to do with you.” He smiled again. It was a kind smile.

Tears were still spilling down River’s face and his granddad pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away the ones that were there, then gave River the kerchief for the ones that hadn’t made their way out of him yet.

The old woman—his grandmother—appeared again at the side-yard door. She smiled at him, too; her eyes were warm.

"Why don’t you come inside, and your grandmother will make us some tea. How does that sound?”

River wiped his eyes and face with his sleeve, then remembered the kerchief and used that to finish the job. He had the thought that he needed to be brave, so he sniffed deeply to clear his nose and fought back the tears. After one last glance down the lane behind him—still empty—he nodded.

The hands on his shoulders squeezed once and released, then his granddad took River’s hand in his own. Together they walked toward the house.

“What’re you doing here?” River asked from the doorway of Louisa’s office, Saturdays not being a workday.

She gave him a subtle once-over and then returned her attention to her computer. “I could ask the same thing.” There was a distinct coolness in her words.

"Lamb." It required no further explanation. 

He’d spent the night with Emma Flyte. Not, of course, in the way one might hope, but rather in an interrogation cell at The Park. His ‘dad’ was there somewhere, too, River knew, but he didn’t care. He hoped they threw him in a hole to rot. But he'd felt bad about Louisa. She’d only been brought in because she’d been with River, caught in the net intended for Frank and him. She'd looked...strained, when she'd sat down beside him at the rail station the night before, and he'd been about to ask if she was okay when more Dogs had interrupted and escorted them both off.

They’d argued in the car and then been separated immediately after arriving at The Park. River had spent the next several hours repetitively answering the same questions but at least this time the questions weren’t accompanied by fists. Eventually Lady Di herself had come in, apparently wanting to satisfy herself that he was being forthright. He had been. He had no reason to lie: Frank was in custody, the baby-assassins were all dead, and River’s grandfather was safe. They’d let him go shortly after Taverner’s visit with the vague implication that he had Lamb to thank for it.    

For now, his grandfather was safely back at home with Catherine and some minders, and River was desperate to see for himself that he was okay. But before he could head to Tonbridge, he knew he needed to pay the piper. Lamb had backed his play and covered for River to buy time, had protected his grandfather despite his obvious antipathy toward the man, and then gotten Lady Di to release him. He’d take his lashing from Lamb without complaint.

It didn’t escape him that he had a bigger debt to pay. Marcus was dead, Shirley no doubt a mess, and the only possible way to look at it was that it was because of River and his fucked-up family: Patrice was after his grandfather when he’d killed Marcus, and it was his father who’d set Patrice on Slough House. How to clear the wreckage caused by his family was beyond him for the moment but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

Possibly, though, he could start smaller and fix the dent he’d put in his nascent friendship with Louisa.  

“When did they let you go?” he asked, grasping for anything to say that might coax her into conversation and ease the tension between them.

She shrugged. “After a couple hours. What about you?” Her eyes hesitantly met his.

“About…” He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes ago?”

“Why’d you come here? You should go get some rest.” She leaned back in her chair, work put aside. The freeze in the room began to thaw.

River smiled faintly. “I’d say that’s very much a case of the pot calling the kettle black.” It was obvious she had come directly here from The Park. She was in different clothes, but they all kept spares in the office. No, it was the deep circles under her eyes telling River she hadn’t slept at all, and the large takeaway cup of coffee on her desk rather than the thermal travel carafe that she always brought from home.

He leaned against the door jamb and fidgeted. He had his own takeaway coffee, and he picked at the lid. “Look, about last night in the car.” He raised his eyes to hers. “I'm sorry I snapped at you like that.”

Louisa’s shoulders dropped a notch and most of the tension left the room. “No, it’s alright. It's none of my business.”

"No," he shook his head. "It's fine. It..." He felt he owed her an explanation after lashing out at her, yes. But it was also that if they were really friends—and he thought they were now—then telling her these things about himself was part and parcel of moving past 'just colleagues', wasn't it? Of course, the last time he’d shared his family history with a supposed-friend—Spider Webb—it was circulated around The Park within days. Widely, given how Louisa spouted it back at him a few months ago when he’d tried to talk to her about Min.

But Louisa wasn’t Spider. He'd trusted her before; he believed he could trust her again.

He took a deep breath. “I was seven years old, and she dropped me in the garden with two people I’d never seen or even heard of before,” River said. “And then she just drove away, without explanation.” He went back to studying his takeaway cup. “I got a card from her on my birthday for a few years, then…”  He shrugged, not sure he was capable of putting into words how he felt the first year she didn’t send one. Or the next. By the third year, he’d stopped hoping for anything.

“For a while, I thought she took me to my grandparents as a kindness; that she gave me to them because she knew I’d be better off, because, God, I really was.” At first, she’d called him, on rare and random occasions, but as time passed the conversations grew stilted because he’d come to realize that he was happier with his grandparents and the guilt of that cut deep. “By the time I was thirteen, I understood she did it because she was better off. That the things she wanted in life would be decidedly easier to get without a kid around to complicate the situation.” 

He took a long drink of the now-tepid coffee. His mind had spun with it the night before, his mouth on autopilot as he answered Flyte’s questions while his brain tended to the old wound that Louisa had inadvertently reopened. “‘Course now I wonder if she left me because I reminded her too much of her father and my father, and she couldn’t stand the sight of me.” He forced a self-deprecating smile, but it felt flat, even to him.

“River—” Her voice was gentle.

He shook his head, stopping her. He had to finish it. “I was seven.” His face twisted briefly with emotion he couldn't control. “And she left me with strangers and drove away. That, that was terrifying and, and heartbreaking and all I could think was that I must have done something really terrible to make her not love me but I couldn’t figure out what it was in order to fix it so she’d come back for me…” he trailed off, his throat tight and burning. He looked away and blinked several times. All these years later and thinking about it still gutted him.

Louisa slid her chair back—the feet made an awful scraping sound on the floor—and came to stand in front of him.  

“What’re you doing?” he asked with suspicion, not sure if she was going to punch him or—

She leaned in and embraced him, pinning his arms to his sides.

“Okay, yeah, I know what you’re doing.” 

“Oh, good,” she said into his chest. “I was afraid I’d have to explain basic human comfort techniques to you.”

“Very funny. I hugged you first, remember?” River said, but huffed despite himself. “Yeah, okay, this is awkward.”

“Yeah, it is,” she said. “Because you’re doing it wrong.”

"Oh, I'm doing it wrong?"

She released him and gestured at his coffee. “Come on, put that down.”

He fidgeted. “Louisa...” He intended to express that this wasn’t necessary, but his lack of conviction was obvious. Ultimately, he did what she said, because this was Louisa and he trusted her, and basic human comfort was maybe something he hadn’t had in far too long and was possibly something he desperately longed for. He set his coffee on the nearest flat surface—a precariously tall stack of files that he knew for a fact Louisa had been ignoring for weeks. Hands free, he stood uncomfortably.

“When was the last time someone gave you a proper hug?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. He honestly couldn’t remember. He’d hugged his grandfather in the bathroom, but he hadn’t exactly returned it. His granddad loved him, of that River had no doubt, but the O.B. wasn’t the most tactilely affectionate person.

She waited patiently but her eyes seemed to bore into him.

He ducked his away. “Um. Probably before my grandmother died?”

“Jesus, that was years ago,” she said softly, tugging his arms up to her shoulders so she could slide hers around his back.

River held her loosely. “So, uh, just checking…is this a thing we do now?” Last time, when he'd hugged her after Min died, she'd said no more hugging.  

“Shut up,” she said, squeezing him tightly.

He smiled at the irksome way she had of somehow making him feel better even while rebuking him. Slowly, River tightened his hold on her.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured into his shoulder.

He grimaced. “For what?” He didn't want anyone's pity.

“For defending her.”

They stood quietly for a moment while River swallowed thickly and tried to summon the right words. In the end, he gave the top of her head a quick, light kiss, and said, simply, “Thank you.”

“For what?” she echoed his question.

For so many things, he thought. For following after him the night before and stopping the Dogs from shooting him; for idiotically digging the grenade out of his hood instead of running like she should have; for being considerate enough to think someone should let his mother know he was (not) dead; but also for accepting as true his assertion that his mother wasn’t worth defending (though maybe she was, because there had been extenuating circumstances, hadn’t there? He’d be processing through that later because today he was still feeling raw and bruised, and he couldn’t even begin to untangle that mess). And for this, which might be the only thing that could make him feel even a shade better about anything right now.

River squeezed a fraction tighter and said, “For having my back.”

It was a nice moment until River was pretty sure he could actually hear Louisa roll her eyes. “God, such a cliché,” she said, releasing him.

River grunted out a small laugh and gave her one last hard squeeze before letting go.

She went back to her desk and waved him off without another glance. “You better get upstairs. Lamb said if you weren't in his office by 10:00 he was going to cut off your bollocks and give them to Shirley.” Her mouth twitched.

River looked at his watch. “Oi, thanks for the advanced warning!” he said and raced for the stairs.

From behind, he heard her call, “And when Lamb’s done with you, it’s my turn!”

Chapter Text

She arrives in Tonbridge later than she knows she should—it’s going on half-seven which is probably a rude time to show up at someone’s door unannounced—but River’s been avoiding her for too long and she’s had enough of it.

The house is bigger than she’d imagined. It’s Tonbridge, and River always referred to it as a house and not a cottage or a flat, but somehow it still surprises her. She stops her car down the drive a bit and stares at the house and large gardens, barely visible in the dim light. How did she never know River was a posh boy? Readjusting her perception, she presses the gas and creeps the final yards toward the house. She hesitates for a just second at the front door before knocking.

There’s no quick answer but there are lights on and she’s pretty sure River is here with his grandfather, so she knocks a little harder. A moment later River opens the door.

“Louisa,” he says, his face showing his surprise as he wipes his hands on a kitchen towel.

“It’s later,” she says, pushing past him into the house.

“What?” He steps aside to open the door wider.

She glances around the entry, taking in the homey feel of it, then turns to him. “That night on the embankment. You asked if we could talk about it later.” She takes off her jacket, punctuating the fact that she’s staying a while, then bobs her head to the side once. “It’s later.” She tips her head back and forth. “Or quite a bit past it, but as you’ve been avoiding me, here I am.”

River glances up the stairs; Louisa’s eyes follow. There’s no sign of the OB. River looks back at her and Louisa cocks an eyebrow at him. She can see the moment he resigns himself that this is going to happen.

Pitching his voice low, he says, “Yeah, okay, but for the record, I haven’t been avoiding you, I’ve just been…busy.” He gestures to the stairs before taking her jacket and hanging it in the small entry closet. “Are you hungry? I was just getting dinner,” he says over his shoulder as he heads deeper into the house.

“I could eat." Following him, she finds herself in a large, bright kitchen. There are copper pans hanging from a suspended rack and knives attached to a magnetic bar. Jars line the back of the counter filled with familiar and unfamiliar things. An ancient, green Aga stove sits in the middle of the large space like its holding court; across from it is an old wooden table with a small stack of newspapers in one corner. It’s a lived-in room but not messy. Everything looks to have a place.

There are signs of activity: a pan sits ready on the stove, on a cutting board is a squash cut in half, a large chef’s knife lies next to it. Louisa blinks. “You’re making dinner? Are you cooking?” She doesn’t mean it come out sounding as incredulous as it does, but, what the hell?

“Yeah, I just said.” He threads the kitchen towel he’s been carrying through the handle of the Aga.

“You said you were getting dinner. I assumed that meant ordering in, not that you were cooking.”

River gives her a look. “I’m a grown man.”

“I mean, sure, but I always just imagined you ate takeaway all the time or lived on ramen noodles.”

River scoffs. “I’m not Lamb.” He picks up the knife. “I’ll have you know,” he says, pointing it briefly in her direction, “that I’m a very good cook.” He uses the knife to deftly peel away the skin from the apparently already cooked squash.

She leans on the counter across from him to watch him work. It’s mesmerizing in that it’s so profoundly unexpected that she can’t turn her eyes away. “Did your grandmother teach you?” she asks. She finds herself wondering not for the first time about his grandmother.

He flicks his glance to her for a brief second. “Yes,” he answers. “And the O.B. They both cooked and neither suffered fools in the kitchen.”

“So, what’re you making?”

“A squash and mushroom curry.” He’s chopping the soft squash into neat, uniformly-sized cubes, now.

Louisa’s eyebrows shoot up.

“What?”

“That sounds…complicated.”

River huffs. “I just told you I can cook.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen.”

River gives her the look again as he picks up the cutting board to scrape the cubes into the waiting pan. It sizzles and a plume of fragrant steam wafts upward. Setting the cutting board back down, he winces.

Louisa’s heart thumps in her chest. “What’s wrong?” she asks, standing upright.

River stops. “What?”

“Why did you wince?”

“I didn’t”

“Yes, you did,” she starts to move around the counter toward him, “I saw you.”

There’s something about the idea of River being hurt that has begun to make her uncomfortable. The first time it happened, after everything with Min, she’d not given him much thought, really. It was more that he looked like a sad puppy that needed tending to and she couldn’t leave him out on the street alone.

She’d been more sympathetic when he’d sat down next to her in the coffee shop across from Chieftain and she’d seen the bruises on his face, but it hadn’t bothered her, per se. But then he’d hugged her in the car and it was sweet and awkward and something had shifted in her perception of him. In that single gesture he’d stopped being ‘the guy she tolerates in the office’ and become ‘the guy who apparently cares about me.’  And when the grenade went off in the facility and she’d seen him lying there looking entirely dead, she’d realized that she apparently cared about him, too. ‘Friends’ might have been too strong a word to use when they entered the facility, but they sure as hell were comrades in arms by the time they left it. And ‘work-friends,’ at the very least. That one person at your day-to-day grind who you rely on to make things just a tiny bit less awful.

When River had been presumed dead the week before, it hit her hard that he’d become one of the most important people in her life, even if the mourning only lasted a few hours. And when she thought she was about to watch him get his head blown off by a grenade, all she could think was: absolutely not. It wasn’t until much later, when she’d been alone in an interrogation room at the Park, that her hands had started to shake and she’d nearly thrown up with how close they’d both come to dying down there on the embankment.

Now, in the kitchen, River backs away from her approach, palms up placatingly. “Louisa, I’m fine.”

Scanning him as she moves, she sees it—purple skin peeking out from the end of his right sleeve. “Your wrist.”

River takes another step backward but his escape is thwarted by the counter behind him. “I told you, I’m fine.”

They have an eight-second standoff before River sags and holds out his arm in her direction. She takes his hand gently in hers and peers closely at his wrist. “It looks painful,” she says, carefully turning it to get a full look.

“Nah,” he says. He extracts his hand and bends his fist back and forth, apparently to show her that it’s fine, but his effort is undermined by the fact that it’s still swollen and has diminished range of motion.

She rolls her eyes and grabs his hand again. It’s eerily similar to how it looked after he’d come back from Upshott—right after Min had died. An old sadness washes over her but she pushes it aside; she’s mostly past the deep despair that used to hit her when thoughts of Min were conjured. “See, it’s fine,” River says.

The skin around his wrist is badly bruised and there’s a ring of uneven scabs around most of it but it’s healing. It must have been bleeding that night. She feels guilty for missing it when they’d been sitting in the Dogs’ car, but it had been dark and there had been a lot going on. There is a fresh split in the scab where a small drop of blood is welling, probably from flexing his wrist too much as he cooked. She grabs paper towel from the roll and folds it a couple times before pressing it firmly to the spot. She gets a fleeting sense memory of bandaging River’s wrists that night at her apartment.

“You should probably keep it wrapped to remind you not to move it around so much.”

“It’s fine,” he says again.

“We saw the CCTV that night,” she tells him. “Of that bastard coming for you.”

“Did you?” he says, eyes flicking to hers and then darting quickly away.

He’s embarrassed, she realizes, but all she's ever thought about that night is what bollocks it took for River, cuffed to the car and staring down Patrice’s gun barrel, to reach out and slap it away. Louisa had been sure that in the next second she was going to watch River’s brains explode against the vehicle, but instead Patrice had shot the chain that tethered River to the car.  

“Who are you?” a voice booms from the doorway, startling them both.

Louisa drops River’s hand and turns toward the voice. River’s grandfather is standing in the doorway in pajamas and robe, slippers on his feet. She takes a small step backward, not afraid of him exactly—he’s 80-something years old and looks frail as a kitten—but he still strikes an imposing figure and this is his house. She opens her mouth to answer but River puts a light hand on her arm as he turns to the old man.

“Granddad, it’s okay,” he says calmly. “This is Louisa. I work with her. I’ve told you about her before.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “I’ve never met you,” he says, accusatorily.

“Uh, no, sir. We haven’t met. But we saw each other once? At Slough House?” She smiles, trying to look as unthreatening as possible.

“I don’t remember you,” he snaps.

“I—” She shoots an anxious glance at River, unsure how much to say to him about that dreadful night.

“It’s okay, Granddad. She’s Service. She’s my friend.” His voice is gentle and patient.

The O.B. studies her for a long, uncomfortable moment before he grunts and turns more fully to River. “No girls overnight. You know the house rules.” His voice is gruff.

Louisa suppresses a grin but she can see the fair skin on River’s neck flush pink.

“Yes, Sir. She’s just staying for a little while. I promise she’ll not stay the night.”

The old man turns his hawkish glare on her for a moment. “Alright then.”

“I’m making a curry,” River tells his grandfather. “Would you like some?”

The old man hesitates and then says, “No, no I…perhaps just some tea and toast, please.”

“Okay. Would you like to sit in here with us? Or I can bring it to you in your room. Or the study?”

The O.B. cast a wary eye at Louisa. “I…” a shaky hand adjusts his glasses. “I’m tired. In my room if you don’t mind.”

“Come on, I’ll take you back up.” He turns to Louisa and gestures with his head to the sizzling pan. “Could you…turns those in a minute?”

“Sure,” she says, relieved to have something to do besides make the former Number Two at the Park suspicious.

River disappears up the stairs with his grandfather while Louisa tends to the squash. She looks around the kitchen, still trying to reconcile the River who grew up here and apparently cooks, with the man she knows at Slough House. 

The morning after everything happened, Louisa had just gone for another coffee and when she’d returned, she could no longer hear River or Lamb’s muffled voices wafting down from above. Ascending the stairs, she found Lamb apparently asleep with his feet on his desk and no sign of River. Damn it. She’d intended to finish their conversation—confront River about running off on his own all the time.

“You’ve just missed him,” Lamb said, not opening his eyes or moving an inch.

“Did he go home?”

“How the fuck should I know?” he barked, then after a small pause, said, “It’s a safe bet he went running back to the O.B.’s.”

Louisa had pushed out a frustrated breath and stalked back down to her office, dumped the coffee, and gone home.

Two days later, when she got to the office, there was a file folder on her desk with a note in Catherine’s handwriting on the front: ‘Right in the shredder when you’re finished.’

Opening the folder, Louisa found a sheaf of papers that were River’s debrief with Lamb from two days before. She’d read through the document three times trying to absorb it all. No one she’d ever met had more of a shit hand dealt to them than River Cartwright. Christ.

Her plan for the day had involved tracking down River and having that conversation, but given everything she’d just read, she decided to let it lie for the moment. River no doubt had a lot he was wrestling with; their conversation could wait.

Almost a week had passed before she’d decided the wait was over and impulsively driven to Tonbridge.

Five minutes later River’s back in the kitchen.

“Is he alright?” she asks, stepping aside and returning control of the hob to him.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. He just gets easily agitated.” He pulls the pan from the burner before flipping on the kettle.

“I’m sorry if I made things worse.”

“You didn’t. That’s just how he is now.”

He looks so sad that a part of her wants to pull him into a hug, but she doesn’t because he’s obviously lost in his thoughts and it doesn’t feel like something he’d welcome.

While he’s fussing with the bread and the toaster, he asks, “Could you put the squash on that plate and then maybe slice those mushrooms while I get this for him?”

“Of course,” she says, happy to have something to do. She moves around to the cutting board. There’s a bowl next to it, in which there seems to be a variety of different kinds of mushrooms, things that she’s maybe seen in the shops but had never even thought about purchasing.

By the time he’s got a tray prepared for his grandfather, Louisa has chopped the mushrooms. “What’s next?” she asks.

A small crease appears between his brows when he spies the mushroom, and he says—with apparent reluctance—"Uh, put them in the pan to sauté and then… mince the shallots? I’ll be back down in a minute.”

“Sure,” she says.

River pauses at the door and turns to her. “Mince means to cut them very small.”

“Funny.”

While River’s off tending to his grandfather, Louisa picks up the knife and starts mincing the shallot. She looks at the squash on the plate and their ordered uniformity and is surprised all over again that River can actually cook. They’ve grown closer over the past couple of years, but looking at the squash she realizes there are so many things they still don’t know about each other.

Louisa can cook. The basics. She grew up with three siblings in a small flat with a small kitchen and her mum would chase everyone out when she was cooking—no room for kids to be underfoot. So she never learned at home. She started cooking at uni; was self-taught, buying a couple basic cookbooks at a resale shop and following the directions. She has a respectable repertoire of simple dishes she can cook and that actually taste decent. She’d never been so adventurous as to try to make a squash and mushroom curry, though. She’s not 100% sure she likes the idea of it, but she’ll be polite about it, of course.

River is gone for considerably longer than Louisa expects, and when he finally returns, he looks stressed and exhausted.

“He’s rather terrifying, isn’t he?” Louisa says. River huffs, but there’s a sadness in his eyes that makes her immediately regret saying it.

“Not really.” River takes the knife from her and uses his hip to bump her aside. She scowls but when he starts mincing the shallot far more quickly and expertly than she managed, she figures it wasn’t the wrong call. “I was never afraid of him. He could be stern growing up, but never mean.”

Louisa raises any eyebrow. “No girls in the house overnight?”

River smirks. “I thought I was being clever one night and snuck my girlfriend in through the window which was on the opposite side of the house from them, but he knew; of course he knew. He was banging on my door before I could even kiss her.”

He seems lost in the memory and she grins to herself imagining a teen-aged River in a school-boy uniform hustling a girl out the window.  “How is he?” she asks carefully. “I mean, generally.”

River pauses, seems focused on his chopping. “He’s very confused most of the time,” he finally says. “Frightened sometimes, I think, though he never says as much. He still has lucid moments but less and less often.”

He rinses his hands in the sink and dries them before leaning back with his arms crossed. “I’m beginning to feel a bit like a prisoner here. I don’t want to leave him alone because I’m afraid he’ll do something or wander off. I can’t even run to the shops to get food without panicking.”  The guilt he feels is palpable when he says, “I’ve been in contact with the Park’s facility. I, I think I’m going to have to make the move soon.” He shakes his head, looks away, out the window into the dark.

“I’m so sorry.”

River shrugs and keeps staring out the window as he confesses, “I promised him I never would, once, a couple of years ago. He said he’d rather I put him down than send him to one of those places.” He finally brings his eyes back to meet hers. “But I don’t know what else I can do.”

“Could you have someone care for him here?”

“I’ve thought about it but I don’t think so. He’s canny, and capable of sneaking away, no matter what kind of minder he has. He’s gotten past me a couple times and I only found him because I knew where he’d be heading. He needs to be in a secure facility, where he can be locked in and watched 24/7, but God, he doesn’t want that.” He shakes his head. “He’ll never forgive me.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

He sniffs a little, and looks at her. “Yeah, thanks.”

It’s quiet in the kitchen for a few moments, except for the sound of the food, sizzling in the pan.

Figuring there’s no time like the present, Louisa leans against the counter across from him again and says, “So. How are you? What with your dad trying to kill you, and your grandfather killing your brother, and you, you know, shooting his face off.”

River grimaces. “Don’t sugarcoat it or anything,” he mumbles.

She waves a dismissive hand. “You don’t want me to. Come on, then. How’re we feeling about the fact that your dad’s a psychopath?”

His brows climb upward as he stops chopping for a second and looks at her. “We?”

“Well, just, you know…trying to be a team player.”

River huffs and his eyes return to the cutting board. He’s finished chopping so he scrapes the shallots onto the fat blade of the knife and then pushes them off into the pan with his finger and stirs them with the wooden spoon. She can’t read anything in his expression, which is unusual—usually he’s an open book. He drizzles some EVOO into the pan with the mushrooms and shallots and stirs, then adds some spices she doesn’t recognize. Except for the one that’s obviously curry.

She’s beginning to think he’s not going to answer when he finally says, “It’s…a lot.” His voice tight and he’s avoiding her eyes. “I mean, I hate him. I really hate him and given half a chance, I’d probably kill him. I wish had, when he gave me his gun.”

She doesn’t even consider saying that he doesn’t mean that, because she knows he does. She’d felt the same way when Min was killed, absolutely would’ve killed Arkady at the hotel if Marcus hadn’t stopped her.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I’m not like him,” he says immediately, then shrugs. “Plus, there were a couple hundred people there to witness it if I had.” He stirs the ingredients in the pan. He’s still not really looked at her. “Knowing everything I know now, I want to even more, but…”

“But you’re not like him,” she fills in, and as much as she thinks the world would be a better place without Frank Harkness in it, she’s glad that the man didn’t have the effect of turning River into a cold-blooded murderer.

River sets down the wooden spoon, lowering the heat on the hob. “D’you want some wine?” he asks.

The abrupt change of topic startles her. “Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Red? White?”

“Red’s good.”

River crosses to the corner of the room to a wine rack she hadn’t noticed and pulls out a couple before settling on one. This River is like an alien to her—cooking, choosing wine, so comfortable in his skin, like he never is at Slough House. She doesn’t know what to make of it.

He opens a cupboard and grabs two stemware glasses from a high shelf and sets them on the counter. As he’s uncorking the bottle, he says, “I’m so…” pausing, he clenches his jaw, “pissed off that Frank is back out there.”

“Yeah, we all are. But how are you dealing with the fact that he’s your father?”

River’s head jerks up. “He’s not my father,” he snaps, anger creeping into his voice.

“River—”

“He’s a narcissistic bastard who seduced my mother to manipulate my grandfather. A sperm donor, that’s it. If I had a father, or a father figure, it was my grandfather. As far as I’m concerned, the world will be a better place if someone puts Frank into his grave,” he says, echoing her thoughts from a moment before.

“And Bertrand?” she asks hesitantly.

River looks away and immediately starts chewing his thumb. Louisa has seen the crime scene photos, seen the mess River made of his half-brother in his grandfather’s tub. His face was obliterated, but Louisa’s also seen the passport River had taken off the body and it was shocking how much River resembled him.

River drops his hand from his mouth and picks up his wine glass. “He was here to kill the O.B. and I needed time to get him safe,” he says with a hard edge. “I’m not going to apologize for what I did.” He takes a long swallow of wine and then reaches for the bottle, adding more to his glass.

“I don’t mean that,” she says. He’s distracted and not paying attention to the pan so she picks up the wooden spoon and stirs it around a little. It does actually smell divine.  “I mean, he was your half-brother, wasn’t he? Just, it’s all really fucked up, isn’t it? I guess I’m just wondering how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine,” he says, the words clipped.

“I don’t believe you.”  

He takes the spoon from her and stirs. “It was…weird, seeing his face.” He stops and shakes his head,  then looks her in the eyes. “But he was there to kill my grandfather. That’s all that matters.” There’s nothing but steel in his voice.

“Fair enough,” she concedes. She can tell there’s a lot going on inside his head but he’s not ready to talk about it. She’ll let it rest for a bit then circle back around later. Leaning over toward the pan, she says, “Smells good.”

“Yeah, it’s just about done.” He seems relieved to move on from the subject. “Could you lay the table while I finish this up?”

“Sure.”

He points to where she’ll find the plates and silverware and by the time she’s finished he’s setting a bowl of rice and one with the curry on the table.

Louisa pushes the last bite of her dinner into her mouth and sits back. “That was fantastic. Oh my God.” She’d been stunned upon first bite and gushed about it and then quickly tucked in and ate everything on her plate and then took more. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast so she was indeed hungry, but also, it tasted amazing.

“You say that like you’re surprised. I did tell you I can cook.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t really believe you.”

River makes an exasperated sound.

“So.” She leans in and rests her crossed arms on the table. “How are you doing. Really?”

River sighs and sets down his fork, leaning back in his chair. He rubs his hands up and down his face a couple of times, then he looks at Louisa. “You know I’m starting to regret letting you in.”

“Come on, River,” she says, not unkindly. “You can’t keep it all bottled in, you’ll turn into Lamb. You must be feeling something about it all.”

He takes a quick drink of wine, polishing off the glass, and Louisa is remined of the night in the train station when he’d said, “He’s m’ dad,” and her jaw had nearly dropped to the floor.

River bites his thumb and stares at the table for a minute before dropping his hand into his lap. “Besides furious? I honestly don’t know. Horror, satisfaction, guilt, curiosity, loss, nausea about the loss, morbid fascination, betrayal, schadenfreude. Where would I even start?” He refills his glass and takes another deep drink.

“Anywhere you like.”

River’s shaking his head even before she finishes. “Honestly, there’s just…so much, I can’t sort it all through in my head. Mostly I have so many questions that I’ll probably never get answers to.”

“Have you…talked to your mother about it?”

River scoffs, shaking his head. “God, no.”

She thinks better of pressing him after the reaction River had had on the subject the week before in the car. “What about your grandfather?”

He sighs. “I’ve tried, a few times when he seemed more lucid, but he always says he doesn’t remember.”

“Do you believe him?”

River gives a small shake of his head, lips pursed. “I don’t know. I want to. You know, mostly I’m so…pissed that Tavener just let him walk away.”

“Lamb said he had dirt on the Park, things Taverner never wants to see the light of day.”

“So…what? He has a lifelong get-out-of-jail-free card? He just gets to go about killing people and ruining people’s lives with no repercussions? He wanted me to join him. Did I tell you that?”

It’s rhetorical, so she doesn’t respond. She does know, though; she’d read it in the debrief that Catherine had given her.

“He wants to, to start over, start building a new group of assassins, and he wanted me to be one of them.” River laughs, a bitter thing with no humor in it. “He genuinely seemed to think that I’d just leave MI5 and join his merry band of killers. What the hell did he see in me that he thought there was even the remotest chance I’d do that?”

“Nothing. The guy is obviously delusional, River, you can’t let him get under your skin.”

“He’s already there, isn’t he? It’s repulsive that half of the genes I carry are his. It makes me want to, to, to peel my skin off.” He visibly shivers.

“River, you said it yourself, he was just a sperm donor. Theirs is nothing about you that’s like him. Nothing.”

“What about the fact that I want to kill him?”

“But you wouldn’t do it, would you? It’s not unreasonable. He put you and people you love through a lot of shit. He killed people you care about. You’re allow to be angry about that. You’re allowed to hate the man.”

“Yeah,” River says, biting his cheek and looking past her through the window into the dark.

It’s quiet for a moment and she lets him brood while she sips her wine—if anyone deserves to, she supposes he does. But only for so long. When her glass is empty, she says, “Thank you for dinner. I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”

His eyes shift to her and his features relax. “Want some more?”

“God, no, I’m stuffed. I’d take more wine though, if you have it.”

“Sure.” He stands with his plate and reaches for hers.

“Let me help,” she says, starting to stand herself.

“No, no, it’s fine,” River assures her. “Don’t need any help.”

Louisa has a sudden flash of memory.

   “What can we do to help him?” she’d asked Lamb that morning in Slough House, wiping away the last of the apparently unwarranted tears.

   “Nothing,” Lamb had barked, clearly annoyed by River taking off on his own but never admitting it. “If he wanted help he would’ve asked for it.”

She stews in the memory as he pulls a new bottle of wine from the rack and goes through the process of opening it. He returns with it and refills her glass before sitting to refill his own.

The thought of that morning at Slough House has churned up a sudden anger in her, deep and roiling. “You never do, do you?”

He stops, the wine bottle hovering over his glass, his eyebrows up.  “What?”

“Need help,” she clarified. “You think you never need help from anyone.” The words come out sharp. Sharper than she intended. Or possibly not—she’s running on pure emotion, not sure what she intended.

River turns and glances around the kitchen before circling back to her; his brows are furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

Swift, hot anger flashes through her. “I’m talking about how you always run off on your own. On the embankment that night, you asked if we could talk about it later. Well, it’s later.” It’s the other half of why she’d come here tonight, to have this conversation. She hadn’t realized how angry she was about it until now.

“Louisa…”

“Yeah, no. Don’t ‘Louisa’ me, River.”  Her voice has risen and she knows she should be quieter because of the OB but her emotions are spiraling and she can’t control it.

He’s eyeing her carefully as he pours himself a last splash of wine and sets the bottle on the table. “I don’t always run off—”

“Yeah, you do, Min. You run off by yourself and—" She cuts herself off when her brain catches up with her words. Ah, shit.

There is utter silence in the room.

“Louisa—”

“Oh God.” She squeezes her eyes shut and she drops her face into her hands.

“It’s—”

She snaps her head up. “Don’t.”

“—okay.”

“It was just a slip. I didn’t mean anything by it.” She can almost convince herself that’s the truth, but a wave of familiar grief is already rolling over her and her eyes are filling.

“I know.” He says it quickly, nodding his head.

Patronizing bastard, she thinks, anger flashing again. “No, you know what? I did mean something by it.” She takes a deep breath through her nose and lets it out slowly, trying to get her emotions under control. River opens his mouth to say something but Louisa holds her hand out, palm up, to stop him. “Just…give me a minute.”

“Sorry,” River says, ducking his head.

She blinks her eyes rapidly and takes a couple shaky breaths, then takes a long drink of her wine. Wisely, River doesn’t say anything.

When she’s got more control of her voice, she says, “Min took off, that day. We were following the Russians and they got in a cab and he rode off on his bike at full speed through London traffic and he, he could have been killed, and it terrified me.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

She’s not sure if he’s acknowledging her feelings about her concern for Min, or if he’s apologizing for taking off without a word.

“He took off and he could have been killed and I was so…angry at him. We argued about it later and then he went off on his own again and he was killed. And now you keep running off—“

“One time, Lou—”

“One time?” she says, her voice rising again. “That’s bullshit, River.” She slams her hand on the table. “You ran off at Stanstead when Taverner told you to stand down. You followed Hobden without telling anyone and got your head cracked and Sid followed you and died.” River flinches at that. “You ran off after Catherine’s kidnappers, alone; you absolutely would have gone to that facility on your own if I hadn’t forced myself along with you. And you ran off to France alone and then almost got blown up by a grenade. Do the math, River. Nothing good ever happens when you go off on your lone-wolf bullshit. When are you going to understand that and start trusting us?”

“I trust—”

“You didn’t trust us! You ran off to France by yourself. And worse, you intentionally made us believe you were dead—”

“It was just to buy some time—”

“Yeah, well, in the meantime, we thought you were dead. It was horrible and all I could think was that it was my fault because I pushed you to come here that night. And you want to know the worst thing about it? I cried, River. In Slough House. In front of Ho.” Tears have sprung to her eyes again and she wipes them viciously. “Christ, I cried in front of Ho,” she says through the tears. “Do you have any idea how much you owe me for that?”

He looks contrite but also like every man she’s ever known when confronted by women in the throes of strong emotion: paralyzed with fear.

With tears still coming, she says,  “You can’t keep running off on your own, because one of these days, River, you really are going to be killed and I…I can’t live through that again!” She uses her middle fingers to wipe under her eyes from the side of her nose across her cheekbone. Her fingers come away black with mascara. “Christ, I must look a mess. Is there a loo I can use?” She’s embarrassed for her mini breakdown and can’t quite bring herself to look at him.

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” He quickly stands and so does she, just as the O.B. yells for River from upstairs. River’s eye’s look toward the stairs.

“I’m sorry, I’ll get out of your hair,” she tells him, grabbing a tissue from the box on the counter and wiping her nose.

He places a light hand on her arm. “I’ll just be a minute, please don’t leave.”

She’s suddenly exhausted and not sure she has more fight in her for one night. When she doesn’t respond, he says again, “Please.”

He looks so earnest that she finds herself saying, “Alright.”

“Good. Come on,” he leads her toward the stairs then points to the right. “The loo is just around there.”

“Thanks,” she says, skirting by him. She hears him ascend the steps as she’s closing the bathroom door.

When he gets to his grandfather’s room, the O.B. is clearly agitated. He worries that he’d heard their conversation downstairs but it turns out he’d just had a nightmare. It takes River nearly twenty minutes of soothing to get him to settle and back to sleep. But he can’t deny that he’s happy to have the time to think through how to respond to Louisa.

When he finally makes it back down to the kitchen he half expects that she will have left, but she hasn’t; she’s leaning against the kitchen counter eating a slice of cake. The washing up has all been done.

Louisa looks caught. “You were taking kind of a long time and…there was cake.”

He’d bought it at the shops the day before because lemon cake is his grandfather’s favorite. But when he’d offered a piece, the O.B. had scrunched up his brows and snapped that he detested lemon cake.

River waves her off. “Have at it,” he says and stands across from her, leaning on the old Aga.

“Listen,” he says, “I did call you.”

She stops with the fork halfway to her mouth. “What?”

“I had Catherine’s phone and after Patrice snatched me and took me to Frank, I did try to call you but Frank caught on to what I was doing and basically…” He chews at his bottom lip, lost in the memory of the jolt of pure fear he’d felt when Frank had said he hoped River wasn’t too attached to whomever he had called. His blood had run cold and he’d disconnected immediately; the thought of something happening to Louisa because of him had terrified him. He flicks his glance back to her. “He would have killed you, alright? And I wasn’t about to give him the chance and I won’t apologize for it.”

She looks like she’s about to argue the point but before she can he quickly follows up with, “But I am sorry, for making you think I was dead. Mostly, though, for making you cry in front of Ho. That’s, yeah, that’s really bad.”

Louisa lets out a small strangled laugh and the remaining tension that hung in the room finally disappears. “Yeah, you’re going to owe me for a long time, like the rest of your natural life.”

River nods agreeably. “Yep. Got it. What’s that going to cost me?” He snaps his fingers. “Daily coffee from the shop across the street for a month.”

“You heard the part where I said the rest of your natural life, right?”

River huffs and smiles, cuts himself a slice of cake and puts another one on Louisa’s plate.

“Please tell me you didn’t make this cake, too. I’m not sure my world view is ready to be so completely turned upside down.”

“I did not make the cake,” River assures her.

“Thank God,” she mutters before taking a bite of her second piece.  

They eat in momentary silence, forks lightly clinking on the porcelain china now and then.

“Look,” she says eventually. “Please just, don’t go running off by yourself anymore. Slough House may not be much, but we have your back, every one of us. Even Lamb.”

River snorts his skepticism.

“He does. He covered for you with Flyte and kept your granddad safe. He’s shite at showing it but he’ll do whatever it takes to protect his joes.”

“Yeah.” River pokes at the yellow icing on the cake, his stomach suddenly souring at the memory of Louisa telling him she wanted to be done with Slough House by the end of the year. He wishes he could say the same but he knows that the only way he’ll ever leave the service is if he’s finally actually fired or in a body bag. “I don’t…I don’t know how I’ll be able to just carry on like before. You know you're the only thing about Slough House that makes it vaguely worth getting up in the morning.”

“A ringing endorsement,” she says, her expression confused.

“Sorry, it’s just—” Impulsively, he puts down his plate and steps close to Louisa, telegraphing his intent. She rolls her eyes but acquiesces, setting down her own plate so River can tug her into his arms. “God, I’ll miss you.” He can’t stop himself from planting a kiss on the top of her head. He’s realized recently that she’s the best friend he’s had in ages and the thought of not seeing her nearly every day leaves him feeling suddenly, breathlessly, bereft.

She pulls back suddenly. “Why? Where’re you going?” She looks almost panicked.

He blinks at her. “Not me. You. You said you wanted to leave Slough House.”

She waves him off and slides back into his arms. “Oh, yeah, never mind about that. Catherine talked me out of it.”

“She did?”

“Yeah, she said I’d be bored to death and she’s not wrong.”

“Oh, thank God,” River says, giving Louisa one brief tight squeeze, then releasing her.

“She’s back, by the way.”

“Who? Catherine? She came back to Lamb?”

Louisa nods. “Mmhm.”

“Is it wrong of me to feel happy that she’s back suffering Jackson’s abuse?”

“Probably, but I feel the same.” She looks at her watch. “God, better go. I don’t want to get caught in the house after curfew.”

“Cute.”

She’s smirking as he walks her to the front hall and retrieves her jacket from the closet.

She slips it on then turns to face him. “When will you be back?”

River reflexively glances toward the stairs and grimaces. “I’ve just…got to get him sorted but then…yeah, I’ll be back soon. Maybe a week?”

“I like my coffee with cream and no sugar.” She gives him another smirk.

“Yeah, yeah, good to know,” he says, as if he hadn’t marked her coffee preference months ago. He gives her a playful shove out the door and she laughs as she goes. River watches until she’s in her car before he closes the door. He’s nearly buoyant with relief as he heads up the stair to check on the O.B.