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The Apartment was dim when Spencer finally dropped his go-bag on the floor.
It had been a long case. One of those cases. The kind that stuck to your skin and made everything feel heavier...like the air, like your limbs, like your own thoughts. A child had been involved. Too young. Too innocent. And for Spencer, it always hit in a way that never dulled, no matter how many years passed or how much tragedy he catalogued.
He kicked off his shoes, the silence loud in his ears, and crossed to one of the bookshelf he'd been trying to organize for months.
He needed a distraction.
Something familiar.
He reached for a medical journal at first, then a physics volume … but paused when his fingers brushed something older…Worn…Beloved.
The Cavendish.
His heart skipped, just for a second.
He pulled it down and sat on the edge of the Sofa, running his hand over the rough cover. The title was still faintly visible, faded from years of reading and being moved from place to place … college dorms…tiny apartments… but it's still here.
Mathematical Principles and Theories. First edition, 1944.
It still had the little tear on the bottom of the spine from when he dropped it on his birthday all those years ago. He had panicked like he’d broken something sacred. Matt had just laughed and said, “Battle scars make books cooler. Like stories on the outside.”
Spencer smiled at the memory, soft and sad.
He opened to the front cover.
The handwriting was still there — messier than he remembered, almost like a time capsule of Matthews youth.
To the smartest kid I know —
You already have all the answers.
Now you’ve got the book too.
– Matt
He hadn’t read those words in years. He hadn’t needed to.
But tonight, he did.
The case had chipped at something in him. Watching that little boy cling to the medic’s hand, afraid and shaking … it had taken Spencer straight back to being that kid. The one who hid in corners with books while the world around him felt too loud, too fast, too cruel.
And this … this book … was a reminder that he’d never really been alone.
Not back then. Not now.
He turned to a page at random and let his eyes blur over the equations. Complex, sharp, elegant in a way that only numbers could be. Something about the quiet logic of it soothed the static in his mind.
Spencer curled up sideways on the sofa,pulling the worn blanket over him that was thrown over the back of the Sofa , holding the book against his chest, like he had the day he first got it.
He could almost hear his brothers voice in his head. “Don’t worry, kid. You’ve got this.”
And somehow, even after all this time, it helped.