FIFTY BLOCKS SOUTH, Maddy’s grandmother, Jessica, reached into the refrigerator and tossed a cube of cheese to her scrappy Scottish terrier, Bando. As always, he caught it on the fly.
“Good boy!” said Jessica. The brown-haired mutt chomped twice and swallowed hard. Then he scooched forward on the floor—head angled, tail wagging. Jessica held her hands up and spread her fingers wide. “Sorry, kiddo, no more where that came from.”
Actual dog food, like everything else, was hard to come by. But Jessica always said she’d rather starve herself than deprive her crazy pup. He was one of the two loves of her life—the other being her granddaughter, who was not nearly as obedient.
“I might be late, Grandma,” Maddy had said as she left for school that morning. “Something big is happening today!” No hint about what it was. But Jessica knew that an eighteen-year-old girl couldn’t be expected to share everything with her grandmother. God knows Jessica had kept a few secrets from her.
The lights in the apartment flickered and dimmed. The bulbs buzzed from the lower voltage. They were rerouting the power again, and this part of the city was always the last priority. Jessica was lucky to have electricity at all, along with four walls and a few actual rooms. A lot of her friends were not so fortunate. She knew families who were crowded into a single open space, and others who moved every few nights, just one step ahead of the housing police and the street gangs.
Jessica heard footsteps on the stairs. Boot thuds. Maddy. That girl stomped like a construction worker. Bando ran to the door, tail wagging, body shaking with excitement. For Bando, Maddy coming home never got old.
The door opened a crack.
“Grandma?” Maddy called out. Bando was already poking the front half of his body through the door opening, pawing at Maddy’s lower leg. She reached down to scratch his head. Then Bando suddenly backed up and growled.
“Shhhh!” said Maddy. “It’s okay, Bando. He’s a friend.”
Lamont tucked himself behind Maddy in the dark stairwell.
“Get back here, you little brute!” called Jessica. “Maddy? Is there someone with you?”
Jessica saw Maddy step through the door into the tiny apartment, pulling in a man behind her. The sight of him brought Jessica up short. He was dressed like an old-time lounge singer. Good-looking, but in his early forties—way too old to be hanging around a teenage girl like Maddy.
“Well,” Jessica said cautiously. “Hello.” Maddy never brought anybody home. Scooter parts, yes—people, no.
“Grandma,” said Maddy. “This is Lamont. Lamont, this is my grandma—and that’s Bando.” Bando yipped, still suspicious.
Jessica reached out to shake Lamont’s hand. Smooth. Certainly doesn’t work for a living, she thought. And what’s that mess on his shirt?
“Welcome,” she said. “Call me Jessica.”
Maddy had been thinking about this little meeting for the whole nasty trek home. Grandma was pretty sharp, and this would not be easy to explain.
“‘Lamont,’” Jessica repeated. “Is that French—‘from the mountain’?”
“Ancient Norse, actually,” said Lamont. “‘Man of law.’”
“Interesting,” said Jessica.
At the moment, the only man of law on Maddy’s mind was Poole. The reason she hadn’t told her grandmother about the lawyer’s letter was that she hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up.
Maddy, of course, had been thinking that she might inherit money, preferably cash. What a treat that would have been! For starters, she would have bought her grandmother some clothes that actually fit and a heater that actually worked. Instead, she was bringing home a strange guy covered in dried vomit.
“Do you teach at Maddy’s school?” Jessica asked. A shot in the dark for sure, but she had to start somewhere.
Lamont looked at Maddy.
“Grandma,” said Maddy, “we need to talk.”
First things first, thought Jessica. In a world lacking comforts or even basic sanitation, she remained a stickler for hygiene. She leaned toward her guest.
“Lamont, let me clean that shirt for you.”