I go to work because I have to, even though I want nothing more than to lie in bed and think about everything and then not think about anything. What does it say about me that the only thing I want to do is call Cas and check in on him?

     I can tell myself that it's not my place a million times. I don't think I'll ever fully believe it.

     Charles and I work in silence to get the morning batches out. Tasha took an order for three dozen cupcakes for a Halloween party on Friday, so I'm starting the first batch for that. We do a Halloween "Spooky" Special — a pumpkin cake base with a honey center that's been food-colored a luminescent green and a cream cheese icing, all decorated to look like different monsters. I can start the bases two days ahead of time but I won't be able to decorate them till Friday morning.

     "What're we doing for Thanksgiving?" Charles asks as he fills a tray with batter.

     I shrug, noncommittal. "I don't know. Probably take select pie orders again. Have enough in stock in case anyone needs them last minute."

     "Oh," Charles says glancing up at me. "I meant what are we doing. Any idea what the plan is?"

     I frown. "I don't know. I haven't given it much thought, honestly."

     "I assume Jack and Jasmine will be joining us again? With the kids?"

     Jack doesn't speak to his family and Jasmine's family lives in Honduras, so the past few Thanksgiving they've spent it with me, so incidentally Dolores, Charles and Amelia, too.

     "If that's the case," Charles is saying. "Maybe you'll think about hosting it here, instead. Last year was a bit crowded at your place."

     He's right. I'd invited Ashley and Ibrahim to dinner, too. It was a tight squeeze. "That's a good idea," I say.

     "Great, because Dolores invited Olivia and Cas."

     I halt. "She did what now?"

     "And Olivia called her yesterday to confirm that her family would be flying in for it."

     I stare aghast before I storm out of the kitchen and head towards Dolores's office. She's sitting at her desk playing solitaire. "You invited Olivia and Cas to Thanksgiving?"

     She smiles. "Good morning, Dresden. I'm doing swell on this fine Wednesday morning thank you for asking."

     "Dolores," I say.

     "I did. Olivia has already confirmed it with her family so there's no going back now."

     "Why would you do that? You said you were staying out of it."

     She nods. "I did and I am. I'm not getting involved in anything you and Cas may or may not be doing in your place of work." Her tone is all insinuation. How she knows, I don't know. We don't have cameras back here, only in the front, so it's not like we accidentally made an X-Rated film.

     She notes my expression and laughs, saying, "Mother's know everything, Dresden. And anyway, Olivia is my friend. I've been playing online poker with her mother for the last four years, so if you and Cas can't manage to be in a room together for a night, you don't have to come."

     "I'm the one making the dinner," I snap. Why do I always lose my control with Dolores and only ever Dolores?

     "Well, you can make dinner and then leave," she says with a casual shrug.

     "Why can't Cas not come?"

     "Because I'm not telling Olivia her son can't come to Thanksgiving because my son is emotionally stunted."

     I throw my hands up. "You know for someone who said she's not getting involved, this feels exactly like getting involved."

     "For someone who's been going to therapy for years," she starts to say.

     I cut her off with: "Don't finish that sentence, Dolores."

     "You would think you'd be more equipped to handle your emotions."

     "Unbelievable," I scream storming out of the office.

     Charles is standing in the doorway and says, "Why do you always have to rile him up?"

     I don't stick around to hear her response, heading out the back door. I don't know where I'm going, but I start walking, anyway, heading up the street into the town center. It's a prime fall day, warm under the sun with a cool breeze, that I don't regret that I didn't grab my jacket before I walked out. All the little shops lining the street have their doors open and halloween-themed store fronts. 

     It smells like fresh mowed grass and a tangy meat coming from the Tex-Mex spot on the corner. Cas and I had dinner there once and he got viciously food poisoned. I told him the beef enchiladas looked questionable but he was always hard-headed about that kind of stuff. "Guts of steel," he'd said on more than one occasion. "Guts of steel," I'd mocked him that night as I rubbed his back through his endless vomiting. When the episode started, he'd rushed to the bathroom and tried to close the door against me. "Look away!" he'd screamed. He was quoting Bridesmaids, which I'd never seen, so after he was done being sick we watched it together.

     Thinking about this now, it doesn't hurt. I am so grateful for the time we had.

     I walk back to Private Weston's slowly, coming in through the front door. Tasha looks over at me from behind the register when I enter. She nods with her chin in a direction across the room. The place is pretty empty, reasonable for a Wednesday afternoon, but sitting at one of the lone tables is Cas, working on his laptop again. I haven't heard from him since last night. I don't know where that leaves us.

     I take the seat across from him before he can say anything. He glances at me over his laptop, before typing some more. I wait and when he finishes, he shuts the screen. "Dolores invited us to your Thanksgiving," he says simply. "I would refrain from coming but my cousins will be there and I haven't seen them since the summer."

     I nod, knowing what they mean to Cas. "Maybe we can draw a Thanksgiving truce?"

     "Thanksgiving truce," he repeats, thoughtfully. "Yeah okay."

     "About last night," I start to say and I don't even know where I'm going with it. I want to ask him if he's okay. How do I say that and remove the concern from my voice at the same time?

     Cas says suddenly, "You know, it's not actually working on a child that's the hard part. This may sound callous, but a patient is patient. You learn to disassociate. You actually don't even realize that you're doing it. But you kind of stop seeing the patient for the person they are. They're just their injuries, they're the parts you can fix and the parts you can't."

     He taps his fingers on the table, looking down. I watch the way his shoulders sink, how he locks his jaw. "The hard part," he says. "Is the after. When you have to go up to someone — mom or dad or brother or wife. And tell them that the person they love, that they've been sitting here praying for, didn't make it. That you did everything you could, and you start to wonder did you do everything you could? But they didn't make it."

     He looks up, meeting my gaze as he says, "Sometimes they're silent. Like they didn't even hear you. And you stand there waiting for them to react and they never do. They remain very still, like someone pressed paused on their life. Like if they don't move, then they don't have to move on. I prefer those people to the ones that go down right in front of you. You can't un-hear a parent mourning the loss of their child."

     I think about what he just said. If they don't move, then they don't have to move on. I wonder if that's what he did. I start to tell him I'm sorry, even though I'm not supposed to say that because I figure this is a different sort of sorry. A sorry that has nothing to with me, but that I'm not any less sorry about.

     He's looking down at his hand where he's still tapping his nails against the table. Not one finger after the other but all of them at the same time. "Y'know," he says quietly. "There were so many times where I wanted you to come out there."

     It takes me a second to catch up that we're now talking about us. About our past.

     "I thought for the longest you'd just show up one day. So much that I'd round the corner of a building or walk by a coffee shop and my heart would stop because I'd see someone who looked like you, or glimpse a tattoo, or get a whiff of your cologne."

     I don't know that you can ever really apologize enough or mean it enough to take back the hurt. In these moments I think about what it means to be honest. Is it always the best thing? I spent so many years of my life holding the truth in, though.

     "I flew out there," I say finally.

     Cas's mouth opens a little, making this perfect oh shape. No sound escapes.

     "You'd just sent this letter. It was your sophomore year, spring semester. You were — not good. Differently, though. You asked me all these philosophical questions about life. It was this thing you said, though. You said 'I don't know that there is a purpose or that I have one'."

     "So you read my letters."

     "Of course I read your letters," I respond my tone incredulous before I've given it a thought. There was no way for him to know that I would have. It's not like I sent him any of the letters I wrote back.

     He swallows. I'm fixated on the way his Adam's apple bobs. "I started speaking to someone that summer."

     I nod. "I remember you talking about her. Rebecca."

     He's fiddling with his hands, twisting his fingers around each other. It's a new thing. "So you flew out there and what exactly?" He looks down after his question, avoiding my gaze.

     "You can't get upset," I say with finality. Olivia and I had talked about this — about him finding out the whole truth. She was okay with the repercussions but I wanted to help with the fall out as much as I could. I owed her that.

     He looks up at that and his eyes are elsewhere. So much distance in them, like I'm looking into his gaze from a shoreline through binoculars. "With who? You?" His tone is sharp. The insinuation being you can't be what you already are. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out where I stand with Cas.

     "Olivia," I answer quietly.

     He clenches his jaw, nodding his head as he looks away. There's tension in his shoulders and the hand twisting has been replaced by clenched fists.

     "So what happened exactly? She told you to leave?"

     "I went to your house," I say. "She was there, you were not. I told her I was concerned and she said you'd gone to visit Halston for the weekend. But she knew you were having a hard time. So I thought you would be okay. I asked her not to tell you that I came."

     "You thought I would be okay," he says with this hollow laugh. When he meets my gaze this time, there's so much heat, so much anger. I applaud myself for, yet again, successfully pissing him off. The way Dolores sets me off seems to be exactly what I do to Cas.

     "Let me tell you something about longing — about missing you. It's like you're fine until the exact moment you're not. Until you put on a lotion you haven't used in a while, and it's the same lotion you used after all of your meets, and so it scent triggers the fuck out of you. I associate lotion with you. The most banal of items. So imagine what else I associate with you? Forget a coffee house. I didn't step into one for years. I was naturally, adamantly against cupcakes, and maybe this sounds trivial. Maybe this sounds dramatic. But everything reminds me of you. I'm at risk for getting winded from a memory every waking moment of the day." He's shoving his belongings into his backpack as he speaks, moving to his feet.

     "So when you say you thought I'd be okay, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," he all but screams at me before he storms out. I remain rooted to my spot, too long, because Tasha walks up and takes his seat.

     "Tash, I really don't," I say quietly.

     "That's cool, let's just sit, then."

     I find myself grateful in this moment that at least Tasha is able to read a room.