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more. There was hurt, injured hope.
    “I didn't lie,” I said, voice quiet.
    “So you had no idea why he might be stopping by.”
    It had been such a small lie. The littlest fabrication, engineered to keep him calm. I opened my mouth, perhaps to say something to that effect, but maybe my lips knew better than to spout something so asinine.
    He stared at me for an eternity, then he turned away.
    “Rivera,” I said, but he just kept walking, through my foyer and out of my life.

4
    You're gonna sit down. You're gonna shut up. And by the grace of God Almighty, I ain't gonna kill you.
    —
Esse Goldenstone
,
upon discovering a pack of

Camels in her grandson's

backpack
    ICKY GOLDENSTONE took a seat on my therapy couch at 8 a.m., and settled his right ankle over his left knee. He was lean and black with a smile that could light up the universe and a glare that could stop your heart. I suspected both were employed with some regularity on the fifth-graders he taught at Plainview in Tujunga.
    “Hey Doc, how goes the rat race?” he asked, and watched me as he settled back against the cushion. He'd been a client for just under a year, but we'd covered some pretty rocky ground in that time.
    “Pretty well,” I said.
    “Yeah?” His teeth were aligned like little white soldiers. “You winning, then?”
    I crossed one leg over the other and smiled. I liked Micky, had since the moment I met him. “Pretty even odds, actually,” I said.
    He shook his head a little. “Then you're ahead of the game.”
    “Trouble at work?” I asked.
    “No.” The answer was straightforward, solid. Our gazes struck and locked. I braced myself. I have clients who come in to chat about their acne or their hangnails or their difficulty paying the mortgage on their million-dollar homes. Micky Goldenstone wasn't one of them. “I found her old man.”
    I drew a careful breath through my nose and pushed my own suddenly minified troubles behind me. Yes, Rivera had acted like an ass, I had had to force the senator out of my house, and I was still peeing at the office, but I didn't have burn scars from my father. I didn't wake up screaming in the middle of the night, and I didn't have guilt so deep it ate my soul like battery acid.
    “The man Kaneasha was living with,” I said.
    He didn't bother to nod. He was already immersed in the past. Immersed and sinking deeper. I could tell by his expression, his darkening dialect.
    “Cig,” he said, and sat in silence for a moment, eyes narrowed.
    “Did you speak to him?”
    He remained silent, looking at nothing.
    “Micky,” I said.
    He drew back almost seamlessly. “Yeah. Yeah. I talked to 'im.”
    “And that's how you learned—”
    “He's a—” He stopped himself, gritted his teeth, makinga muscle bunch in his jaw. “They ain't together no more.” He nodded. “She left more'n a year ago. Maybe 'cuz he beat the crap out of her.” He shrugged. “Maybe not.”
    I had a thousand questions, but so did he. I let him run.
    “He admitted it. I didn't ask. Hell! I didn't wanna know. But he was proud. Fuckin' crackhead can—” He burst to his feet and twisted away raw energy tightly bound. “Can—”
    “Micky” I said, soothing.
    “Can beat the shit out of woman half his—”
    “Micky,” I said, raising my voice.
    “What!” He turned toward me, hands fisted, eyes burning.
    “Sit down please.”
    He did so, but his eyes were still burning, his hands still fisted.
    I watched him, letting him calm.
Hoping
he'd calm. “Her abuse at the hands of her boyfriend is not your fault. It was—”
    “That's bullshit!” He watched me, then inhaled deeply, making his nostrils flare. “I was the one that raped her.”
    I kept myself from wincing. “Yes.”
    “She was just a—” He jerked to his feet again. I let him go. “All elbows and knees and—” He stopped, turned abruptly toward the window. “Eyes.” He said the word so softly I could barely hear him.
    “From what you've told me,