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“I’m trying to remember when it happened,” Francis said, flipping to walk backwards ahead of Jerott and then dropping back to walk next to him again. “It was in the spring, or maybe early summer? The first or second year you were gone. I don’t remember if they were broken up at the time because it’s not like that ever made them act any differently. It was right after Philippa’s damn weasel got out. Christ, that was a time.”
Francis was expounding in gleeful depth about a time he had sent his brother Richard on a chase through their hometown under the mistaken impression that his girlfriend Mariotta was looking for him. It had, if Francis was to be taken at face value, no fewer than eight stops, and Richard had barrelled through all of them.
“Doesn’t Philippa keep ferrets?” Jerott asked. He could have sworn they were ferrets.
“It is a ferret,” Francis said. “She’s named it Weasel.” His voice pitched higher. “‘I chose it precisely so people would ask, and I would get to explain the taxonomical difference between ferrets, weasels, and other mustelids, but people tend not to stick around for the other mustelids. So I make do with what I can get, and focus on the most important distinctions in the average person’s experience.’”
“Did you stick around for the other mustelids?” Jerott asked.
“I did not,” said Francis.
It had been a while since Jerott had interacted with the Crawfords’ next-door neighbors. He tried to intuit how many years in school behind them Philippa was and failed. “How old is Philippa now?”
“Twelve.”
Okay, well, Jerott knew it wasn’t that. He took a step beyond vibes and attempted some math in his head. “Wouldn’t she be… fifteen? Sixteen?”
Francis ignored him in favor of quoting something in a language Jerott did not speak, which was the usual indication he had said something correct that Francis did not want to talk about (though it was also an indication that Jerott had said something incredibly stupid that Francis wanted to mock him for but did not want to talk about, and also an indication that Francis was in a mood regardless of the accuracy of any of Jerott’s statements).
Jerott persisted. “No, I think that’s right. Isn’t she the same age-” As Eloise. Jerott abruptly stopped persisting.
“She is not,” said Francis, and smiled.
“Right.” Jerott cleared his throat. “What about. Er. Richard’s scavenger hunt.”
“Ah, yes,” said Francis, and it was the dangerous kind of cheerful that did not lend itself to conclusions of cheerful anecdotes. Jerott spent the rest of the walk home busy being grateful the rest of the walk home was extremely short.
St. Mary’s old, well-maintained facade enfolded them back like a vaguely disapproving but ultimately fond guardian. Jerott, of the Catholic persuasion even if not entirely persuaded, sometimes felt like he had something to apologize to God for by settling a corner of a converted seminary as home base with a set of five other men who were, for the most part, cheerfully agnostic in variable directions.
He’d made the mistake of voicing this once last year, while drunk—something embarrassing along the lines of, “Does St. Mary’s hate me,” and had to clarify that he meant the building itself and not the friends to whom he was speaking. Danny had said, “If God were angry at us, wouldn’t he have let us know by now?” and Alec had said, “Eh, maybe he plays the long game. He’s certainly got enough time,” and Francis had said, “Alec! Don’t scare Jerott, he’s got enough to worry about with all of our souls on his conscience,” and then grinned beatifically at Jerott to make sure that Jerott knew that this was not, in fact, a defense and was, in fact, further mockery.
Inside the apartment, Marthe was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table, newspaper open on one knee and her elbow on the other propping up her head. Her golden hair was tied in a loose loop at the base of her neck.
“Reading other people’s mail is a federal offense,” Francis said lightly.
“Scorpio,” said Marthe, not looking up from the paper. “You will encounter a great struggle, but a new friend may help you if you aren’t too focused to see it. Other people don’t worry about you nearly as much as you worry about you.”
“So the Tribune’s intern thinks the physics midterm will be a little more difficult than I anticipated.”
“I think it means you need to get your head out of your ass,” said Marthe pleasantly.
“That cannot possibly be what the paper says,” Jerott said crossly.
“If only you could read,” said Marthe, mournfully. She flipped the paper over in a deliberately loud rustle of newsprint while Jerott flipped furiously and futilely through potential responses. Francis’s older half-sister was always around, and had made it her sworn duty to make Jerott’s life miserable.
The rest of the St. Mary’s crew, unfortunately, liked her. (They kept letting her into the apartment, at the very least.) Jerott did not understand why, considering Marthe made it abundantly clear that she didn’t like anyone.
***
Luckily for Jerott’s peace of mind, Marthe left shortly thereafter. Unluckily for Jerott’s peace of mind, Francis wanted to take Jerott out to introduce him to some more of his endless friends.
“You’ll like Míkál,” Francis promised, which is what he usually promised, and did Jerott usually like the friend in question? No.
Jerott did not understand how Francis knew so many people. Even the times they weren’t out with the intention to meet someone Francis knew, they always ran into them. Hardware store? Girl Francis hooked up with freshman year. Library? Guy Francis had met at French tutoring. Community theater production in the park? Guy Francis had met in actual France. Hole in the wall dumpling place on the other damn side of the city? Someone who worked (?) in a chamber of commerce (??) in Minnesota (???) who Francis knew because of an incident with a sheep (????) (the music had been loud in there, so it’s likely Jerott heard incorrectly).
Though there was the time someone had mistaken Francis for Marthe, which was deeply gratifying for Jerott and left Francis scowling.
“Introduce Marthe to your friends,” Jerott said now, riding a brainwave of inspiration.
Francis raised an eyebrow. “You want Marthe to third-wheel?”
Jerott felt his face turn red. “That’s not- I don’t- if she knows other people, she’ll leave us alone.”
Francis kept his eyebrow raised for just a second longer, which allowed Jerott time to remember that Marthe had grown up in this city and if she wanted to know people, she would know them.
“I’ll come,” said Danny, grinning wickedly. He was inverted on one of their mismatched sofas, heels kicked up against the wall. “I like your friends, Francis.”
“I know you do,” said Francis dryly. “You won’t run them off before Jerott has a chance to meet them?”
Danny shrugged and said, “He does a good enough job of that himself.” He rolled sideways—onto Adam, sitting the right way up on the couch, instead of the other direction, which was free and clear for wayward Dannys—and Adam pushed him entirely off the couch before returning his entire attention to the sketchbook he had propped up on his knees.
Jerott scowled. Perfect. A night out with Francis, who wouldn’t pay attention to him, and Danny, who would. “Please tell me there will be alcohol.” He fished his phone out of the couch cushions.
“You wound me,” said Francis. “That I would take you to an establishment that would deny you the opportunity to indulge your finer sensibilities? Never.”
“There was that time with the poetry reading,” Jerott pointed out. Jerott thought poetry was better tolerated drunk anyway and that holding it in a coffee shop was an oversight. “The dog show.”
“The dog show,” said Francis, “was a different category of excursion entirely.”
“They’re all in the category of ‘drag me somewhere so you can socialize,’” Jerott grumbled, jamming his feet into his sneakers.
“Networking, Jerott,” said Francis severely.
“This is not networking!” said Jerott, who also, incidentally, hated networking.
“Well! No reason to complain, then. It is time we were going.” Francis turned on his heel, flung the front door open, and headed out into the cloudy evening.
Jerott cursed and grabbed both his rain jacket and Francis’s from the closet before following.
The bar Francis took them to wasn’t one Jerott had been to before, as it somehow always seemed to be. Francis’s friend Míkál was in the band, and they weren’t half bad. Not Jerott’s style, but not something that caused his ears to bleed like three quarters of the places Francis hauled him to (“They’re experimental! Isn’t it wonderful!”). Jerott had once asked Francis why he’d never joined a band, and Francis had assured him that he had been in a band, and Jerott had just missed it. Everyone from their hometown Jerott had ever asked about Francis’s band had made ah noises and either demurred elaboration or obliquely referenced some incident or other and then demurred elaboration.
When he was done, Míkál made a beeline for Francis and kissed him effusively on each cheek.
“Míkál,” said Francis, “this is Jerott.”
“Ah, Jerott.” Míkál appraised him. “I am Míkál.”
“Your band was… good,” said Jerott awkwardly, because that seemed like the thing to say.
“Thank you,” said Míkál, and turned back to Francis. “Do you have other friends.”
Jerott scowled into his glass. Francis complimented the music much more earnestly in much more elaborate technical terms, and then started talking to Míkál about golf, which Jerott had no idea Francis knew anything about. He supposed he should stop being surprised by that by now. Because golf was one of life’s most boring pastimes, Jerott turned away, took a drink, and idly searched the crowd for Danny’s dandelion head to occupy time until he could leave.
***
“Take your meds, idiot!” A bottle of pills flew from source unseen through the kitchen doorway to clatter on the ground a foot from Francis as the front door slammed shut behind Jerott.
“I,” said Francis, “am fine.”
Jerott immediately peered at his face, and Francis tilted his chin and rolled his eyes. “Christ. I’ve had enough of inquisitions every time I try to leave the house.”
“Go lie down,” said Jerott, because Alec was right and Francis did look tight around the edges. They’d all learned to recognize the signs of his migraines coming on.
“Jerott,” Francis said. “I cannot stand to be in here. Not today.”
Jerott scowled and weighed his options. “All right,” he said abruptly. “Let’s go.”
“Can a man not suffer alone?”
“No,” said Jerott.
He snatched the bottle of pills from where it had rolled to wait forlornly against the baseboard and pushed Francis lightly between the shoulders to get him moving.
Fergie thought Francis was claustrophobic. Alec thought it was some feverish side effect of the headache that had him always intent on heading outside before they took hold. Danny, Jerott was pretty sure, didn’t think at all.
Adam was the only one who never said anything about the way Francis always left before he couldn’t anymore.
Their target was a ten-minute walk to the nearest academic building, and then an elevator up to the fourth and highest floor. It was quiet and dimly lit, as usual, and especially at this time, and Jerott glared another student off the sole couch in the student study area until they transferred to a nearby chair, and then changed their mind and went to the other side entirely. It probably helped that the man leaning on Jerott’s shoulder was observably ill even to someone not versed in Francis Crawford (which, to someone versed in Francis Crawford, was a significantly worse sign).
Jerott forced Francis to take some water and his migraine pills, and then sat listening to the familiar sounds of his breathing as Francis slept beside him on the beat-up communal sofa for two hours.
The St. Mary’s-minus-Francis group chat, aptly titled “francis crawford babysitters club”, had acquired a text as soon as the door had shut behind Jerott. jerott! it read. Danny, of course. where are you taking our dear suffering disaster away from his nice bed in his nice home. have mercy on him
Jerott didn’t bother responding. He was the only one who had known Gavin; the only one who knew just how much the Crawford home was not a place one looked for mercy, then. Francis’s headaches had started young. So had the consequences.
Characteristically, Francis was in a foul mood once he was awake and steady enough to move again. This was, importantly, not to say his migraine had abated; he was always moving as soon as he was not actively in forced unconscious. This was another thing Jerott almost never bothered to stop.
“I don’t need a chaperone,” Francis said viciously as Jerott slung his backpack onto his shoulders again and rose wearily as Francis steadied himself on the arm of the chair and pretended he wasn’t. “I don’t need you to follow me like a sanctimonious horsefly.”
“Right,” said Jerott, tired, hungry, and several hours behind his own schedule. The light through the high, dusty window slits was practically gone. He still had Francis’s pill bottle in his pocket because Francis would not fucking take them unless someone presented them to him on a fucking silver platter. “You’re a strong, independent young woman,” he said acerbically. “We get it.”
“And you,” said Francis, “are hysterical. I? I am perfectly able to look after my own affairs, and I can do it, surprisingly, quite well on my own. You can land the helicopter. You are not my parent.”
“Ah, of course,” Jerott snapped. “Because you’ve done so well on your own before.”
Francis stopped in the middle of the hallway and whirled to face him. “Is that what this is about? Is that still what this is about? My God, Jerott, if that’s all, by all means feel free to go.” He waved a hand expansively. “I release you. Congratulations, you have succeeded. Forgive me if I don’t give you a certificate.”
“We live in the same house, Francis,” Jerott said hotly, a counterargument that worked zero times out of ten. “I am on the damn lease.”
“A mistake easily corrected, I’m sure,” said Francis. “If you need a new place to stay, I can probably find someone who will take you.” He made a show of squinting at Jerott. “It may take some convincing.”
The elevator ride was silent. Once they were outside, Francis stalked homeward at a remove of ten feet from Jerott with a perfect self-possession Jerott only knew took him effort by the set of his shoulders in silhouette.
St. Mary’s was dark and still, the smell of Adam’s curry still lingering, wraithlike. Francis disappeared up the stairs without a word, and Jerott headed into the kitchen and flicked on the light. He dropped his bag on the ground and leaned back heavily on the table, dislodging a pair of precariously balanced chopsticks to the ground with a gentle clatter.
Jerott had held Francis away from the border of life and death once, and he wasn’t sure Francis had ever forgiven him.
Jerott hadn’t known about Eloise. He knew Francis didn’t blame Jerott for that. The only problem, then, was that this meant Francis blamed himself. Wasn’t it something, Jerott thought caustically—because he was far enough removed that remembering didn’t make him nauseous anymore, most of the time, didn’t make his chest tight with the urge to search every room in the whole damn country just to make sure Francis was there somewhere, like compulsively touching a pocket to make sure your keys hadn’t fallen out—wasn’t it something, that Francis could blame Jerott for doing the same thing he blamed himself for failing to do.
A flicker of movement in his periphery. “Francis?”
“Sorry to disappoint,” drawled Francis’s voice as his sister reappeared from the corner she had just turned.
‘Showing up where you are least wanted’ and other extreme sports with Marthe Crawford. “Why are you here?” Jerott snapped, pushing himself up to standing and crossing his arms. He hadn’t thought anyone else was home.
Her hands with their long, elegant fingers started re-braiding her yellow hair. Jerott tracked them from her crown and down around her shoulder. “My eyes are up here,” Marthe said sardonically, and made deliberate eye contact when Jerott jerked his attention from her hands, which did not pause. Her blue gaze was full of a malicious mirth only she could manifest.
“You are standing in my kitchen,” said Jerott. “I am getting dinner.”
“I would ask why my brother is friends with you,” said Marthe. “But unfortunately, it is very clear.”
He was saved from having to find something to say by Francis’s reappearance. “Marthe!” Francis said, lounging elegantly against the doorframe and forcing Marthe a step further into the room when she turned, new braid swinging, and found them face to face. “Sister dearest. Mistress of mercenary matters. Just the person I wanted to see.”
If one was being linguistically accurate, Francis could never be said to be giving anyone the silent treatment, since he was incapable of shutting up. But his cold shoulder was an art form. He always had somewhere else to be and something else to do; and if you were caught in the same room, he would be unfailingly polite and so exquisitely passive aggressive that bystanders would miss the aggression entirely.
Marthe, unfortunately, was allergic to being a bystander. “You’re not looking for your irascible sheepdog?” An angry flush started up Jerott’s neck.
“Regrettably, I am not,” said Francis, and Jerott glowered. “I might have need of your expertise.”
“You have need, do you?” Marthe echoed. “What a blow to your independence that must be.”
Jerott flinched. There was no way Marthe could have known what they were arguing about.
“I could figure it out myself, of course, but you’re better than a child with a recorder,” Francis said. “Never known you to pass up the opportunity to perform.”
“And I’m not passing it up now,” she responded.
“I’ll need you not to pass it up later.”
“Always with the need,” Marthe said, leaning a shoulder against the wall to mirror him. He immediately pushed off from the doorframe and floated another few steps into the room. Marthe just tilted her head to track his movement. “Never, ‘hello, Marthe, would you happen to be free on Tuesday evening to help me? I would be ever so grateful and reward you copiously.’”
“What reward would you take?” Francis raised one eyebrow, dubious.
Marthe’s teeth bared in a smile. “Nothing you could give.”
“Look,” Jerott interjected. “I-”
“Not talking to you,” Marthe and Francis said in unison, not breaking eye contact with each other.
“So you’ll play?” said Francis.
“Only if you need me,” said Marthe with a mocking curl of her lip.
Now Francis smiled. “You can be assured of that.”
Jerott threw up his hands and left the room, remembering only afterwards that he’d intended to get something to eat.
***
Jerott was walking back to St. Mary’s the next evening from work the next day when he caught a glimpse of familiar fair hair in the crowd of people dispersing from the curb and waited for Franics to catch up.
“Where’ve you been?” Jerott asked, nodding towards the bus stop. He hadn’t seen Francis all day, which wasn’t necessarily unusual, especially when they’d had an argument. However, when Jerott had woken up, half of Francis’s closet seemed to have exploded in their bedroom (which was not an insubstantial tornado, considering Francis has the normal amount of clothes and then half as many again that all may as well have belonged to other people for the amount of cohesion they had with his usual style).
“Had to take a little problem to IT,” Francis said, which did not answer why he had gotten off the southbound bus instead of coming from even the direction of campus (south of them, and furthermore eminently reachable on foot). He wasn’t offering more information, but he wasn’t trying to bite Jerott’s head off either, and it wasn’t like Francis was ever forthcoming to begin with.
“Marthe’s upstairs,” Fergie called as the too-heavy front door of St. Mary’s slammed behind them. “I think she’s going through your books again.”
Jerott groaned magnificently. “Why is she always here? Who lets her in?”
“She lives with her grandmother,” said Francis, which Jerott had to resentfully admit was something he couldn’t blame Marthe for wanting to escape. Jerott had met Marthe’s terrifying grandmother only one time. She reminded him of those stereotypical shut-in old ladies who had twelve cats (minus the cats), and also a little bit like Palpatine from Star Wars (minus the control over a galactic empire). His face heated at the memory. He couldn’t even recall why he’d thought it would be a good idea to go in to begin with. Something Francis had said, probably—that was how most of Jerott’s worst decisions started.
“Doesn’t mean she has to come here,” Jerott grumbled as Francis kicked off his shoes and slung his bag on a coathook. “Besides, she hates you.”
“One tends to find having targets for one’s ire more appealing than being targeted.”
“I don’t see how it’s fair-” Jerott started, but Francis had vaulted up the stairs two at a time, presumably eager to engage in cutting repartee with Marthe that almost never ended in bloodshed but was nevertheless not something Jerott ever had a good time getting stuck in the middle of. Jerott reached into the front pocket of Francis’s bag to rummage for the fancy pens he knew Francis kept there and didn’t like anyone touching, with the vague intention to enact vengeance for Marthe’s presence in Jerott’s bedroom by using them on his homework.
The problem was that Francis always had a menagerie of nonsense in his bag. Today’s finds included two Snickers bars, a brown wig, a full-sized tube of toothpaste (half empty), two charging cords, Adam’s library card, and a harmonica before he unearthed the pens. Jerott pocketed the candy as well and unceremoniously stuffed everything else back inside.
***
“Jerott,” said Francis, appearing in the doorway to their bedroom and leaning on the frame. “Would you do me a favor.”
Jerott rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “What is it.”
“You just need to be in the right place at the right time.”
***
One of those little carts university employees rode around in was parked outside the building, just to the side of the door, at the appointed time for Jerott’s arrival. Jerott swerved around it and then did a double take when its driver said his name.
“Míkál?”
Francis’s friend from the bar last week, in a university-branded shirt with his feet propped up on the steering wheel, grinned and flashed Jerott a peace sign. “That is my name.”
“Are you here because of- Did Francis-” Jerott realized he didn’t even know if Míkál went to this university. “Oh, God, what is he doing.”
“Ohh,” said Míkál, a slyness in his expression that Jerott did not like. “I don’t think I can tell you that, if he hasn’t let you in on the joke.”
“Francis,” Jerott growled.
“I don’t think he can hear you,” said Míkál serenely.
The door to the building opened and Jerott jumped back to get out of the path of a very harried man who hadn’t even bothered, it seemed, to put his papers in his bag.
“Can I help you?” Somehow, in the brief moment Jerott wasn’t paying attention, Míkál had changed position entirely to something that screamed sedate and professional, and somehow he easily caught the attention of the man who seemed stuck in his own head.
“Yes, I need to- I need to-” Jerott, watching in a vaguely horrified fascination, noted the exact moment the man noticed where Míkál was sitting. “Could you take me to- I promise I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important, but I desperately-”
“Of course,” said Míkál, and to Jerott’s astonishment, they were off in seconds.
This obviously had something to do with Francis, but what? The walkways were quiet; classes weren’t changing yet. What did Francis mean Jerott to do? Not like he was around to give instructions.
He’d spoken too soon. The doors opened from inside for a lecture hall’s worth of students to exit. And there, golden head recognizable instantly in the stream of departing students, was Francis. His face was alight with triumph. “That should take care of him. Good riddance.”
Jerott looked at the building, looked at the students, remembered the harried man who had exited—remembered a lot of things—and put six and six together that hit with the weight of a stone falling form a great height.
“This was about your physics exam?” Jerott dropped his face into his hands. “Francis, you know you’re still going to have to take it?”
“Not so,” said Francis. “The way I set things up-”
“I do not care,” said Jerott. “You could have spent the time it took to arrange… whatever”—Jerott waved a hand vaguely before replacing it firmly over his eyes—“actually studying for it?” Francis wasn’t stupid. He was the opposite of stupid. He would have done just fine, even without studying, Jerott was sure. No, he did this for his own amusement, and to be a public menace. “You could have asked Diccon Chancellor for help,” Jerott added anyway. “You like Diccon Chancellor and Adam says he’s good at physics.”
Silence. Jerott looked up. Francis was watching something Jerott couldn’t see in the air past his head, thoughtfully. “I suppose I could have,” Francis said, and with that he was back to himself, smirking with the satisfaction of Marthe after she’d been mean to Jerott in a language he didn’t understand. “But that would have been less fun, wouldn’t it?”
Jerott was, frankly, shocked the university didn’t have some sort of tag on Francis—“anything suspicious happen to you in class? Suspect Francis Crawford today!” But they clearly did not, because Francis kept getting away with things.
Francis, still grinning merrily, tugged on the crook of Jerott’s elbow. Jerott had crossed his arms again without noticing. “Come on,” said Francis. “Revel in our success. I have done a service for the greater good.” He started humming the song about the dead witch from The Wizard of Oz, and Jerott didn’t know whether to give in and smile or to push him into the lake.
“He can’t have been that bad,” Jerott said instead, compromising.
“You,” said Francis, “haven’t met him.”
“And now I probably never will,” Jerott said, staring in the direction Míkál and his (probably illicit) golf cart had disappeared with the professor.
“It’s better for everyone that way,” said Francis, patting Jerott’s arm, which he still had not released.
Francis, fresh off some success or other, could ride the high for days. You think this will solve your problems? Jerott would ask if he were in the mood for a fight, because what Francis needed was structure (“Catholicism!” shouted a small voice in the back of his head that Jerott never could quite squash) and what Francis did was undermine every structure he encountered, including interpersonal relationships, for his own personal whims.
But at least this version of Francis was happy.
“What did you want me there for?” Jerott asked, interrupting Francis’s resumed humming for the first time since they left the scene of the crime.
“To revel in my success,” Francis repeated, and Jerott gave him a dead-eyed look and then looked pointedly at his watch, because contrary to popular belief, Jerott did not have the time to appear wherever and whenever Francis wanted him. Francis, of course, ignored him.
Marthe joined them as they turned onto St. Mary’s block, appearing like a computer glitch of Francis from Jerott’s other side.
“It’s moving?” Francis asked.
“Of course,” she said disdainfully. Jerott glared at Francis, and then Marthe. Of course she was in on whatever insane prank Francis had decided to pull this time. Never mind that Jerott wasn’t.
“Jerott thinks my actions were out of proportion to the situation.”
“Hmm,” said Marthe thoughtfully. “I think Jerott should take physics, and then he’ll understand. Or philosophy, to appreciate that many answers can be true. Or he should take up astrology, perhaps.”
“Jerott, I’m afraid, does not know how to find whimsy in the world.”
“Jerott,” said Jerott, “does not appreciate Crawfords putting thoughts in his mouth.”
“Isn’t that where they all come from?” Marthe feigned surprise. Francis snickered, and Jerott scowled.
Marthe lengthened her stride for the last few steps to St. Mary’s and reached for the door handle. “Wait,” said Jerott. “It’s locked.” He pulled out his key ring as he caught up with her.
Marthe paused, giving him the inscrutable searching look Jerott got so often that he really did not think he deserved to see in duplicate. “Of course,” she said, and her left hand slid out of her pocket to clasp her right as Jerott opened the door. He supposed this time he was the one letting her in and couldn’t blame someone else for what she might do there.
“Francis,” Marthe said as she and her brother entered behind Jerott.
“Marthe.”
“Next time you want me for subject identification, don’t leave your own heuristics lying out there in the open. That was sloppy.”
And Francis laughed, light and genuine, and Jerott looked over his shoulder to see Marthe smiling, self-satisfied but without spite.
Someday, thought Jerott, everything was going to pile up and tip and fall on Francis’s head. But whenever that happened, Jerott could handle it; and so, it seemed, could Marthe. They would stay. And today, if Francis was happy, he was not a danger to himself.
Danger to everyone around him? Likelihood was high.