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My mom's mouth got thin, but Frank just looked at me evenly and said, "It's not."

He was working out of the Los Angeles Regional Office, the liaison to the protection detail guarding Jasper Caruthers. Caruthers was from Hancock Park, spent a lot of time in L.A. pressing flesh and fund-raising from Hollywood, and when Caruthers was in town, Frank helped coordinate protective movements.

As the weeks passed, he was around more and more. I watched him with my mom on the couch, her bare feet in his lap, or in his truck out front, laughing together at the end of a date. I watched with that odd blend of jealousy and envy. I couldn't remember my mom smiling like that before.

My mom was an elementary-school art teacher-pretty, casual, a touch of hippie. She was what old people would call a character. Callie Horrigan with her bushy ponytail, her paint-spattered men's shirts, her band of freckles across the nose. Her students called her Ms. Callie, and since I'd spent most of my preschool years tagging along, finger-painting and pasting glitter onto pinecones, I'd developed a habit of calling her by her first name, too.

One morning Callie left early for work, and I caught Frank at the table, hair damp from the shower, suit jacket draped over a chair, shirtsleeves pushed back. The first concrete evidence that he'd spent the night. He was drinking from my mom's coffee cup, steam curling up. I poured myself some cornflakes, sat across from him, and ate in silence. My eyes kept drifting to those weird ideograms on his muscular forearm, faded blue beneath the faint blond hair. He watched me for a while, watched my eyes. And then he said, "You're curious what that says?"

" 'I'm a dumb round-eye'?"

He sort of smirked-Frank never laughed, from what I'd seen-and then he sipped his coffee. I slurped my cornflakes. The Garfield clock over the sink ticked away, pivoting eyes and pendulum tail.

Finally, defeated, I asked, "Okay, what's it say?"

He looked down at it, as if reading it for the first time. " Trust No One.'"

I ate some more, my face burning. "My mom know that?"

He nodded. "After Vietnam I was stationed in Okinawa. A couple of us went out and got these. Thought we were real hot shit. Had it all figured out. Idiots." He shook his head. "I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. And this?" He tapped the tattoo. "As a life philosophy? It doesn't serve. Now it's just a reminder of how stupid I am most of the time."

"Still?"

"You tell me."

I cleared my bowl, reserving judgment.

A few months later, Callie and I moved to Frank's house, a two-bedroom bungalow in Glendale. It was tiny but impeccably finished. Frank had laid down the hardwood floors himself. The crown molding he'd put up was razor straight. The books on the floating shelves above the TV were arranged by size.

My mom rushed around adjusting furniture and trying her framed charcoals against various spots on the wall, and Frank grimaced but held his tongue.

I liked him for that.

While she reorganized the refrigerator, I went out back. A porch, a swing, and a small square of grass, summer brown, not big enough to kick a soccer ball on. My boxes of stuff were in the other bedroom, but I held one in my lap. Baseball cards, a trophy that had broken at the base, the Punisher's first appearance in Spider-Man, and the photo of my dad. I stared at that loose, happy grin, the cigarette my mom had tried to hide with the thick frame. I heard the creak of the screen door beside me, and there Frank was, looking down at me.

"There will always be a place for your father in this house," he said.

The rest of the night, I stayed in my room, getting used to the space, the furniture, the view from the high rectangular window. I unpacked a little but kept rearranging my stuff among the drawers, like a dog circling before bedding down. I didn't like the brown carpet or where the desk was or the new smell of a new house.

There was a knock, which I assumed was my mom since it was Frank's house.

I was slouched on a beanbag she'd bought for me at a garage sale and re-covered in corduroy. "Yeah?"

Frank came in, looked around. I was expecting him to be mad that I'd put the desk at a slant in the corner, but instead, he said, "What are you scared of?"

I looked at him blankly. He smelled like aftershave.

He pulled his mouth to the side, then rephrased: "What do you want me to not do?"

So I told him. Room off-limits when I'm not here. Don't act daddish. Don't mess with my comic books.

When I was done, he nodded. "I can manage that."

He closed the door behind him, and I thought I'd probably live my whole life and never be that goddamned wise.