The discovery about Mrs. Albright sat in Foster's gut like a stone.
He moved through his police duties the next day with automatic precision, his mind a thousand miles away. He filed reports, attended the briefing, and nodded along to Martha's directives, but his thoughts were in the ginger haired woman's townhouse, with a kindly old woman and a dead locksmith.
That evening, he retreated to the bedroom—Foster's bedroom.
It had always felt like a borrowed space, a hotel room he was temporarily occupying. But now, driven by a new, desperate need to understand the man whose life he'd inherited, he began a more thorough investigation.
He started with the desk. He'd already found the blood-stained notebook and his own journal. Now, he pulled out every drawer, feeling along the bottoms and backs.
In the bottom-right drawer, tucked behind a stack of blank stationery, his fingers brushed against a small, hard rectangle. A photograph.
He pulled it out. It was a faded color picture of a woman with Ortego's smile and kind eyes, her arm around a younger Foster Ambrose. They were both laughing, standing in front of a simpler version of this very house.
Foster's mother.
The memory that had flashed before him—the woman with flour on her hands—crystallized around this image.
The ache of Foster's loss became a real, tangible thing in the room.
He continued, his search now feeling less like an intrusion and more like an archeological dig. In the closet, behind a stack of sweaters, he found a small, wooden box.
Inside was not a mystery, but a life: Foster's medals from police academy, a dried corsage from what must have been a formal dance, a stack of letters tied with a ribbon.
He didn't read them. It felt too personal.
But he held the box, understanding that he wasn't just wearing a skin, he was living in the ruins of a full, complete person.
A person who had loved and been loved.
He was still sitting on the floor, the box in his lap, when Ortego found him.
"What are you doing?" Ortego asked, his voice curious, not accusatory.
Foster looked up, pulling himself back to the present. "Just… remembering some things."
Ortego leaned against the doorframe, his expression uncharacteristically serious.
"You've been doing that a lot lately. The remembering. And the forgetting." He paused. "Is it because of Mom?"
The question was a direct hit. Foster looked at the photograph in his hand, then at the boy who shared the woman's smile. He had to tread carefully.
"It's… everything. The job. This house. You."
Ortego came and sat on the floor opposite him, crossing his legs. "You don't have to do that." he said softly.
"Do what?"
"Pretend it's not hard. I miss her too. You used to talk about her. Now you just get quiet and stare at walls."
Ortego picked at a thread on the rug.
"You know, after it happened, you told me we were the only two people left in our little world, and we had to look out for each other. You've been… somewhere else lately."
The words landed with the weight of truth.
Foster Ambrose hadn't just been a police officer; he'd been a brother, a guardian.
And Andrew Garfield, in his desperate fight for survival, was failing at that part of the job.
"I'm sorry, Ortego," he said, and for the first time, the words weren't a lie.
They were from Andrew to Ortego, an apology for the absence of the brother he'd never known but was now responsible for.
"I'm still here. I'm just… trying to figure some things out."
"Figure them out with me, then." Ortego said, with a simple, devastating faith. "You don't have to be a saviour all by yourself."
Foster froze. It was just a turn of phrase, a coincidence. It had to be. But in that moment, in the room filled with the ghost of Foster Ambrose, it felt like the most significant thing anyone had ever said to him.