By the Book (The Last Picks #7)

Chapter 2

For what felt like a small eternity, I stared. My parents stood in the doorway, lit from behind by the afternoon sunlight. They were here. In Hastings Rock. In Hemlock House. Where I lived.

Since the power had gone out, the contrast between the bright light outside and the dimness of the vestibule must have kept them from noticing me at first, because when they started to talk, they were clearly addressing each other. (They were always talking to each other.)

“Why is it so dark?” my mom asked.

“Leave the door open,” my dad said. “There you go.”

They advanced a few steps into the house. No luggage. Maybe that meant this was nothing but a fever dream. Maybe—hope ran through me like a lightning bolt— maybe I was having a stroke!

“Is this all period?” my dad asked.

“Of course,” my mom said. “Vivienne always had a good eye.”

“Place must have cost a fortune.”

“She never missed a chance to show off either.”

“It’s gloomy. I keep waiting for a Bront? sister to levitate into view.”

“No wonder he’s been so depressed. You know he’s predisposed to depressive episodes. I told him to buy a SAD lamp.”

My dad made a considering noise. He paused to run his finger along a decorative table. “I’ll tell you what—he’s been making himself sick, locked up in this drafty old place.”

It’s not drafty, I wanted to say, but I still hadn’t recovered the power of speech.

“Holed up here,” my mom said. “That’s what wounded animals do, you know. They hide.”

I haven’t been hiding, I tried to say, but I was still in the process of (I hoped) having my first stroke.

“Eating God knows what,” my dad said. “Junk food. No exercise.”

No, I thought. No. No. Indira made sure everyone ate plenty of vegetables (you skipped them at your own peril), and I got plenty of exercise because Bobby had told me—firmly—that I wasn’t allowed to put a mini-fridge and microwave in my bedroom. Even though it would have saved me about six thousand steps every day. (He also wouldn’t let me get a set of sheets for my bed that made it look like I was sleeping in a giant taco—presumably, I was the ground beef—but that had been a separate, uh, disagreement.)

“It’s going to be a nightmare to unload this place,” my mom said.

“In this market?”

“Should we think about keeping it?”

My dad made a considering noise. “We’ve talked about a vacation home.”

Bobby made a soft, unhappy noise.

“First things first,” my dad said, “we’ve got to get him straightened out.”

In the exact same tone of roll-up-your-sleeves-for-some-mind-bending-parenting, my mom said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do.” And then, standing approximately five feet from me, she screamed, “Dashiell!”

I just about jumped out of my socks.

“I’m right here!” I shouted back. “Quit shouting!”

“You are?”

“Don’t lurk, Dashiell,” my dad said.

“He used to do that when he was a child,” my mom said. “Remember?”

“I’m not lurking. I’m standing in plain sight. I’m—”

But then my mom swooped in for a hug. My dad was right behind her—we exchanged a manly handshake, and he even gripped my shoulder to convey his boundless parental love and affection.

I put up with about five seconds of it before squirming away and saying, “What are you doing here?”

They were close enough now that, even in the low light that filtered in from outside, I could make out the look they traded—it was a familiar one, a shared amusement with a hint of exasperation, a kind of incredulous disbelief that I didn’t understand something that should have been perfectly obvious. And it probably was perfectly obvious—to them, in their tiny, two-person universe.

Bobby shifted next to me, and a little too late, I said, “This is Bobby. My boyfriend. Don’t talk to him. Actually, don’t even look at him. Bobby, same goes for you.”

That made Bobby give me a look—a rather pointed one, as a matter of fact—before he had to submit to a hug from my mom and an even manlier handshake from my dad.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Bobby said, which was probably the politest thing any boyfriend has ever said when experiencing a transcontinental surprise and being thrust into meeting his partner’s parents. He studied them as he said it, clearly still taking them in.

My mom is Patricia Lockley; she writes psychological thrillers. ( I Am Following You, and If You Whisper, and Is My Son Real? —it was kind of hard not to take that last one personally.) Everyone always says I look like her, and I could see what they were talking about. The same oval face, the high cheekbones, the large, almond-shaped eyes. We both have straight, dark hair. Where Mom is slender, the kindest word for my build is probably wiry. (I wanted to say svelte, but Indira made a sheet cake that looked like the United States flag last week, and I ate four of the thirteen original colonies.) I’m taller than my mom, which I get from my dad. I got the glasses from him too, by the way.

My dad is Jonny Dane, of the Talon Maverick series. He looks like a dad. Like, if you were trying to cast someone in the role of a middle-aged writer, you’d probably skip him because he’s too much of a stereotype: dad shoes, dad shorts, dad polo, dad glasses, hair in a low-maintenance dad cut. Around the house—or when he could get away with it—he usually had a holster clipped to his belt, with one of his pet pistols along for the ride (he referred to this, with an unbearable amount of pride, as carrying ). There was no pistol today, though, which sent a flush of relief through me. I also discovered, in that particular moment, my newest worst nightmare: I had an inexplicable vision of my dad and Bobby in an old-fashioned shootout.

“Is something wrong with your phone?” my mom asked. “We’ve been calling you for days.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve been ignoring you. Like how you ignored my question: why are you here?”

“Dashiell doesn’t like conflict,” my mom told Bobby. “You’ll want to watch out for that.”

“I told you you’re not allowed to talk to him.”

“What’s going on with your lights, son?” My dad toggled one of the switches. “Fuse blow?”

“Nothing is wrong with the lights,” I said, which was clearly patently untrue. I even doubled down with “The lights are fine.”

“Better have a look at the breaker box,” my dad said. “We don’t want a repeat of last night.”

“Dashiell—oh, and Bobby—listen to this,” my mom said. “The bed-and-breakfast where we stayed last night didn’t have air conditioning. Can you imagine?”

“ We don’t have air conditioning,” I said. “I guess you’d better go stay in a hotel. In Idaho.”

“He makes jokes when he’s uncomfortable,” my mom told Bobby. “It’s a coping mechanism.”

“Bobby, where do you keep your tools?” my dad asked. To nobody in particular, he announced, “Bobby and I are going to sort out this light situation.”

“There is no light situation,” I snapped. “And we don’t have any tools.”

In a surprisingly apologetic tone, Bobby said, “I think we have some in the coach house.”

I rounded on him. “Et tu?”

It was hard to tell in the shadows, but it looked like he was blushing.

“Come on, Bobby. Dash, why don’t you show your mom your room? That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

“No, it wouldn’t. Because I’m not twelve years old, and I don’t have a poster of Justin Timberlake hidden on the back side of my closet door. I’m an adult. I do not need my parents swooping in and—and swooping in! If I want to live in a house with no lights, I’ll live in a house with no lights. And why didn’t you ask me if I have any tools? I have lots of my own tools. I have—” And of course, my brain chose that moment to crap out, and I couldn’t think of the name of a single tool. Then it came to me: “—like, eight spanners!”

“They’re called wrenches in the US, sweetheart,” my mom said. “Of course I want to see your room. Speaking of which, I wish you could see the nursery . It’s so cute. Dottie did a wonderful job.”

“Where did you put the nursery?” But as soon as I asked the question, I knew where they’d put my sister’s newborn baby—my room. My old room.

My mom tried to take my arm, but I shook her off. Bobby put a hand at the small of my back, and the contact was grounding—the bubble of surprise (and anger) that made me feel like I’d been fighting a slowly losing retreat popped, and all of a sudden, I could think clearly again. Or more clearly, at any rate. I drew a deep breath and said, “Let’s start over. Mom, Dad, this is a surprise. Notice I’m not saying it’s great to see you. I’d like to know why you’re here.”

“If you’d answered your phone,” my dad said—in the tone of every parent everywhere—“you’d know.”

“He’s dysregulated, Jonny,” my mom said. “It’s all the excitement.” Before I could respond to that—Bobby had a surprisingly tight grip on my shirt, which ought to have told me something—my mom said to me, “We’re here for the fundraiser, sweetheart.”

Dawning understanding—and horror—robbed me of speech.

Bobby was the one who asked, “The library fundraiser?”

He was kind enough not to say: The one that’s being held tonight? Here? In Hemlock House?

“Of course,” my mom said brightly. “We’re the guests of honor.”