Chapter 8
Lydia's house smelled like coffee and something with garlic that had been cooking low all day. Sophia stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment and let herself just be glad to be somewhere familiar.
“Wine or coffee?” Lydia called from the counter.
“Coffee. Angie's not here yet?”
“Two minutes out. She texted from the car.” Lydia doctored up Sophia’s coffee just the way she liked it, after years of knowing each other's habits. She set the mug on the kitchen island and looked at Sophia with her direct, unhurried gaze. “You sounded weird in your text.”
“I didn't say anything in my text.”
“That's why you sounded weird.”
The front door opened and Angie came through it the way she always did, slightly too fast, already talking. “Sorry, Declan had a thing with his homework, Finn would've handled it but obviously—” She stopped. Looked at them both. “Okay, what's going on?”
Sophia wrapped both hands around her mug. “I don't know. That's the problem.”
She laid it out cleanly. The coffee shop, Mary behind the counter, Lettie's body language, the words “I told you I was trying” that had been sitting wrong in her chest ever since.
The lacrosse game, Peggy's flash of fear when she'd walked toward them, both women holding paper cups from the same shop on a day when nobody carried paper cups to a field.
Mary knowing her last name when she'd paid cash.
When she finished the kitchen was quiet for a moment.
“You paid cash?” Angie repeated.
“I always pay cash for coffee.”
“And she called your full name.”
“Sophia Gault. Clear as anything.”
Angie looked at Lydia. Something passed between them, fast and professional.
“The two women,” Lydia said carefully. “Are their husbands Navy?”
“Tom Bowman and Dan Kowalski. Both mechanics at North Island. Both have been on crazy hours. Some kind of classified project. Lettie mentioned it first, then Peggy said almost exactly the same thing, almost word for word, like they'd compared notes on what to say.”
Lydia was quiet for a moment. “Clint mentioned something before they deployed. An upgrade to helicopters. That was it.” She paused. “I assumed it was routine.”
“Is it?” Sophia asked.
Lydia didn't answer right away. Which was its own kind of answer.
“What do we know about the barista?” Angie asked. Her voice had shifted and Sophia recognized it. She was in work mode now.
“Her name is Mary. She's been there a few months according to Lettie. Dark hair, warm, good at her job.” Sophia paused. “Very good at her job. Very warm. The kind of warm that makes you feel seen.” She looked at her coffee. “I didn't think anything of it at the time.”
“Last name?”
“I don't know.”
Angie pulled out her phone. “The coffee shop has a website.” She scrolled for a moment. “No staff page.” She kept scrolling. “Reviews mention a Mary. Just Mary.” She looked up. “I can dig into this.”
“Is it worth digging into?” Lydia asked. She wasn’t skeptical, she was genuinely asking.
Sophia thought about Lettie's shoulders up near her ears. Thought about Peggy's face for that one unguarded second. Thought about the cups.
“I think so,” she said quietly. “I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong.”
“Let me see what I can find,” Angie said. “Give us two days.”
Sophia nodded and picked up her coffee. She looked out Lydia's kitchen window at the dark yard and the canyon beyond it.
She thought about Tom Bowman working crazy hours on a classified project.
She thought about Dan Kowalski's wife standing on a lacrosse field clutching a paper cup with both hands, eyes fearful.
She didn't say what she was thinking out loud. She didn't have enough to say it yet.
But she thought it.
She got home at nine-thirty. Kayla had Lisa in bed and was at the kitchen island with her sketchbook. Sophia registered the drawing on the open page, a hallway, actually good, before she registered her daughter's expression.
“Good meeting?” Kayla asked.
“Just catching up.” She set her keys down. “Lisa go down easy?”
“She wanted to tell me about Pluto for forty-five minutes but yeah.” Kayla turned her sketchbook. “Look.”
Sophia looked. The hallway was confident and clean, the perspective working the way it was supposed to. “Kayla. That's really good.”
“I know.” She said it the way Lisa said things, completely and without apology. “Mrs. Alvarez is going to be so annoying about it.”
Sophia laughed and kissed the top of her head and told her to get some sleep. She waited until she heard Kayla's door close before she sat down at the island with her catering folder.
The Harrington wedding. Two hundred and forty guests, three tiers of desserts, a groom's cake that needed to be a replica of an F/A-18 because of course it did, and a very specific request for gluten-free options that she needed to cross-reference against her standard menu.
She spread the order sheets across the island and uncapped her pen.
She stared at the order sheets.
She thought about Lettie's voice in the coffee shop. I told you I was trying.
She thought about Peggy's face for that half second before the smile came up. The specific quality of that expression. She had seen it before, years ago, looking at her own face in the mirror during a time she didn't like to think about.
When she had been afraid and pretending she wasn't.
She pulled the gluten-free list toward her and started going through it, item by item.
She thought about the two women standing slightly apart from the other parents at a lacrosse game, cups in hand, not watching the field.
She thought about a woman named Mary who had no last name and knew everyone else's.
She went through the entire catering order twice. Made her notes. Sent the confirmation email to the Harrington family at eleven-fourteen. Then she sat at the island in the quiet kitchen until her phone buzzed.
It was Angie.
You got time for us tomorrow night?
Of course she was that fast.
Absolutely.