6
Before Stevie had solved the Ellingham case (which seemed like an impossible task) she never thought about the after, what
it would be like to be the person who did that thing. Now she saw it as something she carried around all the time, like a suitcase full of spoons—publicly visible and hard to
explain, that people would demand be opened, and then, out came the spoons, falling in all directions, clanking.
Nate took a plate, loaded it up with cookies, and sat down on a dining room chair in the corner with a look of satisfaction.
“I heard this story on a podcast and they talked about someone named Stevie,” Luna said, “and I was thinking about that when
I heard your name and I just looked it up and there was a picture and it was you! It was at your school? In Maine, in the
1920s . . .”
“It was Vermont in the 1930s,” Stevie said quietly. If you had to show off your spoons, you at least had the right to show them in order. Not that spoons have order. It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but it was the one in Stevie’s head and she clung to it.
“Of course!” Lance said. He was no longer swaying. “The Ellingham case. Albert Ellingham and his wife and daughter. You did that?”
“I remember this,” Benny said. “Didn’t you solve another one too? At a camp or something? Aren’t you doing a podcast?”
“That was in Barlow Corners,” Stevie said. “It was the Box in the Woods Murders. The guy from Box Box . . .”
“Box Box!” Margo said. “I love Box Box. I featured it on my channel!”
“What the hell is Box Box?” Mitzi asked.
“It’s a subscription where you get a box of boxes every month and . . .”
“There was something called the box box murders?” Lance said.
Nate locked eyes with Stevie and shoved an entire chocolate chip cookie into his mouth.
“So you solved more than one murder?” Mitzi asked. “Like that woman from the show, what was that show? The mystery writer,
and everywhere she goes, people get murdered?”
“Murder, She Wrote,” Arthur said. “I love that show. They used to show it after The Golden Girls.”
“How do you do it?” Helen asked loudly, cutting off the rest of the questions. “How do you solve a murder?”
A good question, one with many answers.
Suddenly, Stevie was certain she had absolutely no idea how to solve a murder. She couldn’t even figure out what happened with David or pass a test on a case from 1972 that had already been solved or be a normal daughter.
But the room was still waiting for an answer. At least, Helen was.
“I . . . look around. Talk to people. Listen. You just, you know, look. And then figure out what’s important. What’s true.”
This sounded insane, but that was the answer. Looking. Listening. Picking through all the little pieces of life and sorting
them into piles of things that mattered and things that didn’t. Putting it all in order until there was a clear story. Sometimes
she had to stare for a long time or walk around while her brain ran through whatever garbage she had collected.
“What’s true,” Helen repeated, knitting her hands together. “That’s a tall order. How do you know what’s true?”
This was why she was going to fail out of Ellingham and life—she wasn’t ready for this kind of basic questioning on the one thing she allegedly understood.
“You . . . test it. Against facts. Evidence. You collect things you know are real.”
“But what about things people tell you?” Helen asked.
“Lying is easy. Convincing people of lies, also pretty easy. Sometimes all you have to do is repeat a lie to get people to believe it. When you repeat things, they either become embedded or they lose meaning, you know? Simplest trick in the book. Repeat it until it’s real.
Shouldn’t work but it does. Reality can be very flexible. ”
“So true,” Elliot said. “You know, I was just at this retreat where we had to—”
“What would you do if you knew someone was going to commit a murder?” Helen demanded.
“If I knew someone was going to be murdered?” Stevie asked. “Go to the police? Or try to stop it.”
“What if you couldn’t go to the police? What if you didn’t have any proof? What would you do?”
Helen was really hammering her with the hard ones. Stevie had been in positions where she had known things but not been able
to prove them, articulate them. You can’t go to the police because of vibes.
“I would try to stop it,” Stevie said. “Somehow. If I knew.”
Helen settled back in the chair and picked up her drink, like a lawyer who had finished with the person on the stand and was
now leaving them to wriggle like a fish on a line. The air went out of the conversation.
“I went to this retreat,” Elliot said again, “a month ago. I just got back. And we spent a lot of time talking about truth—”
“Shut up, Elliot,” Benny said.
Question time was over. The group had seen her spoons—she showed them one after another—and eventually got bored of them because
maybe they wanted a knife. Everyone wants the knife. Besides, they were making each other itchy and annoyed.
“Well,” Sophie said, setting down her glass, “this has been fascinating, but we need to get back. We have another event tonight. Thank you so much for inviting us.”
“And we should really be going as well,” Margo said.
Luna clung to the sofa cushion and leaned toward Nate. She, at least, was not ready to let this moment go.
“Do you know Ivy Grey?” she asked.
“The vampire writer?” Nate asked. “Yeah. I love her books.”
“No, I mean do you know her?”
“No,” Nate said, shaking his head fervently, like he’d failed.
“I met her when she did a signing at Union Square and she signed all my books,” Luna said enthusiastically. “She got her teeth
sharpened like vampire teeth. I’m saving up for that. I can’t do it until I’m eighteen.”
“You’re not getting vampire teeth,” Andy said, not looking up from his phone.
“She redefined the genre,” Luna went on. “Don’t you think so?”
Nate didn’t like to talk about his own writing, but the mention of an author he liked was acceptable conversation.
“What I like about her books is that she basically turned vampires into an MLM,” he said. “They have to recruit people to
get ahead in vampire culture, because they’re all sharing blood and sending it up the chain, but no one can win in that. The
vampires at the bottom are starving but convinced it will work.”
Luna nodded fervently and side-eyed her mother.
“They even go on a cruise,” Luna said. “Like a cruise some supplement company or diet program would send you on to get you to sell more.”
That seemed specific, and targeted. Margo stiffened a bit and fingered a lapis-blue beaded bracelet on her wrist.
“Oh yeah,” Nate said. “When they go on that boat into the Arden Dark on a ship made of teeth, but it’s a cruise for top recruiters.
The top recruiters get the diadems. Then they eat the ones at the bottom of the pyramid.”
“The Blood Bonus!” Luna said.
“Could we not with the blood and the teeth for a minute, Luna?” Margo said. “It’s the holidays. Come on. Thank Mitzi and Lance.
Time to go.”
“Why can’t I talk about blood and teeth at the holidays? Blood and teeth still exist on Christmas. And there’s nothing wrong
with blood and—”
“Luna,” her dad said. “Stop.”
“I’m just saying . . .”
Margo hustled her daughter toward the door.
“Please come by,” she said to both Nate and Stevie. “I’m a content creator and I’d love to collab with either of you. It would
be really fun!”
“I have to go too,” Benny said. “We’re doing inventory tonight at the bookstore.”
“Wait,” Helen said, waving Benny over. She reached into her pants pocket and produced a thick wad of cash, which she handed
to Benny. “Before you go. For the shelter. For the holidays.”
“Holy shit, Helen.” Benny flipped through the bills. “This is five thousand bucks. For real?”
“Food’s expensive.”
“I’ll get you a tax receipt,” Benny said, wrapping Helen in a hug. Helen, at least, did not seem to mind the smell. “This
is amazing.”
“No receipt,” Helen said with a wink.
Benny smiled and nodded.
“Glad you came, Bernadette,” Lance said. “Auguri!”
“Whatever you said. And nice to meet you, Stevie. I’ll see you around. Thanks for having me, Mitzi.”
“Can you believe that?” Mitzi said, not bothering to lower her voice as Benny shut the door. “Can you believe that?”
Lance grabbed the remote and turned up the volume of the music, but Mitzi met the challenge and got louder.
“She just invites herself—”
“I invited her,” Helen said.
“Why?”
“Spice things up,” Helen said.
“Spice? That’s spice? Is there any other spice you decided to add? Arsenic? Cyanide?”
“Mitz . . . ,” Lance said.
“Or just bring rats. Why don’t you go get an armload of rats? That would brighten everything up.”
Arthur tapped Stevie’s arm gently and leaned in.
“Benny’s disgusting,” he whispered.
“Where’s your Christmas spirit?” Helen asked, mouth twisted into a mischievous smile.
“I have spirits!” Lance chimed in from the bar cart, with a did you see what I just did with that joke smirk. “What we need right now is another round and a little more music. Mitzi, another martini? Helen, another zero-proof
Negroni? Stevie! Would you like one of those? I’ve got this wonderful new nonalcoholic . . .”
Snacks, fueled by the roach he had eaten, had a zoomie around the room.
“Time for me to head out,” Elliot said, getting up and stretching. “It’s been a real experience. Thanks. Stevie? Nate?”
Elliot had given them an opening, and Nate and Stevie jumped to their feet to take it.
“So,” Nate said, when they were safely at the other end of the hall, “what the fuck was that?”
“Mitzi and Arthur are on the co-op board,” Elliot said, pulling his keys from the pocket of his cardigan. “They like to have
these little drink things and it’s easier to go sometimes than have Arthur show up at your door to ask you why you didn’t
come and give you a lecture on the new recycling procedures. Anyway, it’s good because I get ideas for writing, you know?
Character stuff. You probably do that.”
This was to Nate, who shook his head.
“I avoid people.”
“You’re funny!” Elliot said. “And what you did, with the murders and stuff. That’s wild.
I’d love to talk to you more about it, like, maybe how to build that into some storytelling.
Or if you want someone to help tell your story, Stevie.
Or, you know, Nate, if you ever want to talk about writing or craft stuff. ”
Elliot might as well have asked Nate if he wanted to come by for a little amateur dentistry. Nate flinched toward the door.
“This retreat I just went on,” Elliot continued, “it really changed my relationship with my process. I wrote a draft of my
entire book in five days.”
On this, Nate’s expression changed.
“You what? How? How can you do that?”
“It’s about letting go of stuff. If you want, we can talk. . . .”
“Can we talk now?”
“Uh . . .” Elliot glanced around at the empty hall, then his empty wrist. “Stopped wearing my watch. Keep forgetting. That
was another part of it. Yeah. Sure, I guess. Come in now, if you want.”
“Is that okay, Stevie?” Nate asked.
“Yeah,” Stevie said. “Sure. Of course. Whatever. I’ll . . .”
Nate nodded, then disappeared into the apartment across the hall, leaving Stevie on her own.