31
Stevie had never been inside a dog café before, but once she entered, she was furious that the experience had been denied
her for so long. There, among the tables, dogs meandered, sniffed, rested, played a bit, or followed each other around, nose
to butt. The Beatles sang “Here Comes the Sun” as customers chatted or worked on tablets and computers and notebooks over
coffee and canned wine. One person was drawing anime while a fluffy white dog leaned against her on the bench, snoozing. Stevie
ordered a hot tea and a massive chocolate chip cookie. David shoved his phone forward to pay.
“Solve a murder, get a cookie,” he said.
They took a seat at one of the tables. A bread-colored Frenchie came up to Stevie’s ankle and snorted impatiently until she
scratched his velvety head. His tag read: POTATO.
“So, now what?” David asked.
“Take this to the cops, I guess,” Stevie said.
“I mean, there might be a chain of custody problem, but . . . if they don’t want to test the scarf, maybe I call up Carson from Box Box.
He’d pay for it. He’d pay for anything if there was another cold case to make a show about.
And there could be DNA from the other people in the group on the scarf.
Maybe they could use genetic genealogy to trace them . . .”
Stevie gazed around the café, at the dogs happy to pad around on the cement floor and sniff each other. Benny had loved those
animals at the shelter so much, and Helen had loved her bird. They had been nice people. Good people. Weird people. They deserved
better than what they got.
“It was all so pointless,” Stevie said. “Helen killed someone by accident because she was drugged and then hid the rest of
her life. Dean killed people because his scam was over and he’d lost his money and power. They all had to die because they
weren’t useful to him anymore. And Benny got caught in the crossfire.”
“It’s not like the other murders you solved had a point,” he said.
“I know that.” She sneezed and rubbed her nose with a rough brown napkin before anything dribbled on the table. “I know I
didn’t make Dean go there. I know I didn’t directly cause Benny to go out a window. But I was a catalyst. I was the thing
that made someone think about murder, and that’s what put a chain of events in motion. It happened here. It happened in Barlow
Corners. And London.”
Potato was distracted by a new dog—a small tiger-striped hound with long legs and a mischievous look on her face. She trotted
over to say hello.
“But not because of you. Don’t flatter yourself.” He wasn’t joking or being nice. “If you can do this thing, if you can get these answers . . . don’t whine when you do.”
Shots fired. Potato stopped playing with the striped dog and looked back in concern.
“I’m not whining,” she spat. “This isn’t easy. Sometimes it sucks. It sucks to find these things out. It sucks to see dead people. It sucks to watch people suffer. Yeah, I like to know. I like to figure it out. I like to get the answers, but it can still suck.
Like the girl from the pub. All I wanted for weeks was to know who she was and what happened, and now I do, and I don’t feel
better. She’s real and you dated her.”
“So what do you want me to do?” he said. “I can’t fix that.”
“I don’t know.”
He pushed back in his chair and rubbed his hands over his face.
“My flight leaves at ten,” he said. “I’m going to need to leave soon. I should probably go, right? I have my schedule. My
stuff is there. I can’t decide if I even want to go back. I mean, it’s fine. I like London. But it was supposed to be a short
thing, one semester, and I’m staying because it’s easier to stay at this point. Because I don’t know what else to do.”
“What’s wrong with us?” Stevie picked at her cookie. “Are other people this confused?”
“Dunno. Probably?”
“What do they do?” Stevie asked.
“Go into denial,” he said, shrugging. “Or get a guitar. I could get a guitar.”
“Not when denial is still on the table.”
He grimaced and nodded.
What was she supposed to do with this inflexible pain that refused to dissolve on command? This ever-bleeding injury that
would not heal, no matter how many times Stevie showed it off. Complaining about it was useless. There was even a smell to
it . . .
But no. That smell was coming from Potato. He had seen this conversation play out and decided his contribution was a philosophical
poop right there next to them on the café floor. His owner sighed and went for the spray bottles and paper towels from the
box by the door.
Benny would have liked that. You can talk shit, but dogs—they actually do it.
Stevie was going to get chances that Benny did not. The thought should have been a sad one, but Benny—Benny was happy. Benny
was funny. Benny would have told her to lighten the fuck up. So David kissed someone. So Stevie couldn’t get past it. The sun was still going to rise the next morning.
And Helen? Helen had told her that she was a fool on a journey. She was right. The Tower had fallen. Stevie was on the ground,
in the rubble, but she was alive.
It was like the floor was physically tilting, like the house in Stevie’s mind had been knocked askew in an earthquake and
was righting itself. She felt it. The furniture was out of place and things had fallen off the shelves, but she was back on even ground.
She was okay. Whatever he decided, she was going to be okay because she was herself.
And yes, David was beautiful beyond belief and her body called out for him in ways that were still unfamiliar and electric.
And maybe not everything would be great, and maybe it would be, but that was another matter.
People may lie, but that voice from the universe? It never does.
Stevie stood, pocketing the remainder of her cookie and taking her tea.
“I can’t make up your mind for you,” she said. “Let me know what you decide.”
David looked up at her, real surprise on his face. It was a good face, with a mouth she loved to kiss. But not right now.
Stevie was too tired to walk back to the apartment, so she sprang for a rideshare and ignored the horrifying cost of a five-minute
trip. When she got back to 8H, the living room was full of quiet industry. Nate was sitting on the floor, headphones on, hunched
over his laptop. Vi and Janelle were on the sofa, both on separate devices but sharing a blanket. The apartment that had felt
so blank and foreign when she arrived now hummed with a familiar and warm vibe. Even the little chairs seemed, if not logical,
then welcoming and useful. Someone was using them as a charging stand. There were smells now, like Janelle’s lemon body wash
and coconut hair oil. All of Stevie’s senses were alert in this room, but not to solve a murder—to be alive, to be here, to
be now.
Janelle got up from the sofa to greet her. They went to the end of the galley kitchen for a bit of privacy.
“How’s Nate?” Stevie asked in a low voice.
Janelle was clearly surprised to find that after seeing David, Stevie was thinking of someone else.
“He says he’s done,” Janelle whispered. “He’s reading it over.”
“Seriously?”
Janelle nodded, wide-eyed. “What happened with David?”
A great many things had happened. She had solved the murder of Melissa Long and five other people whose names she did not
know. She would tell Janelle about that tomorrow. Tomorrow she would contact the police listed at the bottom of the article
about Melissa. Tomorrow, all those things would happen and Helen Jesperson’s story would be told.
But that was tomorrow. Tonight, she wanted to be here, in this room with her friends. Completely.
“He has a flight back to England tonight,” Stevie said.
“And?”
Stevie watched Nate shove one hand absently into a container of Pringles as the other worked the scroll pad on his laptop.
“I think,” Stevie said after a long moment, “it’s time to move on.”
Janelle’s eyes widened farther.
“And go back to sleep,” Stevie added.
Janelle and Stevie joined Vi on the sofa. It was large enough for the three of them. Janelle put a cushion on her lap for
Stevie’s head, and Vi didn’t mind having feet on their lap. Stevie pulled a blanket over herself. She grabbed her phone and
texted her parents:
I love you. Everything is fine. I’ll call you tomorrow when we land in Vermont.
The reply was swift:
Love you too.
Then everything went blank until she felt a hand shake her awake. Nate was kneeling next to her.
“I think I just sent my book,” he said. “I’ll be in the bathroom for a while. I’m going to go throw up.”