Chapter Thirty-Three
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
When Dev drops me off, he asks if I’ll come by the bar tonight.
“For another Hanky Panky?” I am ridiculous.
“If that’s your fancy, but I do make other cocktails too,” he says, twirling a strand of my hair around his finger and pulling me gently toward him.
Oh my. It could be his accent, but when he says things like this, I think he’s clever and sexy and not using a well-worn line.
It doesn’t seem rote, or slick, or sleazy.
It feels honest. It doesn’t really matter though.
Whether we share a few kisses or a few nights, in less than a week there will be a very big ocean between us.
Which is probably why I’m leaning into it so easily.
“I have to go. I told my cottage mates I’d be back around three. I’d hate to disappoint them.”
“You hardly know them.”
“I hardly know you.”
“Excellent point.”
“I should go.”
“Right.” He pushes my hair back over my shoulder.
“We’re going to visit Tracy’s flat,” I say. “To search for clues.”
“Okay, Sherlock, off you go.”
“Off I go.” I turn to unlatch the door, but then turn back. “Can we—”
But before I ask, he’s kissed me again.
I stop at the cottage door to catch my breath. Inside, Amity and Wyatt are at the kitchen table. The minute Amity looks at me, I can tell that her romance radar is up.
“Looks like it was a strenuous hike,” she says, smiling. “You’re quite flushed.”
“Quite radiant.” Wyatt is grinning too.
“Do you know when Brits say ‘quite’ something, they mean the opposite?” A deft change of topic.
“I had no idea until Dev filled me in on the way to Hathersage. I happened to mention that our pub lunch yesterday was ‘quite good’ and he said, ‘That bad?’ Turns out a lot of what they say does not mean what we think it does. If you give a Brit a piece of helpful advice and they say, ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ they pretty much mean there’s no effing way they’re doing that.
‘Very interesting’? They mean ‘What a total bore.’ It’s quite confusing—and I mean that in the American way. ”
“How extraordinary,” Amity says, still looking at me like I’ve got the proverbial lipstick on my collar. “It’s like every day is opposite day.”
“So when Germaine said that Roland Wingford was ‘quite instrumental’ in developing the story for this mystery, what did she really mean?” Wyatt asks.
“Probably that he didn’t contribute at all,” I say.
“Then who created the mystery?” Amity says.
“That’s obvious,” Wyatt says. “I’m quite confident—make that damned confident—that when we crack this case, and we will crack it, we’re going to find Germaine Postlethwaite’s fingerprints all over it. Roland may be the published author, but she’s the brains behind this operation.”
Amity and Wyatt have the murder bulletin board on the table.
I pick up the much sparser board devoted to my mother’s mystery.
If Germaine is so smart, might she figure out what my mother was hiding too?
I lean the board against the wall and take an index card from the pile on the kitchen table.
On it I write “Stanage Edge,” though I’m not sure if I should add it to the board.
Amity asks what it means. I try to describe what it was like to be there.
“Was it from your mother’s bedtime story?” she asks.
“It might have been. It must have been. I don’t know.”
“I believe that sometimes, against all logic and reason, people know the answers to the mysteries that perplex them,” Amity says. “They know it viscerally, in their bodies, if not intellectually. Are you sure there’s nothing else?”
When I don’t respond, she pats my hand, the way my grandmother used to.
“Not to worry. We’ll keep trying.”
My throat constricts, a familiar feeling from childhood, when I was trying to hold back tears, because it wasn’t the right time, because I was at a friend’s house, or at school, not in my room at home.
Why am I suddenly so sad? I don’t realize that my lips are trembling until I notice the way Amity is looking at me.
She comes over and puts an arm around me.
“Let’s sit,” she says, guiding me to the couch.
I start to speak but can’t find the words.
For a few hours, I’d forgotten about my mother, and how she bolted and reappeared and never explained herself.
I’d forgotten what brought me here. I let myself kiss Dev and enjoy the moment without overthinking.
It’s like I let down my guard out of happiness, and now sadness is rushing in.
That glorious feeling of being up there on Stanage Edge has dislodged everything I’ve been holding back.
I have an overwhelming desire to call my mother.
To ask her what I’m doing here. To demand answers.
All my life, I’ve wanted answers from her.
Why did she go? Why did she return, only to leave again?
Why didn’t she miss me the way I missed her?
Why was it so difficult for me to be apart from her even after she’d left me again and again?
She was so disappointing. How can I miss her so much?
My eyes sting. The first tears since my mother died.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s come over me.”
“Don’t you?” Amity says, handing me a tissue. “I think I do.”
I blow my nose, looking up at her and waiting for her to clue me in.
“This, my dear, is grief.”