Chapter 20
“We have to figure out where she went!” Arthur was midway through mounting the tandem bicycle when he said it, freezing in a position best reserved for dogs planning to relieve themselves.
“I agree, my darling, but why have you stopped?” Sal was, miraculously, putting on his helmet of his own volition instead of dragging his feet about it. That was how serious the situation was.
“I have no idea where to begin the search.” Arthur relaxed his leg, letting it fall onto the pedal.
It was as if, when his brain had hit a wall, his body had followed suit.
“She won’t be at the festival. It’s too public.
I doubt she’s at the platinum pavilion either.
” Arthur’s mind raced, but in circles, like his thoughts were bound to one track, and it was all left turns.
“Hailey said the ritual would take all day, so she has to be somewhere out of the way.”
Sal let out a gasp, pointing behind Arthur. Fearing the worst—that Ambrosia had somehow discovered they were onto her and she’d come here armed with wooden stakes and stolen magic—he spun, nearly knocking the bike over in his haste, but there was no one behind him.
“Come on!” Sal hopped onto the front of the tandem bike, which was unheard of, and nearly began pedaling away before Arthur could join him.
“You’ve figured out where Ambrosia is?” Arthur called as he tried to balance his umbrella in hand while also gripping both handlebars of the bike so he didn’t go tumbling off.
“What? Who said anything about Ambrosia?” Sal called over his shoulder.
“Where are we going, then?” Arthur had to pedal fast to keep up with Sal’s pace.
“I saw our girl!” Sal exclaimed. “Rumble. We must follow her!” He pointed ahead, to some bushes, where Arthur didn’t see a cat at all.
“This isn’t the time to go chasing shadows, Sal,” Arthur said. His stomach was in knots. A Rumble sighting was no small thing, but now was about the least convenient time for such a distraction. Sal was probably only imagining he’d seen her, anyway. “I know you miss her—”
“She’s not a shadow. I saw her, Arthur. Just for a moment. She looked right at me.” Sal’s voice cracked, and it wasn’t from exertion. “Then she ran this way.”
“I believe that you think you saw her, but we can’t afford a wild-goose chase.”
“She’s not some horrible goose!” Sal shrieked, turning to stare at Arthur, which wasn’t at all safe. The bike wobbled. “She’s our daughter!”
“Rumble is a cat. She can take care of herself.” Arthur gripped the handlebars, staring dead ahead as they zoomed through the streets. “Do you want to crash?”
Sal tilted his head as if pondering the incredibly straightforward question. “Well, not really.”
Arthur pointed ahead of them. “Then maybe you should steer!”
They narrowly avoided toppling into a bush as Sal yanked the front wheel to the left.
“Just—slow down!” Arthur pressed on the brakes. “We don’t have time to go looking for Rumble. Brody is somewhere with Ambrosia, and she’s stealing his magic.”
“Not until dusk,” Sal argued, pedaling with extra strength to counteract the brakes.
As a result, they moved at a snail’s pace as though through molasses, which Sal frequently reminded Arthur was a real possibility (the Great Molasses Flood had been quite dramatic, and Sal claimed it as the backdrop to many of his stories, most of which obviously did not take place in either Boston or 1919).
Arthur let out a frustrated sigh. Sal could be dramatic, and he could be a little frivolous, but he was rarely so stubborn—in matters not concerning fashion, at least. With Sal at the helm of the bike, Arthur was powerless to steer them back on track, not that he even knew which direction to go.
“We can’t afford to waste a single moment.” Arthur leaned forward, struggling to keep his umbrella angled so the wind wouldn’t take it. “Brody has been through enough horrors. We can’t let some unscrupulous witch steal his magic!”
“We won’t let it happen, Arthur. I promise. But Rumble—”
“She doesn’t want to come home!” Arthur said, a little louder than he meant.
“What are you talking about?” Sal was staring to the side of the road, scanning the bushes for any sign of a house cat that wasn’t there. “Of course she wants to come home. She’s only lost and confused.”
“I almost caught her at the festival,” Arthur admitted. “She scratched me and ran off. Does that sound like a cat who wants to be found?”
“Rumble would never scratch! Not unless one were trying to put a cute little Dracula costume on her, of course, and then it would be justified. One might take stock of one’s approach to things like consent and apologize. One might also compromise on a harness with detachable bat wings instead.”
Ah, so Sal had been attempting to turn Rumble into a full-on mascot for the Dead & Breakfast. Arthur had suspected as much, though it did sound like Sal gave it up when Rumble wouldn’t cooperate.
Was that why she’d run off to begin with?
Arthur wasn’t certain Sal would take that lesson to heart if they brought Rumble home, and he might suffer the same heartbreak again in a few months when he inevitably tried again.
“It happened, Sal. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.
I didn’t want to see you hurt.” Arthur placed his palm at the center of Sal’s back for a second, but they were too precarious on the bike for any proper comforting gesture.
“I don’t know why Rumble ran off, but she’s an animal.
One fully equipped to survive on her own.
She was a stray long before we met her.”
Sal let out a huff, then pedaled even faster. Wind whipped through Arthur’s hair and he wobbled again.
“You sound like that fake pet psychic. Fifty years! What nonsense. Sure, Rumble was a tiny baby kitten when she came to us—”
“She really wasn’t, Sal.”
“I gave birth to her! I grew her in my womb!”
“You don’t have a womb!”
“She needs her fathers! Even if only one of them cares.”
The words stung. Arthur involuntarily flinched, causing the umbrella to tilt awkwardly, throwing off his balance.
The wind caught it at just the right angle, tugging it from his grasp.
Without thinking, Arthur took both hands off the bars to grab the umbrella and keep it from flying off into the road.
Sal let out an eek of surprise and overcorrected, trying and failing to keep them upright.
The bike careened over the (thankfully empty) sidewalk, hit a lamppost, and flipped over. They both tumbled off into the bushes. Blessedly, none were the sharp pointy kind, though it wasn’t very pleasant to face-plant, literally.
“We’re going to lose her!” Sal shot up and stared around. “Oh no.”
“Are you hurt?” Arthur asked. He quickly took inventory of himself. Nothing worse than a few scratches, which would heal quickly once the sun set.
“Rumble!” Sal shouted. “Wait for us!”
Arthur brushed the wrinkles out of his pants. If Sal were hurt, he’d make it well and truly known, so he must’ve been fine as well. Helmets were an excellent invention.
“I do care about Rumble,” Arthur said, taking Sal’s hand in his to draw his full attention.
“I care about Brody, and Lola Lataurelle, and the Dead & Breakfast and our guests, and most of all, I care about you.” His voice broke as emotion caught up to him.
Then his words poured out in an unstoppable deluge.
“It’s just that all these priorities are warring in my head.
Solve the case, Arthur! Run the inn, Arthur!
Find Brody’s mother, Arthur! Rescue Rumble, Arthur!
And I should be able to do it all. But every time I get close to fixing one problem, another one gets worse. ”
Sal squeezed his hand. “Why didn’t you tell me it had all gotten so difficult for you?”
“I…thought it was obvious.” Arthur looked down at their feet, the toes of his slightly scuffed loafers pressed neatly against Sal’s bright yellow Crocs, decorated with a sun charm on the left and a crocodile on the right.
If he couldn’t tell Sal, who could he tell?
“There’s only so much time in a day. Or night.
I’ve been trying to be the perfect bed-and-breakfast host, the perfect chef, the perfect VAMP PI, and the perfect cat dad.
But I’m a miserable failure at everything.
Now we’re snapping at each other, and it’s my fault. ”
Letting his hand fall out of Sal’s, Arthur sank down to sit on the curb beside the lamppost they’d hit. There wasn’t any traffic going by, so it wasn’t too reckless a thing to do. He put his head in his hands, wishing he could quiet the doubt that had taken hold there once more.
“I shouldn’t have said you didn’t care.” Sal slowly lowered himself to sit beside Arthur. “Besides, we’re immortal. I’d be more concerned if we never argued. Remember when I wanted to paint the outside of the Dead & Breakfast in Halloween colors?”
Arthur let out a little laugh. “You made me sit through a PowerPoint presentation.”
“Gary, the gentleman on Fiverr I hired to make it, worked very hard on it, and yet you refused to budge. That doesn’t make you a bad husband. I can see now how some people might’ve been put off by all that orange. And it’s not like we can’t simply agree to disagree on things like that.”
“Orange is a lovely color, but it must be balanced with other things. It’s best as a minor accent.
” Arthur echoed the argument he’d presented to keep Sal from insisting on pumpkin-colored siding for the entire inn.
Now wasn’t the time to relitigate that particular disagreement, though.
It was true that he and Sal had their disputes from time to time, but they never felt so heavy as this.
He essentially had to choose between finding Rumble and saving Brody.
It seemed an obvious choice to him. Rumble would probably survive another day without rescuing. Brody might not.
“If I were better at this, we wouldn’t have to pick and choose. I should be able to handle it all myself,” Arthur said.
“Now, that is one point I will never agree to disagree upon!” Sal stood up, slapping his thighs in emphasis. “You are my capable husband—brilliant beyond compare! Ah! My eyes! I can’t see for all your splendor!”
“Sal,” Arthur grumbled. Sal might have been cheered on many occasions by similar pep talks, but Arthur was not so easily shaken from his melancholy by compliments.
“Are you the sun? Because I’m powerless against your charms!”
“Seriously, now isn’t the time for pickup lines.”
“Are you a detective? ’Cause I’d let you scour me for clues!”
“Okay, yes, very funny.”
“It’s your turn now. Pick me up!”
“Fine.” Arthur stood up, his lips twitching into an unwitting smile. He stooped slightly, sweeping his arm under Sal’s knees and lifting him up, bridal-style.
Sal wrapped his arms around Arthur’s neck and leaned in with a contented sigh. “Are you an overachiever on a group project? Because you really know how to carry me.”
Arthur planted a kiss on Sal’s temple before setting him down next to the bike.
“I’m afraid to say I might be an underachiever this time.
I can’t even figure out where Ambrosia’s ritual site is.
I’ve been ten steps behind this entire time.
Other Arthur Miller probably has a better handle on this case than I do. ”
“So what?” Sal put his hands on his hips with all the extra sauce of a Taco Bell drive-through order.
“So what?” Arthur reeled back. “I think it’s clear I can’t do this. Maybe I’m not cut out for solving mysteries.”
“Darling, I’m the melodramatic one. Don’t step on my toes.”
“I’m not being melodramatic,” Arthur said, waving his arms in a very sensible and grounded way. “I’m being serious.”
“You stumbled a few times. It happens. I do it constantly—remember my first time in platform heels? I tripped and fell off the stage. But I was all right. And so was Dita Von Teese.”
“I thought you fell onto one of the stage crew—”
“I’m the one telling the story, Arthur! Just…let me have this!” Sal stomped his foot and huffed. “The point is, I didn’t give up, and neither will you.”
“This isn’t like putting together a theater performance, Sal. I don’t get a practice run or a dress rehearsal. If I screw up, someone could die.”
“Someone doesn’t know the curse of MacBeth!”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Arthur groaned, running his hands down his face. Sal, ever the optimist, might never truly understand the weight on Arthur’s shoulders. “The inn, Rumble, Wilhelmina, Lola…it’s all just too much for one person to juggle.”
“Well, of course it is!” Sal placed a hand on Arthur’s shoulder.
“That’s why you’re not alone,” Sal continued in a tender voice, reaching for Arthur’s hand to move it to rest on Sal’s back.
“You’ve got me.” He joined their other hands together and lifted, as if to begin waltzing.
“And Nora, Quinn, Theo, Lore. Remember when we first moved here and we had no one? And now look at us. We came here looking for a home and a community, and you’ve built just that.
They all know they can rely on you, but what’s the point of fighting for your people if you’re not going to lean on them when you need help, too? ”
Heat stung Arthur’s eyes. “I don’t want to make my problems everyone else’s—”
“That’s not for you to decide, is it? Whether or not other people want to help you is up to them.” Sal leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “Your problems are my problems. I want to help. Let me.”
Something inside Arthur broke, and tears welled in his eyes.
He wiped them away. Maybe Sal was right—no.
Of course he was right. If he’d found out one of his friends was struggling but they insisted they had to handle everything themselves, he’d set them straight.
Yet he’d been doing that very thing, carrying the weight of it all without sharing the burdens in any real way.
He’d taken it all on himself, and here they were, with a crashed bicycle, no closer to fixing anything.
“I’ve been a bit of a fool, haven’t I?” Arthur asked.
“Lucky for you, I love fools.” Sal kissed his cheek. “We’ve lost Rumble, but I know what direction she was going.”
Not again. Arthur sighed. “What about Brody?”
“Oh, we’re going to save Brody first. You’ve convinced me.”
Arthur tilted his head, brow furrowed. “Then…we can follow Rumble later? We need to find a magically significant location. Somewhere Ambrosia would pick for her ritual. Perhaps Theo or Lore knows—”
“We don’t have to ask them.” Sal pointed up. “There’s one obvious place to go around here, and Rumble happened to lead us halfway there already.”
Arthur stared in the direction Sal gestured to see a banner affixed to the lamppost, inviting tourists to visit the town’s namesake. On it was a printed version of Brody’s mural of the eponymous Trident Falls.