Chapter Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
The children’s room at the library has descended into chaos around Finn.
A broken air conditioner at the day care center across the street forced twenty preschoolers into the normally serene space, where they now wander like tiny tornadoes, pulling books from shelves and colonizing the floor with their small bodies and big voices.
A symphony of high-pitched laughter, shrieks, and chatter bounces off the walls, filling Finn’s ears as he tries to focus on maintaining some semblance of order.
Sweat beads on his temples—whether from the exertion of constantly reshelving books or from the collective body heat of twenty energetic children, he isn’t sure.
The library’s usually cool air feels thick, almost claustrophobic.
In a rare pocket of silence, as he crouches down to retrieve the scattered Magic Tree House books swept off a nearby display table, an image flashes unbidden into his mind: the basement carpet, stained dark with Caren’s blood.
Without any concrete evidence, just the nagging knot in his gut that Autumn would have called spidey-sense, he is convinced that what happened to Caren somehow connects to Autumn’s death.
The Allard family name surfacing in both his and Caren’s quests for the truth, like a body refusing to stay submerged, cannot be ignored.
It might be coincidence—Eastbrook is small enough that connections overlap—but Finn stopped believing in coincidences the day Autumn was shot.
“Can you help me find the one with the mouse named Peanut?”
Finn looks up to see a boy with enormous brown eyes staring at him expectantly. The child’s direct gaze is unnerving, his eyelashes casting tiny shadows on round cheeks still carrying baby fat.
“Let’s see,” Finn says, straightening the books he has gathered, his fingers rubbing the worn spines. “Do you remember where they went in the book?”
The boy frowns, his lower lip jutting out dramatically. “I think they time traveled to Japan.”
“Ahh,” says Finn, selecting a book from his lap, feeling a small sense of triumph at knowing the answer. “Night of the Ninjas. Magic Tree House book number five.”
The boy snatches the book with greedy hands and dashes away, his small feet slapping against the carpet.
“Say thank you!” a woman calls after him, her voice carrying the weary authority of someone who’s repeated the same phrase countless times that day. She turns to Finn with an apologetic smile. “Librarians really are superheroes.”
That single compliment buoys Finn through the remainder of his shift, but as the clock ticks down, a restlessness crawls over his skin.
The sun is high in the June sky as he steps out of the library after work, and the thought of returning to his basement depresses him.
So instead of continuing down Massachusetts Avenue toward home, he turns up Westbard, toward Tatte.
As he hoped, Ellis is working behind the counter.
Her dark curls are piled haphazardly atop her head, and her apron bears the evidence of a day spent crafting beverages.
The high-ceilinged coffee shop is emptier than he’s ever seen it—the late-afternoon crowd sparse, most customers hunched over laptops at small marble tables, giving the space the hushed energy of an open-plan office.
“If I owned a coffee shop, there would be no laptops allowed.” Ellis smiles and hands him an iced lavender matcha.
Finn pats his messenger bag, feeling the hard outline of his own computer inside. “Does that mean you’re not going to stop by my table and say hi if I have my laptop open?”
She laughs. “I’ll make an exception.”
He claims a corner table and settles in, the leather banquette cool against his back.
Opening his laptop, he allows himself a few minutes of people-watching first—a middle-aged woman in the opposite corner, shoulders hunched, typing furiously; a young guy by the window alternating between staring at his screen and gazing out at the street, as if waiting for someone who might never arrive.
Finn’s thoughts drift back to Yumi’s porch this morning and what she said about someone visiting Autumn’s apartment the weekend of July Fourth. He opens his calendar and scrolls back to last July. Nothing there.
Next, he checks his texts. His yearslong chat with Autumn, which once challenged the chat with his mom for top spot, has drifted down in ranking during the year she’s been gone.
The realization sits heavy in his stomach.
She was leaving him in small ways like this, tiny Autumn-shaped holes appearing in the fabric of his life.
He finds their conversation and scrolls back, heart pounding against his ribs.
When he reads the text, his body jolts as if touched by a live wire, adrenaline flooding his system.
His memory was right. That was the weekend they’d gone away with college friends, staying at a rental near Assateague, an old wooden cottage swarming with mosquitoes.
Autumn wasn’t even in the DC area, much less in Eastbrook, which meant whoever that unknown visitor was, he was visiting Tori Price, not Autumn. The revelation feels like a puzzle piece clicking into place—but a puzzle whose complete picture remains obscure.
“What’s up, fool?” Ellis drops onto the banquette beside him. She reaches for his iced matcha, her many silver rings catching the light. “Mind?”
“Go ahead.” Finn, normally a bit germophobic, leans back to give her access, savoring the casual intimacy of sharing a drink.
“So what are we working on here?” she asks after a long sip, a tiny drop of green liquid clinging to her lower lip before she wipes it away. “Epic poems? Romantasy?”
He laughs. “Nothing that exciting. Studying for the GRE.”
She narrows her eyes at the laptop screen, dark brows drawing together. “Crimson Edge. Why are you looking at that? Trying to game your way into grad school?”
Finn glances at the screen, suddenly remembering the Crimson Edge page is still up from when he was researching the envelope he’d found at the Allards’. “Wait, what do you know about Crimson Edge?”
She gives him a look, eyebrows raised. “I went to Washington Prep! I know about Crimson Edge.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“I forgot you’re not from around here.” She shakes her head, a ringlet falling loose. “One of my friends from high school got into Brown. Rowing team. Her parents bought her an erg. I was the one who took the pictures of her on it, but in my defense I had no idea what they were for.”
“What are you talking about? What’s an ‘erg’?”
She laughs. “For real? An erg is a rowing machine. Rowers use it to train. So her parents buy her one, she takes a few action pics, and then Crimson Edge pitches her to the Brown rowing coach as a recruit. Even though she’s never set foot in a boat once in her life.”
“Why would the rowing coach want someone who’s never rowed on their team?”
“They don’t want her, they want her money.
” Ellis rubs her fingers together. “Her parents make a donation to the rowing program, and voilà, she gets in to college as a walk-on. Coaches are allowed to, like, hold a few spots for walk-ons. You know, athletes that aren’t good enough to be recruited, but the coach sees potential and needs someone to fill the bench. ”
“And your friend admitted she did that?”
Ellis smirks. “I happen to know what her grades were, and I was like, no way you got into Brown on your own. It’s kind of like an open secret.”
“That’s so unfair.”
Ellis rolls her eyes. “Welcome to the real world.” She touches his arm, her fingers cool against his skin. “But you’re right. It is unfair. It’s basically buying your way into a college you couldn’t study your way into. But what can you do? If you have enough money, the rules don’t apply to you.”
“You really believe that?”
“I work at a coffee shop, Finn, and it’s my second job.” Her voice carries the weight of experience. “Hell yeah, I really believe that.”
They talk for a while about music and upcoming concerts at the Anthem and 9:30 Club, the late-afternoon light shifting through the high windows, casting long shadows across their table. Ellis’s attention wanders back to his screen.
“What’s that tab?” With a finger tipped by a chipped navy polish, she points at a Google search for Tori Price.
“That’s me trying to track someone down.”
“Why, she owe you money?” Ellis’s eyes sparkle with mischief.
He laughs. “You’re very fiscally focused. But no, she was my friend’s employer.” He takes a deep breath. “My friend Autumn. She was killed about a year ago when a robber broke into the house she was living in—with this woman. I just want to talk to her, but I can’t find her.”
“That is super intense.” Ellis cocks her head to one side, her playfulness evaporating. “What do you know about the woman?”
“Her name. But no address. She moved. No social media. She seems to have scrubbed herself from the internet.” Frustration colors his words as he counts off the dead ends on his fingers.
“Kids?”
“One. A little boy.”
“What school?”
“No clue.”
“Where does she work?”
He shrugs. “She’s not at her old job.”
“You got nothing, my friend.”
“I know one thing about her. She shops at American Plant on River Road.” He sighs heavily. “So unless I want to stake out a plant store on the off chance that she shows up—” He catches a smile breaking out on Ellis’s face, her eyes suddenly bright with possibility. “What is it?”
“I wonder if she’s a loyalty member.” Ellis leans in closer, her voice dropping conspiratorially. “I have a friend who works there. If she’s a regular customer, and she’s a loyalty member, she’s in their database.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Home address and all.” She grabs her phone. “I’ll ask her.”