“And AJ had a realization!”Charlie announced.
AJ actually blushed a little at that, ducking her head and shooting Charlie a sidelong glance.But she said, “Yeah, well, maybe.”When I did some nonverbal prompting, she continued, “I was thinking…maybe I need to have some more experiences before I write a memoir, you know?What we went through this weekend—I guess I realized there’s still a lot of stuff that I haven’t experienced.”With apparently zero self-awareness, she said, “Thank God I figured it out now before I finished my first draft.”
“Uh, right,” I said.(It wasn’t like her amazing writing instructor hadn’t said the exact same thing, oh, a hundred times.) “Well, that’s great.”
Because I’m an adult, I even managed not to addI guessat the end.
“And we’re ready to telleveryoneabout the conference in class tomorrow,” Charlie said.“I’m going to tell them how you solved the murders!”
“It’s a shame they couldn’t go,” AJ said, “because it was such a transformational experience for me.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“And I’m going to tell them about meeting Maggie McLaughlin!”
“And we’re definitely going to tell them about Thatcher,” AJ said.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I like AJ.
When I shut the door, I was smiling.They were young.They were happy.They were still feeling out their connection to writing, and it still brought them so much uncomplicated joy.It was nice to see that.To be reminded of that again.
And for a moment, it was like a window opened in my mind, and I thought I knew what Vivienne had felt when we’d sat in her office.Some of it, anyway.Part of it.Enough, maybe, to understand her a little better.
Before I realized what was happening, I was in my favorite chair in the den, a blank doc open on the laptop, hammering out a sentence.
She had died badly.
I stopped.Erased.
She had died.
I stopped again.
She had been a problem from the beginning.And a problem for too many people.A problem someone had finally used a hammer to nail down.And she was dead now, and nobody cared.
My chest was tight.The world seemed to step back, and I seemed to step forward, falling through that page into a shabby office where a difficult, troubled woman had died, and a tired detective stood over her.
But I cared.I guess that made me a sucker.
No, too on the nose.
And I guess, now, I had to do something about it.
I sat back.Stared.Got up.Walked around.I stood at the fireplace, opening and closing my hands and looking in at the soot-stained stones.
It wasn’t perfect.But there was something there, the electricity that came sometimes.When I knew I’d touched something alive and powerful and true.
I hurried back to the laptop.
A rap at the door roused me from a frenzy of drafting-slash-brainstorming (a weird but fun combo that is a pure and total mess).Bobby stood there, grinning.He must have already showered and changed because he was in his civvies—joggers and that old Oregon State sweatshirt—and his hair was damp.“You look like you had an idea,” he said.Then the smile turned wary.“Or is this another of those letters to the editor?”
“In the first place, letters to the editor are the lifeblood of American democracy.And in the second place, if you’re going to publish a hit piece on orange cats, you should expect reasonable, measured pushback—”
“He used that serial killer font when he sent it,” Fox said airily from the hallway.“I saw.”
“You said you wouldn’t tell!”
“Okay,” Bobby said.“You need to hit the road, or you’re going to miss your flight.”
