I pushed back from the desk, stood up, and paced.
I paced between the door and the window in endless loops.
After a few minutes, I sat down. Pulled my phone out of my pocket and scrolled to Aldridge's contact. The contact card had her cell number, her work number, her home number, and a personal email she had given me once at a foundation event when she had been three glasses of red into the evening. The button to make the call was a green circle.
My thumb hovered over the button.
Make the call.
I put the phone down and gave myself one more day. Simon Kessler’s folder stayed closed. So did Margaret’s stack of messages.
By six, my computer was shut down and my coat was on. I left the building, stopped at the Thai place on her block for dinner, and headed to her apartment.
Bonnie was on the couch.
She was in pajamas — flannel, snowflakes, one size too big because Bonnie liked her pajamas one size too big — with Walter on her lap and Pickles on the back of the couch behind her head and the cephalopod book on the cushion next to her. The cephalopod book had a piece of paper sticking out of it. The piece of paper had been there to mark the chapter on octopuses, which was the chapter Bonnie was perpetually rereading.
She didn't get up. "Beau."
"Hi, Bonnie."
"You brought Thai food."
"I did."
"You didn't bring the book."
"Oh no, not again. I forgot the book."
She glared at me.
"I'll bring it tomorrow, I promise, with notes," I said. "I haven't had time to read it tonight."
"Mmm…"
"But I'll read it tonight."
"Mmm…"
She watched me put the bag of food down on the kitchen counter. Sabrina was at the counter, in jeans and one of my sweaters — a sweater I had left at her apartment and hadn't, in any of the intervening weekends, asked for back — and she was unboxing the soup containers without looking up at me.
The kitchen was warm.
After dinner — after Sabrina had made Bonnie eat soup and Bonnie had eaten the soup with the patience of a kid who was too tired to argue — Bonnie pulled out Saturn.
Saturn was half-glued cotton balls and half-cardboard, and the cotton ball that was supposed to be Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, had come unglued and was sitting in Bonnie's lap.
"Beau, you have to glue Titan back on."
"Why me?"
"Because I'm sick, and you aren't."
"Mmm…" I sat at the table.
Bonnie set Saturn in the center of the table. I picked up the glue and Titan. I looked at Bonnie.
"Where does Titan go?"
