After Grant excuses himself to take a migraine pill and stare at the ceiling in his room, Lissa sighs and starts collecting the dessert plates. She stops when she notices me still perched onthe couch with my arms crossed and sinks into the armchair opposite.
“You okay, babes?” she asks gently. “Last night was a lot, huh?”
“Yeah. Well … that’s not quite it,” I confess. She tilts her head and leans forward, listening. She’d make a great therapist—one of those cool, disarming ones who wear lime-green hoop earrings and sunflower-dotted Doc Martens to show how relatable and safe they are.
“I don’t like murder,” I say, a disclaimer I’ve never found necessary before. “And I’d love to never witness a voluntary spontaneous human combustion again. It’s just, gory details aside …” I suck in a breath, unsure how to word this. “Am I a psychopath for thinking it was all … I don’t know …”
“Fun?”
Lissa looks at me with a knowing twinkle in her eye, and relief whooshes out of me.
“Yes,” I say, my tense shoulders dropping. “I know Grant’s completely traumatized, and I probably should be too. And I shoulddefinitelybe taking a cocktail of antibiotics after that bite. But honestly, it was such a rush for a minute there. Is that horrible?”
She smiles at me. “If you’re a psychopath, welcome to the club. I fuckinglovethis stuff.”
She rises from her chair and pauses, her grin turning mischievous. “Also, nothing kicks up the adrenaline like a handsome sidekick, am I right?”
Not this again. “Grant’s not my sidekick. We’re kind of just … I don’t know, teammates.”
“Please. The fighter’s always the hero; the brains is the sidekick.” I open my mouth to protest the insinuation that I’m brainless, but she keeps going. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you when you’re training, like he just wants to impress you. It’s so cute.”
“No, I think that’s just how his face is. It’s hisI don’t want to dieface.”
“Hmm.”She picks up the last of the plates, pensively scraping its crumbling contents onto the stack of others. “I’m just saying. High stakes, good-looking guy … Wouldn’t be surprised if it all generates a little heat. Maybe the crime-chasing isn’t the only fun to be had.” She flashes me a grin. “Think about it.”
With that, that life-size Polly Pocket swans out of the room whistling.
• • •
WITH NO NEWSfrom the West Brompton Book Club, we do our best to prepare for whatever’s next. I spend my days with Grant in the garden, showing him things like how to throw a good punch and how to saw through zip ties with his shoelaces. Lesley and Lissa busy themselves with sleuthing, combing former crime scenes and Facebook for missed clues.
In our downtime, Lesley lights a fire in the study and we fall into an unspoken routine. He settles in with a true crime podcast and Lissa searches Pinterest for recipes she thinks she can pull off. Grant spends most of his time frowning at his phone but occasionally breaks to annihilate me at Bananagrams.
Now and then Lesley ditches us for panel discussions and workshops, and sometimes Lissa leaves for hot dates at edgy bars with names like Textile or Illicit or Shoe—usually hinting on her way out thatsome othersof us could do with a romantic night out, at which point I try to hit her with a pillow. Thankfully, Grant tends to be too immersed in doomscrolling to notice.
But most often, it’s peaceful and quiet—the four of us in the study, just waiting.
And it’s driving me up the goddamn wall.
It’s not that Iwantmore attempted murder. But as Anna’s first bookstore event looms, we get closer to leaving this story awho-less whodunit. Every morning, I find Lesley and ask, “Anything?” And every morning, he shakes his head and says something like, “Nada, Rox ’n’ Roll,” and the tumbleweed of angst in my stomach gets a little bigger.
Meanwhile, Grant only gets more upbeat. Well,upbeatis a strong word. But he spends less time grumbling and more time honing his focus in our self-defense lessons. He seems so determined, buoyed by our upcoming chance at escape. Guilt kicks me in the shins for feeling any differently.
By the day of Anna’s event, I’m lugging around the world’s worst case of anticipatory FOMO and Grant is literally whistling his way downstairs.
I don’t want to be the storm cloud that rains on his parade, so I take a bracing breath and force some pep into my step as I join him in the kitchen.
He’s on the phone, holding it wedged between his ear and shoulder while he butters his toast. His scholarly look has a slightly more casual spin today, a navy sweater layered over a T-shirt instead of a button-up. He’s neatened up his scruff a bit, making it more of a style choice and less a manifestation of fatigue.
From the sound of it, he’s talking to whoever’s covering his classes at BU; I hear talk of syllabi and modules and other things I can tell he gets revved up about. When he looks at me, I flash him a smile and, for some reason, two thumbs up. His brow quirks in puzzlement as he slides me a cup of coffee.
“Really, thank you guys for everything,” he says into the phone. “I’m feeling a lot better. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer. Hey, how’s Arthur? You think he misses me?”
He shoots me a glare, which makes me realize I must have rolled my eyes out loud. Then he freezes, his butter knife held in midair.
“No, sorry,” he says abruptly. “No visitors allowed. Contagion and whatnot.”
I sneak a look at my phone while he wraps up his call. Admittedly, I never got around to notifying HillCare that I wouldn’t be coming back. But none of them ever reached out, not even to fire me. Not even to see if I was alive. I wonder what it must be like to work with people who’d miss you if you were gone.
