“They wouldn’t have to hack it if I was passed out. You just need my fingerprint to get in. If I’m lying there unconscious? Anyone could have gotten into my phone. Tell me from your perspective what happened that night.”
Yumi adjusts herself. “All right. I called you and you werewalking the dog. You had just left the Allards’ and you sounded tipsy, for sure. You were even slurring your words at one point.” She stops and looks out the screened window for a moment. “I remember you saying that you thought you saw someone or were startled by something? Then the phone went dead. I called you back after a minute, but it went to voicemail. Then I got a text from you saying you were calling it a night.”
I nod, recalling the text that I have no recollection of sending.
“What if someone else sent that text?” I ask. “What if I was unconscious at that point?”
Yumi meets my gaze but says nothing.
“I don’t like feeling like this,” I say at last. “Out of control. Like I can’t explain myself well enough to be believed. Not being able to remember.”
“We’re going to figure this out,” Yumi says. “You’re not alone. I’ll help you.”
I’m so grateful for her empathy, I feel like I could cry. The past few years I’ve become more introverted and less connected to people. We all used to hang out before Covid—Yumi, Kenya, and me and the guys—but since the lockdown, since Yumi got sick, and since our kids grew up and apart, we’ve all splintered. Combine that with the hypercompetitiveness of social media, the problems with Rachel and my career, and sometimes I feel utterly isolated. At least Yumi makes me feel less alone.
“Thank you,” I say. “I mean it. You always say the right thing. Do you remember exactly what I said?”
“I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember your tone.”
“What do you mean?”
“At first, you said they spooked you or something, but thenyou sounded relieved. So you must have seen someone that you knew. Miguel, maybe?”
I shake my head. I’m about to say,Can’t be, he was in Rehoboth, but I stop myself. I don’t actually know for a fact where Miguel spent Saturday night. He says he came back early Sunday morning, but I don’t actually know that.
And that scares the hell out of me.
TEN
Finn used to tease Autumn about how often she relied on tarot to help her make sense of the world. Problem with a boyfriend? Pull a card. Unsure of what class to take? Pull a card. Can’t decide whether to eat ramen or order sushi? You guessed it, pull a card.
She could spend hours hunched over a spread, looking for shared traits, examining how one card might influence another. Finn has no patience for that. He likes clear systems with right and wrong answers. It’s one of the reasons he loves the library. As a kid, he was fascinated by the letters and numbers on the little white labels that graced the spine of every book in his small town’s library.
Now, as an adult, he often wishes people came with such clear identifiers. Little buttons that tell him who is an introvert, who is prone to political rants, and who he should never under any circumstances ask about their weekend. Sometimes he imagines his own would say simply:FINN. HE/HIM. PLEASE DON’T ASK QUESTIONS.
Right now he could use one of those labels. He can feel the eyes of the little girl with wild red curls boring into his back as he plucks a Percy Jackson book from the shelf to put on hold. She’s been following him from a safe distance for the past twenty minutes as he pulls books. The few times he’s turned to look at her with a friendly smile, she scoots. But Finn’s radar tells him she wants help with a book. Her nanny is of no help. The woman sits on a child-sized chair in the corner of the room, earbuds in, hunched over a phone, ignoring her charge.
Acknowledging the girl face-to-face hasn’t worked yet, so Finn tries a different tactic. “So, Percy Jackson fan?” he asks without looking directly at her. He lets the copy ofThe Chalice of the Godsdrop into her sight line.
“Not really.” Hers is a squeaky little voice, the kind that could get lost if you weren’t listening for it. “I like magic. But I don’t like scary.”
“Hmm.” Finn runs his fingers along the spines of the books as he moves away from theRs. “What about two friends who discover a pair of magic boots a witch left behind?”
“Maybe.”
He findsWhat the Witch Leftand dangles it by his side, again without turning his head. In his opinion, it’s a classic. Even though it was published in the early 1970s, the story is a timeless one of friendship and both the freedom and the limits of magic. After a few seconds, the book is gone.
He feels like doing a little jig. There is no better feeling than putting the right book into a reader’s hand, especially a kid’s. Moments like this dispel the faint hum of self-consciousness that follows him into public spaces. Kids don’t care if your voice doesn’t match your jawline. Mission accomplished, he moveson, pushing his cart of books that need to go on the reserved shelf toward the front of the library, when Howie Wong appears in his path, eyes wide behind his thick black glasses.
“Finn, there’s a gentleman at the front who says he’s here to see you.” Howie has been at the library for twenty years, knows everything and everyone, and considers anything that happens in the small building to be his business. If the library staff are like an eccentric little family, Howie is the nosy but respected elder. “He looks a little, how shall I put this?” Howie leans forward and whispers, a burst of stale coffee breath hitting Finn full in the face, “Menacing.”
“Does he have one really thick eyebrow that runs across his forehead like a caterpillar?”
Howie jerks his head back, astonished. “Yes, how did you know?”
“Mind if I take ten minutes?”
“Not at all. Do you want me to come with you? For moral support, that is.”
