My name, in that voice, after this many years, is cheating.
“I saw three notes in that dragon box on her desk,” I say, “and a woman who doesn’t know why they matter.”
Brock goes still. All the way still, and I know he doesn’t like it as much as I do.
Not that I care.
Moving on.
“And why do they matter?”
He watches me. He’s about to say something true — I can feel it loading — so I grab the nearest thing off the shelf and hold it up between us.
“Do you think she’d want a doorbell that plays eighty songs?”
“Gunnar.”
“They make one that barks.”
He lets me go. He always lets me go. That’s the arrangement.
But I know this isn’t over.
On the way to the registers there’s a display of tiny doors. Doors for doors. I stop.
“What is this?”
Brock looks over. “Pet door.”
“For what pet? A mouse?”
“Cats, mostly.”
“Let me get this straight.” I point back toward the lock aisle. “They sell a wall of deadbolts, and then they sell you a hole to cut in the same door.”
“For the cat.”
“For the cat.” I look at the tiny door for a long moment. “So the cat outranks the deadbolt.”
“In hers? Absolutely. Ella has wanted a cat for as long as I’ve known her,” Erik says staring at one in particular.
“Noted.”
I definitely do not grab the one he was looking at.
The kid rings us up himself. We all look at Erik when the total appears. We didn’t plan on shopping. We didn’t bring currency. Good thing, too. He hands the kid a card made of plastic. We don’t have that kind of currency for Earth.
The receipt keeps printing. And printing.
“Big project?” the kid says.
“Repairs,” Erik says.
“Renovation,” Brock says.
“Apology,” Rayner says.
The kid nods like that helped, and hands me a receipt long enough to qualify as a legal document.
