Page 25 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

Later, long after Bobby had finished eating and fallen back into a deep slumber, I lay there, staring up at the ceiling.

The rumble of Eric’s Land Rover told me when he and his wife finally left.

Once, something moved out in the ornamental bushes—a burst of movement, the rustle of branches.

Light pollution from the city filtered through the blinds, striping the carpet, the bedspread, the wall.

Next to me, Bobby radiated warmth; his breathing was strong and deep.

When I finally worked up the courage to look, it was hard to tell, in the dark, if he had tear tracks.

What had I done wrong?

As soon as he’d told me about his mom, I’d dropped everything.

I’d come here with him. I’d insisted, as a matter of fact, because I wanted him to know I supported him.

That I’d do anything for him. I’d asked him about his feelings so that he knew he was free to share them if he wanted to.

But I’d also given him space. I’d sat with him and his dad and his brother.

I’d been polite, or I thought I had. Had I crossed some invisible barrier and demanded too much? Had I been too needy in my own way?

Or was it something I hadn’t done? Should I have asked more questions?

Probed? Tried to force words out of him?

Should I have kissed him more? Initiated…

something? Any time I’d touched Bobby, he’d pulled away.

Had he wanted me to prove, somehow, that I still wanted him?

That I wouldn’t be put off? I couldn’t help thinking of what had happened with Keme not too long ago.

Had this all been some kind of test? If so, it seemed, I had failed.

He had called West.

He had talked to him about his feelings.

He had cried.

I squeezed my eyes shut until sparks danced against the back of my eyelids.

What made it all worse was that I couldn’t even imagine West gloating.

I couldn’t imagine him getting off the phone and laughing at me, enjoying how much of a dunce I was, proud of the fact that Bobby had called him.

West was too sweet. Too kind. He wouldn’t have done anything like that.

He’d be home, worrying about Bobby. God, he was so sweet he was probably worrying about me .

Bobby had called him.

Some part of me wanted to pretend it had been a misunderstanding.

Like in a romance novel, I thought. I’d overheard the wrong snippet of a conversation, and in my fear and insecurity, I’d jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

But this wasn’t a romance novel. And I didn’t think I was jumping to conclusions.

I had heard Bobby say, I really needed to talk to someone . I had heard him crying.

If you tack an ending on it, my brain suggested.

If you put it in a story.

That was an old trick, and a good one. Isak Dinesen (AKA Karen Blixen) had said, All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.

And that’s a fancy way of saying it, but we’ve all done it.

We’ve all found a way to give the arc of pain in our life meaning.

People say things like It all worked out for the best , or Everything happens for a reason . And the reason is the story they tell.

For many people, death clarified. It magnified. It focused. People saw what really mattered. And, of course, they also saw what didn’t matter. People quit their jobs. People moved across the country. People did all sorts of things. You couldn’t believe the kinds of things they did.

At some point, I must have slept, but it felt like an endless midnight until I finally dragged myself out of bed.

By some improbable turn of events, it was late morning, and Bobby was still sleeping.

I showered and dressed and made a call. And then I waited on the porch for someone from the rental car company to pick me up.

My other good trick, when something truly awful happened, was simply not to deal with it.

(That’s a life hack, by the way, and you’re welcome.) According to my phone, I’d missed approximately three hundred calls from Millie, so, as I drove to Hastings Rock, I called her back on the rented Chevy Malibu’s Bluetooth system.

“DASH! OH MY GOD, ARE YOU OKAY ?”

That was when one of the car’s speakers blew.

I’m not kidding.

I honestly had no idea if I’d opted for the rental insurance, and now it seemed like a pressing issue.

“HOW’S BOBBY? IS IT TRUE HE WAS POISONED? WE WERE SO WORRIED. KEME STAYED UP ALL NIGHT HE WAS SO WORRIED!”

“No!” Keme said in the background, a frantic edge to his voice. “I was playing Xbox!”

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

I don’t know if this is historically accurate, but being trapped inside a mid-size family car with Millie’s amplified voice blasting me from every direction made me think of how nuns must have felt if they ever got trapped in the belfry.

As I turned the volume down, I managed to cut in with “We’re fine. Everyone’s fine. Yes, Bobby got poisoned, but only a little.”

“How do you get poisoned only a little?”

“Dash,” Keme said, as though that were an explanation.

“It’s a long story,” I said. “I’m on my way back to Hastings Rock right now.”

“Dash,” Millie said, “things are really bad.”

“Did they arrest Indira?”

“What? No, but she and Nalini had a BIG fight, and Nalini left. And the sheriff STILL thinks Indira did it.”

A call from Bobby made the phone buzz. I hesitated, dismissed it, and said, “Okay, well, I’m working on it. That’s why I called; I need your help. I want to talk to Larry Lizard.”

“From Live with Larry Lizard ! I love that show!”

“Yeah. I don’t know where he’s staying, so if you could—”

“We’ll find him! Do you want us to get him for you?”

Get him sounded like Millie-speak for something felonious—kidnapping, for starters. “Uh, no, absolutely do not —”

“Because we can totally do it. I have these hair scrunchies that are SUPER strong, and Keme has his—”

The sudden silence was actually more terrifying than if she’d finished the sentence.

“ What does Keme have?” I asked in my best parental voice. (It’s not great; it lands somewhere between Peg Bundy and Roseanne Conner.)

“Say nothing,” Keme whispered not quietly enough.

Millie said, “Uh, nothing.”

“Is it a knife?” I asked.

“We’re going to find Larry now.”

“Is it a gun? If it’s a gun, tell him—no, wait, I want to talk to him myself.”

“Bye, Dash. Love you!”

“No, we don’t—” Keme began.

And the call disconnected.

I called Bobby back. “Hey, you’re up. How are you doing?”

Bobby’s voice still had a hint of muzziness. “Fine. Where are you?”

“Out running a few errands.”

Silence.

All muzziness was gone when he said, “In what car?”

“I rented one. I didn’t want to wake you, and I thought you might need the Pilot for your own errands.”

Bobby’s unspoken questions practically vibrated across the call. Finally he said, “ Where are you?”

“Oh!” That was me, a natural-born actor with an impresario’s flair for the dramatic. “I found the flowers you were looking for. Lotus flowers, right?”

“You did?”

“Yeah. This place online.”

“That’s great. Thank you.”

“Take a look at the confirmation to make sure I got the right ones, would you? And the address? It’s in my email; just jump on my laptop.”

The best word for Bobby’s silence was profound .

“Gotta run,” I said. “I’ll be back later.”

Later was good. Later wasn’t specific. Later could mean next year.

“What—” Bobby began.

I disconnected.

Look, I know it was rude. I know it wasn’t good boyfriend behavior. But on the one hand, fair was fair. The less said about Bobby’s behavior the night before, the better. And I thought I’d done an admirable job of pretending not to have had my guts ripped out.

So, I tried not to think about the call or Bobby or any of it, really.

Instead, I focused my morbid curiosity on my conversation with Millie and Keme for the next hour and a half. Specifically, whatever Keme had that I wasn’t supposed to know about.

I mean, it couldn’t be a gun, could it?

But, on the other hand, Indira was basically his foster-mom, so it most definitely could be a gun. It could be one of those big-game rifles that could take down an elephant.

Clouds had moved in overnight. The gray sky crouched overhead, clouds skimming the tops of the trees, and the light was so diffuse that the day was shadowless and pale.

Was it pepper spray?

I shook my head and focused on the road.

Brass knuckles?

I passed one of the freshwater fountains on the side of the road, where two cars were waiting as an old man in a custard-colored poncho filled approximately fifteen jugs.

Keme didn’t have access to lasers, did he?

I was getting close to Hastings Rock when a message from Millie came through on the car’s display: He’s at Fishermen’s Market .

Okay. That wasn’t too bad.

And then the next message came through: We got him!

I swear to God, I dropped my foot on the gas.

(I figured if I hurried, maybe it would only be one felony.)

Fishermen’s Market had, at one point in Hastings Rock’s history, been an actual market, and presumably it had, uh, serviced fishermen.

Fisherpeople? (Actual details to be googled later, I decided, especially since serviced sounded a little too adult for my tastes.) As Hastings Rock had converted itself from a fishing village into a tourist destination, however, the market had been transformed into one of the most popular restaurants on the boardwalk.

The restaurant itself was a small frame building that could only generously be described as a shack, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that during the summer months, if you could fight your way through the crowds, it was the perfect spot to sit at one of the tables on the pier and enjoy some of the best seafood in the world (fried, of course).