,)“We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming.”
—Ruth Rendell, One Across, Two Down (1971)
“Get up,” Cherry said. “Now.”
Heart pounding, I flew off the couch and practically tripped over the blanket before I had time to realize that I wasn’t wearing pants. Daniel made a loud noise and jumped, but he saw his mom and immediately covered his boxers. “Jesus Christ,” he complained in a deep, sleep-rough voice. “What the hell, Mom?”
“What the hell is that you lied to me,” she said angrily. “You said you were taking her home last night. Now I come over here to find you two sleeping together?”
I wanted to die. I also wanted to put on my jeans, but she was standing next to them.
Daniel groaned and pulled his hair back out of his eyes. “We weren’t—we were only sleeping.”
Cherry snorted. “Sure. That’s what I’d tell Baba when I was your age. She didn’t believe me either. And I don’t think Dottie let you watch this place so you could have sex parties with your girlfriend.”
“Did you not just hear me?” he snapped back.
“I heard you just fine.” She pointed to the coffee table, where, next to the wilted lily from my hair, the box of condoms still sat. “And I see plenty fine too.”
Chum bucket!
“I know what it looks like,” Daniel said. “But it wasn’t even opened. See for yourself. Go on. Nothing happened. I asked her to stay here because—” He glanced at me. “It doesn’t matter. It was for her safety, and it’s none of your business.”
“I’m your mother. It will never stop being my business,” she said, throwing his shirt at him. “Go get dressed in the back. I want a word with Birdie alone, please.”
“Mom—”
She made a sharp hissing noise, and he relented, angrily snagging both pairs of jeans off the floor. As he handed mine over, he looked at me with big, sorrowful eyes, but I couldn’t even hold his gaze. I just shoved my feet into my jeans and quickly pulled them up while he walked past me. I was breathing so hard, it felt like I might collapse.
Cherry walked to the kitchen. I followed, and when she got to the counter, she turned around. “What are you doing with my son?”
I shook my head. “We didn’t do anything,” I said, voice breaking.
“I don’t care what you did or didn’t do. I asked you a question. What are you doing with my son?”
“Um . . .” I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. We’re solving a mystery together at work didn’t seem like the right answer. Neither did I accidentally ate a bunch of weed candy last night and had a cataplexy episode, or the one I’m sure every mother loves to hear: I lost my virginity with your son, and now I might have feelings for him.
After a few awkward moments, she finally gave me a clue about what was going on in her mind, saying, “I know he told you about his self-harm incident.”
Is that what we were calling it? I nodded. “Yes, he did.”
“Then you can understand why he doesn’t need fair-weather girls in his life,” she said. “He needs stability. If you’re one of those girls who wants to have a wild weekend, find someone else. Because he’s a good kid, and he doesn’t need that right now.”
“What? I don’t even know what a wild weekend is,” I said, perplexed and defensive.
“I don’t know you, but I know my son. He’s emotional. He gets attached. I’m trying to keep him steady so that he doesn’t plummet into another depression. Do you really want to be responsible for that?”
How was I supposed to answer? I was confused and panicked, in a strange place with a strange woman. My eyes welled with tears. Don’t cry . . . Do. Not. Cry.
Daniel rushed into the kitchen. “What the hell? What did she say to you?” he asked me. When I shook my head, he said to his mother, “Seriously? What is wrong with you? You can’t keep pulling this shit. This isn’t normal!”
“Don’t tell me what’s normal. I’m your mother. I’m responsible for your well-being. You weren’t answering your phone.”
“So, you broke in here to check on me—”
“The back door was open.”
“—when I specifically asked you never to do that?”
“I will not talk about this now.”
Not in front of me. That was the implication. I could take a hint; I strode away from the kitchen to gather up my things.
“Birdie,” Daniel pleaded.
“It’s fine,” I said, feeling as if my heart were being shot with a dozen arrows—prick, prick, prick. “Talk to your mom. I’m going home.”
“I’ll take you,” Daniel said.
I shook my head. Prick, prick, prick.
“Birdie—”
“I’m not a child. I can get home by myself.” I quickly swiped at my eyes and found my purse as he begged me to stay. I couldn’t. Everything inside me was screaming for me to run. Bolt. Flee the scene. I slipped into my shoes and bolted out the door, and when he tried to come after me, I stopped him and said, “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry . . . for everything.”
I somehow made it out of the neighborhood, avoiding stares as I tripped my way down the sidewalk, blubbering like a small child. But I managed to pull myself together long enough to board a morning bus. And when I was headed out of West Seattle, crammed against commuters headed to their jobs downtown, stunned and dazed about what had just happened, trying not to cry again—Pull it together, Birdie!—I realized that what I’d said to Daniel was a lie: I wasn’t sorry in the least.
Sure, it was humiliating that I’d brought an entire box of condoms for Cherry to find, but I wasn’t sorry that Daniel and I had talked about sex. And yes, it was embarrassing that I’d nodded off so many times last night, but I was honestly glad he knew about my narcolepsy now; it was a relief. And spending the night with him on the couch? I didn’t regret that one single bit.
At least, not until Cherry walked in.
What are you doing with my son?
Good question. What was I doing?
I guess I needed to figure that out. But right now it was all I could do to hold back tears and try to stop my chest from feeling as if it were caving in and collapsing around my wounded heart.
• • •
It wasn’t until I got back to Bainbridge Island that I remembered Grandpa was gone on his fishing trip with Cass. Instead of heading home, I walked past the harbor shops and hiked up the main drag to Aunt Mona’s house while the sun timidly peeked through gray clouds. But when I spied the retro red letters of THE RIVERA on the marquee above the doorway, I also spotted a shiny black SUV parked in front of the door. My first thought was that the cops had come to arrest Mona for stealing that painting from Sharkovsky’s house, but as I quickened my steps, hugging my purse against my ribs, I realized it was something far worse.
Leon Snodgrass.
He was putting something in the back seat of the SUV. When he shut the door and looked up, our eyes met. It had been more than a year since I’d seen him, and some things looked exactly as I remembered: pasty-white rich-boy complexion. Long nose. Stupid 1990s band T-shirt, in an attempt to look less like the stockbroker that he was.
But other things had changed. No longer clipped short, his chin-length light brown hair was tucked behind his ears. A matching beard covered the lower half of his face. And he was wearing jeans. I’d never seen him outside a pair of khakis.
If I had to profile Leon Snodgrass, it would look a little like this:
Suspect: Leon Snodgrass
Age: 39
Occupation: Investment banker
Medical conditions: (1) Allergic to mangoes. (2) Terrible yet frequent golfer. (3) Thinks “da bomb” is a funny way to describe things he likes. (4) Says Monopoly is better than Clue. (5) Possible foot fetish; always looking at Mona’s feet.
Background: Born into an upper-middle class family on Bainbridge Island; great-grandfather owned a shipbuilding company in Scotland in the early twentieth century. Went to the University of Washington; has master’s degree in finance and brags that he met former President Barack Obama in 2010 when the man made an appearance at a bakery in Pioneer Square, and that President Obama complimented his shoes. Won a bunch of sailing competitions after college. Started dating Mona four years ago; broke up. Then again two years ago, before going on a “break” a year later, during which time, seventeen-year-old Birdie Lindberg took photographs of him laughing it up over calamari with Cathy Wong inside Doc’s Marina Grill. A month later he moved to Texas. Some of us wished he’d stayed there.
“Birdie,” Leon said, blinking at me as if I were a figment of his imagination.
“Leon,” I replied, hugging my purse more tightly. “Heard you were in town.”
He nervously tucked his hair more firmly behind his ears. “Yeah. Decided to move back to the island. Austin was great, but it’s sweltering, and the traffic is insane. And I got sick of waiting in line for breakfast tacos.”
Did he say “move back”? As in permanently?
“Well, hoo-boy,” I said. “You came back to a real restaurant mecca here, didn’t you?” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Now you get to wait in line behind chatty Mrs. Carmichael at Pegasus Coffee.”
He laughed softly and scratched the back of his head. “Believe it or not, I’ve missed all this. You don’t realize how fresh the air is until you’ve gone.”
“Like Murden Cove’s tidal flats?” Farther north on the island, they start stinking like sulfur in the summer during low tide.
“Ugh, Murder Cove,” he says, wincing. “Okay, maybe I didn’t miss that. But the rest of it. Plus, the city is right across the water. I can zip over there if I’m missing nightlife.”
“In your super-dope new yacht?” I said. “What was that you named it? The Spirit of a Woman I Don’t Deserve?”
“Oof,” he said, blowing out a hard breath. “Why are teens so vicious?”
“Because we haven’t learned the art of being phony yet, Mr. Soundgarden.”
He looked down at his T-shirt. “They were the first band I ever saw in concert.”
“And what’s with the hair and the jeans? Trying to relive your golden years? Is that why you’re chasing Mona again? You know she doesn’t fit in with your golfing lifestyle, right? That hasn’t changed.”
“I don’t have a golfing lifestyle. I learned to play golf so that I could schmooze my clients. It’s called being good at my job.”
“Now you’re bad and bourgeois, buying yachts and making it rain?”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
“Why are you throwing all this shade on me, Birdie?” He said this as if he were partly teasing, partly confused.
My patience was in tatters. Everything I’d endured over the last couple of days—Daniel’s confession over sushi, our emotional talk in Green Gables, my accidental foray into stoner life, the cataplexy episode last night, and getting yelled at by Cherry this morning . . . It felt as if I were in the middle of a lake, trying to paddle a canoe by myself, and some unseen force was poking holes in the boat, letting in more and more water. My canoe was sinking, and Leon had the misfortune of being a fish in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I wanted to bash him over the head with my paddle.
“Why are you trying to take Mona away from me?!” I said, almost shouting, sounding like one of those loony-tunes, doom-and-gloom street preachers who wildly accuse innocent passersby of contributing to the fall of humanity. “Can I not have one good thing?”
“Birdie,” he said in a pleading voice, holding out both hands as if he was trying to keep me calm. “I promise you—”
Whatever he was going to promise, it was lost when the door to the theater opened. Out came Aunt Mona, who trotted toward us wearing white pants, wedge heels, a blue-and-white striped shirt, and a navy blazer emblazoned with a hand-stitched gold crest that said AHOY! Over a bobbed white wig, she wore a glittery sailor hat.
“Darling!” she said to me, breathless. “Is everything okay? You didn’t set the house on fire, did you? Are the two of you playing nice?” She gave Leon a questioning look.
“We’re completely fine,” he said, sounding like we were in the middle of a bank robbery and he was the level-headed one trying to keep us calm. “It’s all going to be okay.”
Speak for yourself, I thought.
“What’s wrong?” Mona asked me. “Is everything all right between you and our Daniel?”
I shook my head once, self-conscious.
Aunt Mona held up a hand to Leon, telling him to wait, and then pulled me back under the theater’s entrance. “Hey,” she said in a low voice. “Tell me what’s happened.”
“This isn’t a one-time thing anymore? You’re dating Leon again?”
She closed her eyes briefly. “It’s . . . complicated. We’re talking. That’s all.”
“Talking about what? He told me he was moving back here to the island, but was that a lie? Did he only come back to convince you to move to Texas?”
“And sweat to death in the summer? Not on your life.”
“Then what? I came over here because I needed to talk, and there he is, standing outside in the morning sun like he spent the night here last night.”
Mona groaned. “Okay, he did, yes. But it’s not what you think. Trust me, there’s nothing juicy going on. Not even so much as a French kiss. We just stayed up late talking and he slept on the sofa. I swear,” she said, holding up three fingers.
I still didn’t totally believe her. Or maybe what happened with Cherry this morning had completely stripped away all rational thought and turned me into a raving, panicking paranoid.
“Now, stop pouting,” she said in a calming voice, “and tell me why you’re here.”
Blowing out a hard breath, I tried to put Leon out of my mind while I gave her the short version of last night’s events: going to West Seattle, meeting Daniel’s family, the stupid gummies.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” she murmured with wide eyes. “Hugo’s going to eat me alive for letting that happen on my watch!”
“Are you insane? Don’t tell him! You want him to have a heart attack?”
“All right! All right,” she said. “Go on. Tell me the rest.”
And I did. About sleeping with Daniel on the couch. And about Cherry finding us.
“Jeez,” Aunt Mona complained. “Uptight much?”
“Actually, I’m not sure she is.” I certainly wasn’t going to get into Daniel’s issues while Leon pretended to watch late-Sunday-morning post-church traffic. “I think she’s just overprotective about Daniel. She’s actually . . . I don’t know. You’d probably like her. I think she’s a few years older than you. She was a magician’s assistant back in the late 1990s. She had a stage name and everything—Black Butterfly.”
Aunt Mona blinked at me. “No way. That’s Daniel’s mother? Holy shit. Hold on,” she told me. And then shouted to Leon, “Just a second, okay?”
Before I could stop her, she was racing back inside the theater. And while I gave Leon an awkward lift of the chin that said I acknowledge that this is holding up your plans and that I was a total jerk to you a few minutes ago, but please don’t come over here and try to make good with me right now. Then I stared at the cardboard movie standees in Mona’s ticket window until she came back out—this time, carrying something.
“Look!” she said, holding out an old event flyer, affixed to a backing board and stored inside a clear plastic sleeve. The flyer’s design was silk-screened in black ink on neon pink paper. It advertised an event at a Seattle club in 1999. The Jim Rose Circus Side Show, with opening act the Great Albini and Black Butterfly.
“That’s her!” I said, pointing at the blurry, silk-screened people.
“I know! I saw this show with your mom when we were in high school! We were sixteen—I made us fake IDs to get inside, but they didn’t even check them. I tore this flyer off the wall as we were leaving the show.”
“You saw Cherry perform?”
“I did! I remember her outfit, the most amazing black corset with roses . . .”
“You saw Cherry perform,” I repeated, completely astounded. “She could have been pregnant with Daniel.”
She was silent. I looked up to see glossy eyes. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
Shaking her head quickly, she said, “I’m not sad. I was just thinking about when your mom was pregnant with you, and now my eye makeup is going to smear, so I’m going to stop being nostalgic and focus on what matters here. Because I think this is a sign. Destiny!”
“Destiny hates me, and so does Cherry.”
“You said she was an overprotective mama bear. All you need to do is convince her that you’re not a threat. Calm the bear down.”
“How?”
“No idea, but you’re the one who loves solving mysteries, Veronica Mars.” She gave me a wink with gold-tipped eyelashes before shoving the flyer into my hand. “Here. Take it. It’s yours now, and you can do whatever you want with it. All I know is when destiny calls, you answer. Right now I’m answering my own call.”
“With Leon?” I said, making a face.
She kissed the top of my head. “We’ll see. It’s only a boat ride.”
Right. I didn’t believe that for one second. But she told me when to expect her back and promised—again—that we’d talk more later. And as I stood on the sidewalk, clutching the flyer she’d given me, Leon helped her into his SUV. Then he turned to me, hesitated, and then hugged me.
Me.
I froze, all my muscles stony, not knowing what to do. Then he pulled back to look at my face, holding my arms, while he said in a low voice, “We got off on the wrong foot today, but I want you to know that nothing will change. I get that Mona is practically a mother to you, and I wouldn’t do anything to take her away from you, okay? So don’t be worried. It’s all going to be fine.”
He sounded serious, and I was so discombobulated, all I could do was stare at him when he released me. Then he was jogging to his SUV and getting behind the wheel. Aunt Mona waved at me from her window as they pulled away from the curb and disappeared into traffic.
Nothing will change? What was happening? Did that mean they were officially a couple again? And if nothing was changing, then why was my stomach in knots?
My phone buzzed. I pulled it out and found a series of texts:
Daniel: I’m so so so so sorry.
Daniel: R u ok? Did you make it to the ferry? I went after you in my car, but u weren’t at bus stop. R u home yet?
Daniel: Even if u r upset, lmk u r ok.
Me: I’m home.
Daniel: PRAISE ELVIS. R u ok?
Me: Physically, yes. Mentally, I’m sorry I left.
Daniel: Really? Bc I’m devastated u left.
Me: Yeah?
Daniel: Yeah. And I’m just so sorry it happened. Mortified. Please don’t hate me.
Me: I don’t. At all. Zero hate.
Daniel: Can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that.
Daniel: Last night was the best sleep I’ve had. Ever.
Me: Me too. Wish I was still there.
Daniel: Wish u were still here too. (,)
I looked at the pink flyer Aunt Mona gave me. I didn’t want to come between Daniel and his mother. What a disaster. A disaster upon disaster, considering all the events leading up to this morning’s confrontation with Cherry.
Before I met Daniel, my life was a cozy mystery book in a small town with one quiet murder to solve. Now dead bodies were piling up everywhere, a serial killer was on the loose, and I was a brooding detective with a sleep disorder who’d fumbled all the evidence.
A good detective restored order.
So why was I leaving behind a trail of chaos wherever I went?