Shay takes us out for an afternoon of fun, she says. We watch them throw salmon for the tourists in the Public Market. We have an early dinner at Etta’s, and then we go to a big, old bookstore in Pioneer Square, which Shay calls a Seattle landmark. I lose Shay in Cooking and Diego in History.
I wish I could lose myself.
It’s like this thing with Emily has cracked me open, and I don’t want to say like a nut. But suddenly, it’s like I can read what other people are feeling. Not Shay, and not Diego. Not everyone I see. But sometimes, a wave hits me, and I know.
I know that the fat man in Travel is worried about his daughter’s marriage.
The woman in head-to-toe Gore-Tex just threw up in the bathroom. She’s pregnant.
It’s a girl, I want to tell her. Don’t worry so much.
The man in the green shirt taking down a book in Fiction wonders why books can’t save him from falling in love with women who hurt him.
The woman with the long silver ponytail has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. She’s worrying about cancer as she chooses a book called Living Simply in an Age of Stress.
You’re okay, I want to tell her.
But what good would it do? She’d think I was just another passing lunatic.
Emily isn’t okay.
I’ve got to screen everything else out. I’ve got to figure it out, I’ve got to decipher it.
I’ve got to break it down.
I go downstairs to this little café they have. They’re out of soda, and the girl behind the counter suggests coffee.
“I don’t drink coffee,” I say, which I realize is enough to get me deported from the city of Seattle.
“We have juice,” the girl behind the counter says. She has a pierced eyebrow and a seriously punked-out haircut. Her gaze is somewhere between hostile and bored. She hates her job and pretty much hates her life, but I’m relieved that I get no insight, no flash into why.
“I don’t like juice,” I say.
She shrugs. I finally ask for tea, which I don’t really want. I find a table and start dunking the teabag like I’m trying to wash it clean.
Forget about the visions, I tell myself. What else did you see?
Detective Fusilli had asked me if Emily had a crush, and I’d said that Emily never talked about boys. I thought I’d been telling the truth. But what if she’d been trying to talk to me about a crush, only I was too dense, too locked in my own head, too busy trying to hear music that I wanted always, always playing? I wanted the music to block out everything in my head, and it wound up blocking someone talking just a couple of feet away.
I remember Zed closing the laptop as Shay moved toward the table. Had he been hiding something? How could I get back into the studio and find out? I couldn’t drive, which was a serious handicap. I discovered something essential: Detectives need cars.
Maybe I could talk Shay into going back so that she could see Rocky. Why was she taking him food, anyway? Why wasn’t she taking food to Mrs. Carbonel? Did Shay have a crush on Rocky? Was she using this as an opportunity to move in on him? That would be totally snaky of her, but I really don’t know how Shay operates in her love life. All I know is that for an overweight middleaged woman, she has plenty of dates. You’d think on an island you’d run out of men at some point.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Shay and Rocky are already involved. Maybe Shay is the reason the Carbonel marriage broke up. I try to think back about that night we went over there. Mrs. Carbonel hadn’t even said hello to Shay.
Shay plunks down a bag of books on the table, making me jump. She points to the tea with her chin.
“I didn’t know you liked tea.”
I push the tea away. She sits down. I look at her sandaled feet, then look away. Shay has feet like a hobbit. Her toes are chunky and round. You’d think that if you had toes like that, you wouldn’t want to call attention to them. You’d be too embarrassed to get pedicures. Not Shay. Her toenails are bright red.
“Don’t you want to buy a book or two? I’m treating,” Shay says.
I shake my head.
Shay looks distracted. She lifts her hair off her neck and lets it fall again. Her hair is thick like my mom’s, but it’s brown, not blond. Not that my mom’s was natural. Mom used to call me her “tell,” which meant that because I have brown hair, everyone would know her blond hair was fake. She used to ruffle my hair when she said it; she really didn’t care, she was making a joke. I feel anger grip me in a fist and squeeze. Shay’s feet, her hair, annoy me. Her breath, the fact that she’s breathing. The fact that I’m sitting here, in a strange place, with a stranger, miles away from what I know. What I’ve loved.
“Are you after Rocky?” I ask her.
Shay looks confused for a minute. “Am I…”
“Are you trying to move in on him?” I ask. “Is that why you’re bringing him food?”
Knowledge floods Shay’s eyes. I see it happen, filling her brain as the blush fills her cheeks. So it’s true.
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” she says.
She is furious. I’ve never seen her angry, at least at me. Only at Detective Fusilli, or at a driver going too fast on a country road.
“You think I’m using Emily’s disappearance to spice up my love life?” she asks. Her green eyes are intense, watching my face.
I shrug. I press my finger on the teabag on the table and watch the brown stain spread out.
Shay stands up. “I’ll meet you at the car,” she says.
I sit there for a few minutes. I’m not feeling too great about myself. I tell myself that detectives have to ask questions that people don’t want to answer, but deep down, I know something that I’m afraid to admit. I enjoyed asking the question.
Finally, I stand up. Diego is coming down the stairs to get me. He waits while I wipe up the tea and throw the napkin and cup away. We walk to the car without saying anything. I can tell he knows Shay is upset, but I’m not sure if he knows why.
Shay is sitting in the driver’s seat. “I hope we don’t hit traffic,” she says in a neutral voice. “There’s a Mariners game letting out.”
We do hit traffic, but I think she’s relieved, because she gets to concentrate on driving. I want to say something, but I don’t know what. So I start thinking about how to investigate Zed. It’s up to me, and I know it. If I go to the police and babble about oyster shells and feelings, they’ll laugh me out the door.
Shay had said that he stays in a shack on the beach. If I could get inside, maybe I could find something.
Or maybe Emily could be inside. Maybe Zed got her to go away with him, but then she changed her mind. Maybe he’s keeping her there, and that’s what I saw in the vision.
“Why don’t we stop for ice cream on the way home?” I suggest.
Diego turns from the front seat and looks at me, surprised. Shay glances in the rearview mirror. It’s the first time I have ever suggested prolonging an outing. It could be the first time I’ve suggested doing anything together.
“How about that place in Greystone Harbor?” I say.
I see how Shay’s face relaxes. I realize that she thinks that this is my way to apologize. I’m embarrassed. I should have thought of it as an apology. Instead, it’s just a ruse. But at least it gets me somewhere closer to Emily.