Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

Stella seems surprised to see her, as if she’s already forgotten that she asked them to come. She blinks at Clare, then lowers her hand and rubs at the jagged nail.

“I don’t know,” she says with a shrug. “They’d already taken him back when I got here, so I haven’t seen him. Someone told me he’d be out pretty soon. So that must be a good sign, right?”

Aidan is standing on the far side of the room, trying to look through the window and past the empty desk to the back of the station for any sign of Scotty. Giving up, he finally turns and walks back to them. “What’d he do?”

“I don’t know,” Stella says, her eyes darting from Aidan to Clare. “We were kind of arguing, I guess, and he stormed out of Andy’s—”

Aidan grunts, as if he should have expected as much, then resumes his pacing.

“And then, well, he must’ve gotten lost or something.…”

Clare raises her eyebrows. “Lost?”

“He fell asleep,” Stella says, biting her lip.

“Where?” Aidan and Clare say at the exact same time.

“In a neighbor’s flowerbeds. So they called the police.”

“Seriously?” Aidan asks, coming to a stop, and Clare can see that he’s trying not to laugh, though he’s doing a terrible job of it. She presses her lips together, feeling the same way. She’s not sure exactly what she’d imagined Scotty had been hauled in for, but this certainly wasn’t it.

“I know,” Stella says, shaking her head. “He’s such an idiot.” But the way she says it—so fondly, her eyes shining—makes Clare look at her harder, and when she does, Stella ducks her head to hide the fact that she’s blushing.

Stella doesn’t usually blush, either.

Before Clare can say anything, Aidan frowns. “So are they charging him with anything?”

“I don’t know,” Stella says. “They wouldn’t tell me.”

He gives her an odd look. “Wait… if you weren’t with him, how did you know to come here?”

“He got one phone call…” she says, before trailing off.

“And he didn’t call me?” Aidan says, looking confused, but before Stella can respond, the door beside the desk is flung open, and for the second time tonight, Clare is surprised to see the round, merry face of Officer Lerner.

“Hi,” she says, shooting up from the chair, relieved that it’s not some random cop they’ll be dealing with, but someone they actually know.

Officer Lerner’s brow creases at the sight of her, but then she can see it register—who she is, why she’s here—and he smiles, tapping his hand twice against a clipboard.

“So we meet again,” he says. “I take it you’re a friend of young Mr. Wright?” He glances down at his paperwork, and then—just as abruptly—his eyes fly back up to Clare’s face. “Hey, are you…” he asks, his face darkening as he notices Aidan, too. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she assures him. “Really. There was just… it’s a really long story.”

He takes a step closer, his head tilted to one side. “Boy, that’s gonna be quite the shiner tomorrow,” he says. “Are you sure—”

“Yup, totally fine,” she says again, trying too hard to keep the impatience out of her voice. “Is Scotty okay?”

He takes off his hat and rubs at the shiny bald spot on the top of his head. Then his face reddens slightly, and Clare gets the distinct impression he’s trying not to laugh. “Yeah, he’s fine,” he says. “We had a nice little chat about boundaries and responsibility and trespassing and underage drinking. But seeing as he’s a first-time offender, and that it’s everyone’s last night in town, and he wasn’t causing any real trouble, we agreed that a warning would be sufficient.”

“That’s great,” Stella says, calmer already. “Does that mean… will he be able to leave now?”

“Oh, yeah,” Officer Lerner says, chuckling a little. “He’ll be out in a minute. He’s just… getting cleaned up a bit.”