“I’d rather go with you,” I said, in as normal a tone as I could manage.
She whirled to look at me, her eyes gone dark as a storm. Rapidly, she took in my face, my posture, my bare feet on the carpet, and when she reached her conclusion, she reared back as if I’d struck her.
“You said you wouldn’t,” she whispered.
“I need to hear it from you,” I said. There was no use now in pretending. “What happened between you and August Moriarty?”
“You don’t—”
“I do, I need to know.”
“Watson, please—”
“Tell me,” I insisted. God, I was terrified. I hadn’t known that please was in her vocabulary. “Just—will you tell me.”
Tightly, disbelievingly, she shook her head, like I was a man on the street who’d made the mistake of demanding her wallet and PIN number and ten minutes with her in an alley. Like I hadn’t seen the knife she’d been carrying in plain view. In that moment, I invented and discarded a hundred things I could have said to her—platitudes, reassurances, accusations—only to have her walk past me and straight out the front door, the tap of her boots the only sound in the silence.
In the kitchen, Shepard said to my father, “Sororities? Hot cocoa? Um. Can you walk me through it again?”
I DIDN’T TELL MY FATHER OR THE DETECTIVE SHE’D LEFT, FOR the simple reason that I didn’t want them to stage a search. She had every reason to want to disappear, I thought, even with our bomber on the loose, but the last thing I wanted was for her to come face-to-face with them right now. Even if I didn’t have any doubts about who would win.
It did nothing to stop the sinking feeling in my stomach. Because this wasn’t a superhero film (swelling music and inevitable triumph, the enemy at her feet in a tasteful amount of his own blood). This wasn’t one of my great-great-great-grandfather’s stories (her with hat and cane and pocket watch, dashing out to haul the villain in, me waiting by the fire for the great reveal to be brought safely home). This wasn’t even an item on my father’s endless list, an anecdote to be summed up in some tasteful, mannered way. I didn’t even know how that could be done. 128. When you betray Holmes’s trust, _______. 129. When you realize she’s cared about someone who isn’t you, you selfish bastard, _______. 130. When the direct result of emotions she claims she’s incapable of feeling is one dead misogynist creep, one innocent girl choked to almost-death, your every private moment filmed, and Holmes nearly blown up into bloody pieces, _______.
She’ll understand, I told myself after a good hour of stewing. She’ll understand why I did it. And, for now, I’ll respect her need for distance—I can do that much—and when she’s back, I’ll apologize, and we can get on with the business of not getting ourselves killed.
That was when I remembered rules 1 and 2.
Search often for opiates and dispose of as needed.
Begin with the hollowed-out heels of Holmes’s boots.
Maybe we weren’t so divorced from the past as I wanted to believe. I thought, Oh, I am one stupid son of a bitch, and I hardly remembered to grab my coat as I flew out the door.
Between our house and the road was a flat expanse of grass, dusted lightly with snow. When I was a child, it had been its own continent, unending. But now it seemed the size of a postage stamp. It was unforgivingly white, and open, and showed no sign of her. How had she managed to move without footprints? All I could pick out were those of rabbit and deer.
We were a half mile from the nearest house, and even farther from any sort of civilization. Still, I tromped out to the middle of the road and shadowed my eyes, looking far in both directions. I saw pavement, flat land, our nearest neighbor’s weathervane. I didn’t see her.
Well, before I took my father’s car to go out looking, I’d rule out the rest of our land. I’d be thorough. Holmes would have been thorough, looking for me.
God knows what I’d say when I found her.
I MADE QUICK WORK OF THE TREES ALONG THE SIDES OF THE house. I spent longer in the shed my father had built to store his tools. The lawnmower was there, and his sawhorses, and though it seemed like there was nothing else, I examined the shed from both the inside and out, looking for unaccounted-for space, a hidden room. I felt every inch of wood with my bandaged hands. Nothing. Still nothing.
I stalked out into the backyard and considered the stretch of open, icy land behind the house, wondering if she’d managed to turn herself the same colors as the landscape, if she was somehow standing right next to me. If she’d erased herself altogether.