“Well,” Leander said, brushing off his clothes, “it’s too bad they only have gas fireplaces in that house, or you’d be quite the hero.”
I sat down on the woodpile. “I don’t need to be a hero.”
“I know,” he said. “Sometimes, though, it’s easier to be one than to be a person.”
Together, we looked up to the looming house on the hill.
“I thought Sherlock Holmes kept bees,” I said. I could open all the apiary doors. I could funnel them into that massive, awful dining room and let them build honeycombs down the walls. “I don’t see any bees.”
“His cottage is my sister Araminta’s now. It’s down the lane,” he said. “I don’t go all that often. She doesn’t much like visitors.”
I lifted an arm experimentally, then stretched it. “I guess you got all the friendly genes in the family.”
“Alistair has his small share, along with the family home.” There was a trace of bitterness in his voice. “But yes, you’re right. I have friends. I throw parties. I, shockingly, leave my house on occasion. And, if my deductions are correct, I’m the only Holmes in recent memory to fall in love.”
I opened my mouth to ask about Charlotte Holmes’s parents, then thought better of it. If the two of them were in love, it seemed like it was beside the point.
“Are you still with him?” I paused. “It was a him, right?”
Leander sighed, and sat down next to me. The woodpile shifted under our combined weight. “What is it that you want from Charlotte?”
“I—”
He held up a finger. “Don’t give me ‘boyfriend’ or ‘best friend’ or any of those other vagaries. Those terms are too loosely defined. Be specific.”
I wasn’t going to say either of those things; I was about to tell him to stay out of our business. But it wasn’t our business, anymore.
“She makes me better. I make her better. But right now we’re making each other worse. I want to go back to how it was before.” It sounded simple when I said it like that.
“Can I give you some advice?” Leander asked, and his voice was like the night around us, cloaked and sad. “A girl like her wasn’t ever a girl—and still, she is one. And you? You’re going to get yourself hurt either way.”
Speaking of vagaries. “What do you mean?”
“Jamie,” he said, “the only way out is through.”
I was too exhausted to talk it through further, so I changed the subject. “Have you been learning anything? From your contacts, I mean. Anything useful to take back to Germany?”
His eyes narrowed. “Of a sort. I learned that I need to have a word with Hadrian Moriarty. But then, I imagine I’m not alone in that.”
Hadrian Moriarty was an art collector, a high-class swindler, and, as I’d learned this fall, a frequent and valued guest on European morning talk shows. I wasn’t surprised to hear he was involved in an art scandal.
“And everything’s okay? I heard someone yelling about leaving.” I looked down. “I know it’s not my business.”
“It’s not,” Leander said, but he patted me on the shoulder. “After all that hard work, you’ll sleep well tonight. Though I suggest you do it alone, and that you lock your door. And then put a chair against it.”
“Wait.” I paused. “You and that guy. Are you two still together? You never said.”
“No.” He touched my shoulder briefly and stood to go. “We never were. He didn’t—he’s married, now. Or was. And is again.”
I was beginning to put together a puzzle of my own.
Because history ran in circles, and my own life especially so, if Leander had been in love with my father. I thought of that list he’d made. #74. Whatever happens between you and Holmes, remember it is not your fault and likely could not have been prevented, no matter your efforts. I watched Leander Holmes walk up the hill to the house, and then I buried my head in my hands.
I LOCKED MY DOOR. I PUT A CHAIR AGAINST IT. I WENT TO bed alone, and woke up to find Charlotte Holmes curled up in a small, dark ball on my floor.
“Watson,” she said sleepily, lifting her head from the carpet. “You kept getting texts. So I tossed your phone out the window.”
The window in question was still open. A cold wind was driving through it. To my credit—to my everlasting credit—I didn’t wrap her in blankets, or scream, or demand answers, or douse the room in gasoline.
At least we were on the ground floor.
As coolly as I could, I got up, stepped over her, and pulled my phone from a rosebush. “Eight texts,” I said. “From my father. About Leander.”
“Oh.” Holmes sat up, rubbing her arms. “Can you close that? It’s freezing.”
I shut the window with a snap. “Apparently your uncle wasn’t in touch yesterday. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, except my father’s gotten an email from him every night for the last four months. He wants us to check in, make sure he’s okay.”
I tried, unsuccessfully, to keep myself from remembering Leander’s forlorn voice. My father. My father, who was perpetually rumpled, pleased with himself. My father who bumbled through two countries, a dead-end job, a number of awful mystery stories he wrote out longhand and then read to me, dramatically, on the phone, doing all the voices. How anyone could love him that way was the real mystery.