The Sleepwalker(29)

Rikert was already at the bakery when I arrived. He had a table in the back corner, beside the window. He was seated facing the door. For a moment I was surprised that he was dressed as casually as he had been at his niece’s birthday party, but then I remembered: he had said it was his day off. He had a leather jacket draped over the back of the chair, the coat a shade of dark caramel.

“Oh, my God,” he said, laughing, as he stood to greet me, “you’re wearing your mother’s sweater.”

He was extending his hand, but I stopped and stood perfectly still, a little nonplussed. “You recognize it?”

“I do. Your mom loved it because it was warm and had pockets. But even she called it ‘the spinster sack.’?”

“Well, thank you. You really know how to make a girl feel good about herself.”

He shook his head. “You’re beautiful. Your mother was beautiful. But I’m a guy. I will always prefer what you were wearing as Lianna the Enchantress over Lianna the Spinster.”

“It’s too cold for a belly shirt.”

“And harem pants. I get it. I’m sorry, it was just a reflex. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have said anything. Let’s start again. Lianna, lovely to see you. Thanks for joining me.” He pulled out a chair for me and I sat down.

“That’ll work,” I said.

“Again, my bad.”

“I guess I should be impressed that you remember the sweater. A lot of guys probably wouldn’t even have noticed.”

“Maybe not.”

“On the other hand, you’ve been carrying a grudge against it for a really long time.”

He chuckled. “Grudge is a very strong word.”

I almost said something about the profound effect my mother must have had on him, but stopped myself. “This place smells pretty incredible,” I said instead, inhaling the aromas of confectioner’s sugar, vanilla, and maple. There were a dozen tables in the bakery, all but one taken, and the crowd was a mix of students and Burlington executives. People were chatting easily, laughing at some tables, leaning in attentively at others.

“It does. The secret is to make a decision: entrée or dessert. If you order a sandwich, you won’t be able to restrain yourself. You will eat every bite. And then you won’t have room for dessert.”

“I am an eat-dessert-first girl. Life is short.”

“Very wise. That’s how you have to approach a place like this.”

He nodded in the direction of the glass case with the desserts and the long blackboard with the lunch specials. “The way it works here is that we go order and then they bring it to our table. We should decide what we want so they don’t kick us out.”



It wasn’t especially nutritious, but I guessed the flourless chocolate cake was pretty low on carbs—which was a good thing because unlike Paige, I wasn’t getting a whole lot of exercise those days. Vacuuming was as good as it got most of the time, and I really didn’t vacuum all that often. The slice of cake was indecently large. The cappuccino I ordered had a cinnamon-colored heart swirled into the foam.

“So what did my mom eat when you two would come here?” I asked the detective. I was curious, but it was also among the most innocuous questions I could think of. “A big cupcake?”

“Usually a slice of the maple cake with vanilla icing and walnuts. And, like you, a cappuccino.”

I nodded. “I’m not surprised. She loved maple. And not just maple syrup.”

“I once saw her inhale a maple creemee.”

“So you didn’t just come here or the coffee shop.”

“Busted. Yes, one time we went across the street from the hospital and down the road to the ice cream place for creemees.”

“Okay.”

“Would you like a list of every single place we ever went?”

“Maybe. Not today.”

“Fair enough.”

“What did you two talk about? Clearly it wasn’t just sleepwalking and dreams.”

He was eating a chocolate and peanut butter cupcake that had to be the size of a softball. He took a bite with a fork and murmured, “Most satisfactory.” Then: “We talked a lot about you and your sister. I was serious when I told you how much she loved you two. I mean, she told me all about your magic and Paige’s skiing. I gather the kid was practically skiing before she could walk.”

“An exaggeration,” I said, a sibling reflex that I regretted as soon as I had spoken.

“And she was thrilled about Amherst and so proud that you were going there.”

“I was a freshman when you were transferred, right? When you two stopped seeing each other?”

“That’s right. You had just started your junior year of high school when we met.”

“My mom ever talk about my dad?”

“Little bit.”

“But not really.”

“That’s correct.”

“So she didn’t, I don’t know, exude love for him the way she did for my sister and me.”

“Oh, I never doubted she loved him. It never crossed my mind that she didn’t love him.”

“Then why do you think she didn’t talk about him?”

“Talking about your husband to another man implies the two of you are lovers or confidants. We weren’t—at least not in that way. We were sleep confidants, and I mean sleep in the literal sense.”