A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(66)

“You have one in your hair,” he said fondly, and I plucked it out and tucked it behind my ear. “Did you send a photo to your uncle?”

“No,” I said, taking out my phone. “I should.” The light had taken on that effervescent quality it did around sundown. Watson was smiling, one hand on his hat, the river out behind him.

Leander responded almost instantly. Adorable! You two are breaking my heart, he said, along with a row of (unbroken) heart emojis.

“I wonder how often they did this,” Watson said. “Leander and my dad.” They had been at Oxford at the same time, though they hadn’t met until an alumni event after graduation. In their twenties, though, they’d returned quite a few times together to their old stomping grounds.

I settled in against the cushion. “I’m not sure. They talk about it enough.”

We drifted in silence for a moment. Knowing Watson, he was painting the scene in his head. Leander trailing his hand in the water, James inexpertly steering, some sandwiches and a bottle of wine in a wicker basket. The two of them spinning out some merry argument the way we’d heard them do so many times before.

“How’s your father?” I asked finally. “Have you responded to him at all?”

Watson stabbed the pole back into the water. “No. I don’t understand him, sometimes. It’s like he can maintain the illusion that he’s a normal, healthy human for about ten years at a stretch. That’s how long he was with my mom. How long he was with Abby. And then he . . . he burns it all down. Gleefully.”

I was with him until that last adverb. “I don’t know if he enjoys it.”

“Some part of him has to,” Watson said, making a face. “I keep—I keep waiting for him to show up at Leander’s door, here in Oxford. It’s the absolute last thing he should do, which means it’s probably at the top of his list.”

“I’m not defending him,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me, pushing us along down the river.

The evening was starting to cool. I took my sweater out of my bag and slipped it on.

Watson’s eyes refocused on me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t apologize,” I told him, pulling my hair out from the collar. “You have every right to be mad.”

With his father, and with me.

“You’re here now,” he said, and he dragged the pole against the riverbed to slow us. “You aren’t going anywhere.” The taut line of his shoulders. His eyes everywhere but on mine.

“Watson,” I said. “I have to tell you something.”





Twenty-Four


WATSON SHOOK HIS HEAD AS THOUGH TO CLEAR IT, AS though a fleet of sirens had gone screaming by.

“I’m going to bring us ashore,” he said stiffly. “Can you grab that paddle out of the bow? Give me a hand.”

Together, we maneuvered the punt toward the bank. Watson kicked off his shoes and stepped into the shallow water. We carried the boat ashore to rest in the soft bed of leaves under the willow grove.

He dropped down to sit on the till, hands folded. “Why is it,” he said, “that when you have to tell me something, it’s usually that we’re about to die?”

“It isn’t anything that terrible,” I said, though I knew, in a way, that I was lying. “Why do you think it’s always something terrible?”

He opened his mouth, then thought better of it.

“Most of my past behavior notwithstanding,” I allowed.

“Spill,” Watson said, and there was an edge to it. “We’re paying for the punt by the hour.”

“I’ve dropped out of my summer classes,” I said quickly.

It wasn’t what he’d been expecting, that much was clear. “Really?”

“Really.”

“But that means you won’t be able to enroll this fall.”

“I know,” I said.

“I thought you were taking chemistry,” he said. “Really advanced-level chemistry. I thought that was what you’d wanted?”

It had been. And yet. “I can’t . . . I can’t see myself doing it.”

He nodded. Watson, of everyone, would understand this: a boy who lived enough in his head that he rehearsed each moment before he lived it. “It makes sense,” he said. “You’ve been all caught up in this case.”

“Watson,” I said, somewhat louder than I intended. “That’s not the point. Do you understand? None of that is the point! I never . . .”

I’d run out of words. All I had was the sharp pulse in my throat.

“Hey,” he said, standing. “What are you trying to tell me?”

A punt went by on the water—four blond children with ice lollies, their blond mother with an ice lolly, the father steering them onward, steering them home.

“I’ll always take a case if it seems like someone needs me,” I said. “But Jamie . . . I don’t know if I can see myself doing this, either.”

“So, not chemistry,” he said, more lightly than I think he felt. “And not detective work.”

“Not this kind of detective work. Not solving cases that the police could easily take on, and I’m not planning to join the force. I don’t do well with institutions.”