The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(55)

“You’re excited to see Mum, I take it,” I said. “Big dinner plans?”

My father shrugged. “Just trying to be a good host.”

The car was warm, too warm, and I cracked the window as he pulled out of the school gates. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m feeling kind of gross.”

He gave me a look. “Apparently not that gross. How’s Elizabeth? Are you two back on?”

“No. Maybe. No. No, we’re not.” I knew it wasn’t a good answer. I thought about saying something like I can only solve one mystery at a time, and then cringed. What was it that Elizabeth had said? Being aware of it didn’t excuse your crappy behavior?

My father didn’t say anything else until we’d made it out of Sherringford Town and into the cold, white fields beyond. “It isn’t nice to leave people in the dark,” he said, finally, with an odd vehemence.

I looked at him. “Am I leaving you in the dark about something?”

“Elizabeth,” he said, gripping the wheel. “That poor girl. She has expectations, you know, and I don’t want you jerking her around. It’s not very nice. I don’t like to see that kind of behavior in you.”

I didn’t like it in me either, but it was sort of beside the point—my father never came down on me like this for anything. “Are you all right? Is everything okay with Abbie?”

“You don’t need to get yourself involved in that.”

“Okay,” I said, unsettled. I’d groused a lot over the years about my father’s relentless good humor, but I was discovering I didn’t know what to do when it wasn’t there.

The night got darker, streetlights winking out as we drove further into the countryside. It wasn’t proper farmland, with farms and turbines and hay for miles and miles; instead, the road wandered through little towns, none of them any bigger than a gas station and a couple of bars, surrounded by ancient farmhouses. During the day it was unremarkable, but at night, with the snow turning into sleet, those old houses were strange and sad.

“Then again,” my father said, out of nowhere, “it isn’t fair for her to expect things from you that you can’t give her. Has she even said anything to you about it?”

I blinked. “Yes?”

“Well, that’s good. Good. Good for her. That’s better than—than just wanting things and never saying anything about it and hanging around, feeling tortured, instead of communicating your feelings like an actual adult.”

We were definitely not talking about Elizabeth. “Dad.” I swallowed, then said, “Is everything okay with Leander?”

He almost swerved off the road. “What are you talking about?”

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” I said, not unkindly.

More silence. More farmhouses, standing like sentinels in the dark. My father pounded his hand against the wheel once, twice, three times. “Your stepmother doesn’t like Leander hanging around so much, looking at her like—she says, and I quote—‘like he’s just waiting for James to realize how much more he likes him than me.’”

“He’s been at the house a lot, I take it.”

“He’s renting a place down the road,” my father said. “I haven’t gotten to see him this much in ten years! We’ll usually put together a few weekends in the summer—run around Edinburgh like we used to, tidy up the ends of some case he’s solving—but you know, it was never enough. It was the best when he lived so close to us, in London, but that of course made your mother furious. I—ah. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“Probably not,” I said.

“Abbie is different, you know. More adventurous. We have a lot of fun.” He nodded, as if talking himself into something. “She thinks he’s in love with me.”

There it was. “Is he?” I asked.

“No.” He sounded almost relieved that the conversation had made its way here, as though this had been the end point all along. “No! No. No, he’s not. Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he’s in love with his straight best friend. I hate when people insinuate that. You know, that’s insulting to both of us, and anyway, I’m just—he’s brilliant, you know? Leander is the life of every room, and he’s obviously a good-looking man. He could have anyone he wanted, he’s not just hanging around pining after me. Of all people! That would be absurd. That would be . . .”

He trailed off.

“It would be really sad for him,” I said, looking down at my hands.

“Oh, God,” my father said.

The sleet was coming down harder. Little dots and dashes of hail were bouncing off of the windshield.

“Yeah.” I paused. “He’s your favorite person?”

Mechanically, he put on the wipers. “I’ve never—I’m not attracted to men. He’s not an exception to that.”

“But he’s—”

“He’s my favorite person.” He was talking almost as if to himself. “Don’t you wish sometimes that who you—you spent your life with was determined just by that? Wouldn’t that make it less complicated?”

I was seventeen years old. I was dating-or-not-dating another girl who was right now questioning the campus dealer about a crime I hadn’t committed, and I was in love with my best friend, who I hadn’t seen for a year but who lived on in my day-to-day like a splinter in my goddamn heart. I thought about the rest of my life a lot more than I’d like to admit.