A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(65)

Malcolm and Robbie, I panicked, and dashed down the stairs to find my father.

He was at the front entrance, waving to Abbie and his boys as the minivan backed down the driveway.

“Oh,” I said.

“They’re going back to her mother’s for a few days,” he told me, shutting the door. “Charlotte made quite the compelling case for it, and now I feel remiss in not already having sent them away myself.” He sighed. “Detective Shepard’s in the kitchen, if you’d like to speak to him. Did you find what you needed?”

“Is that Jamie?” Shepard called. “Ask him what the hell Forever Ever Laffy Taffy is.”

But Holmes’s violin was still crooning. I followed the sound as if in a dream. There, in the family room. Dressed again in her usual clothes, all the way down to her trim black boots. Against the bright window, she was like a shadow gone abstract, the instrument tucked under her chin. She moved the bow with exquisite slowness. A high note, and then a languorous descent.

She paused, midnote, like some beautiful statue. It wrecked me, watching her.

“Watson?” she asked without turning.

I plodded forward as if I’d been summoned to the judge for sentencing.

“I just spent a good hour telling the detective about the explosion. As if I knew anything he didn’t. Oh, and your father said that your assigned time to get your things from the dorm is at ten thirty tomorrow. So I might toss Nurse Bryony’s place alone.” She held the Strad up to examine its strings and plucked one, listening. “Is that all right?”

“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.