Mom doesn’t know that I was coming back from Lucky’s house when the boatyard window was broken. But she knows that I was outside the bookshop when Adrian drove up and demanded to talk to Evie. And Mom is pissed. And a little scared.

“If that really was Adrian who did it … ,” she says a day later, when we watch four people installing a new window across the street.

“Of course it was him! Who else would it be?” Who else would hurl a crowbar at a window after drunkenly threatening people with that eye-for-an-eye speech? I don’t understand how the police can’t get fingerprints off it, but apparently they can’t. He must have wiped it before he threw it.

Or someone in the police department is covering for him.…

“Why would an Olympic rower from Harvard be vandalizing windows in Beauty?” Mom says. “Evie? Would he really do that?”

“I couldn’t really say,” Evie murmurs.

Oh, but she could. She could say, all right. Evie doesn’t want me to tell Mom—I think because she’s so embarrassed that Adrian’s such a toxic stalker, even though it’s no reflection on her, duh—but she swore me to secrecy when she showed me all the drunken texts he sent her that night. Forty-three. Forty-three! And that’s on top of eleven phone calls. Who does that? A maniac, that’s who.

Then again, who throws a rock through a historic department store window?

Maybe I’m a maniac too.

Which maniac came first, the chicken or the egg?

After I insist again and again that it was Adrian, begging her to trust me on this one, Mom relents and tries to call up Adrian’s father through his business number—just to talk—but he’s not taking calls. And he’s not the kind of guy to whom you can march up and demand justice. You can’t just ring his doorbell. Guess when he’s the one whose property is destroyed, he’s available. When it’s his son who’s doing the destroying … well, he’s a busy man.

Take a number.

When Wednesday rolls around, Mom locks up the store at noon for our half-day closing and walks next door to Freedom Art Gallery, where several neighborhood shop owners are gathering to talk about security. Hate to break it to them, but they are in zero danger from Wreck-It Ralph. Adrian doesn’t care about their windows.

Evie is remarkably quiet about all of this. Pretty sure she’s far more upset than she’s letting on, but she says she needs time to think about things. So I’m giving her space. But I’m also thinking about those forty-three texts.

Maybe we’ve all got our ticking time bombs.