“Hey, you know, I actually have a camera set up in a Macaw over at my place, like a surveillance thing? It’s connected to an app on my phone. I put it in over a year ago when Elizabeth… Never mind. Anyway, I know you only fed the cat that one time, because the app shows whenever anyone goes into the kitchen.”

Shit. Roy scooted back his barstool. “I’m sorry.” He looked down at his feet. “I felt like a burglar in your house. And your cat hates me.”

Tupper laughed. “He’s a one-person cat. He misses my wife. It’s fine. Doesn’t matter. I just wanted you to know that I know so you’re not carrying it around, you know?”

For all his crisply ironed shirt neatness and insanity, Tupper Paulsen was a pretty nice fellow.

“Where are you from? I mean, originally?” Roy asked. Mars? Uranus? What color was Uranus?

“Maine,” Tupper said. “Elizabeth and I, we grew up together in the state of Maine.”

Roy pulled his glass toward him. He waited for the story of Tupper’s sad wife and single surviving twin, but Tupper just went around the bar and poured himself another pint of Guinness.

“Maybe the Hedgehog should be the Maine Lobster, to make it more personal,” Roy mused. He pushed his half-empty glass across the bar for Tupper to refill it. “Or a moose?”

“The Moose. That really sounds like a sex toy.”

“Can it make noises? Do moose even make noises?”

“I think they huff and sort of bellow.”

“Perfect.” Roy laughed.

Tupper came around the bar again and sat down.

“So, it’s just you and the cat in the house right now?”

Tupper nodded. “That’s sort of the reason I had to rush away. I thought she was close. And that’s why I’m using the Macaw. I know it sounds creepy. It’s just so I know when she decides to come back.”

Roy was confused. “So no one’s dead or anything awful?”

Tupper laughed and drank more beer. “No, everyone’s fine.”

“But your daughters’ room. All those sad pictures. The empty bed.”

Tupper laughed again. He appeared to be drunk. “That’s Elizabeth’s work. She’s an artist. We don’t have any kids.”

“I see.” A great weight floated off Roy’s shoulders, but he was no less confused. “So whose bedroom is it then?”

Tupper huffed, mooselike, into his Guinness. “You really need to come down to the warehouse sometime.”

Chapter 4

Ted’s face lit up when he spotted Stuart.

“Dad!” He burst out of the huddle of children and ran into Stuart’s arms. The other students shuffled over to their minders disinterestedly, or waited for their Hobby Horse teachers to lead them away.