Sunny’s robe was white terrycloth, as ascetic as the one I was borrowing. She stood in the doorway, her bare pink feet over the sill, the light outlining her head with the wet hair combed down sleek as otter pelt. Her eyelashes were dark with moisture, and her eyes looked larger than usual. She was so close I could feel the damp heat from her skin, and see the beads of water gathered on her breastbone between the lapels of the robe. She was a little shorter than me. I was surprised; maybe I’d been thinking of myself as a version of me at sixteen, when all cops were taller than me. Maybe she was taller when she wasn’t wearing a robe, when she wasn’t warm and damp and smelling of shampoo.

I should have said something casual, but I couldn’t talk at all. I forced my feet to carry me toward the living room and an armchair as far from the hall as I could get.

If I’d expected anything, I’d have thought she would go into her bedroom for clean clothes. Instead, she came into the living room, too. She didn’t seem to be able to hear my heart beating, which was a relief. “Think you can settle for the couch?” she asked.

I swallowed, which didn’t help, so I just nodded.

“Are you hungry at all?”

I shook my head.

“Well, that’s good, because dessert was in the back of the car.” When I didn’t respond to that, she asked, “Did you lose your voice?”

Surprise made me cough. “No. No, I’m fine.” I was too restless to stay where I was; I stood up and went to the front window, and parted the curtain enough to see the street. It was still there. The bike and sidecar waited by the curb, and everything gleamed with the polish of rain.

“Are you tired?” Sunny asked.

I ought to have been. I probably was, if only I could figure out how to tell. “No,” I said, looking out at the street.

“Me, neither,” she said, and sighed. “I keep wondering if I should have heard something from The Lilacs.”

I couldn’t think of an answer to that.

After a moment Sunny said, “I could leave you alone, if you wanted. Maybe I was wrong—maybe you would have preferred to be by yourself.”

“No, you were right.” I looked over my shoulder at her and found her closer behind me than I’d expected. She looked disarmed, and it had less to do with the robe and the wet hair than it did with the absence of something in the set of her mouth and the way her eyes tracked, an armored attitude that she’d had as recently as when she went to take her shower.