As Ray and I sat in the booth together, talking intently across a wreckage of plates and napkins, I wondered what we would look like to strangers. Coworkers? A couple? Despite the measured course of our conversation, I knew that Ray’s eyes were on me a lot, and that I blushed at odd intervals, sensing his attention. This awareness built alongside my interest in the discussion, like a chord following a melody. I blinked it away, returning my mind to the task between us. We were coworkers, that was all. We had discovered much in one day, and yet Brenae’s death seemed muddier than ever.

We agreed it was best for us to part ways at the restaurant and for me to walk alone to my car, lest we be seen together if any of the students or Hal returned to the Westing. Tomorrow I would continue observing at the gallery, and Ray said he would transcribe the interviews for Janis, and ask her about how he should proceed.

“I need to talk to her, too,” I said. “If I want to write about this, I should tell her.”

“Do you?” said Ray.

“I’m giving myself the week to decide,” I said. When the words came to my mouth, I intended them to be about the story, but with Ray looking at me so hard, they gathered a different weight, and I faltered before finishing the sentence.

We bused our plates, then I accompanied Ray to the door, chatting about something meaningless to cover up my embarrassment at the sudden intensity of the moment before.

“You sure you don’t mind walking three quarters of a mile?” Ray asked me, and then grinned, his face brightening. “I guess I’m asking the wrong person. Though I wish I could plant a few maple trees to shade you.”

“Maybe I should aspire to jacaranda these days,” I said.

“Should you?”

It was a stupid conversation, but we both were smiling. Both uneager to leave. From behind the counter, the prep cook nodded good-bye to us, then flipped a tortilla into a warming iron and pressed down.

“Sorry for the long phone call,” Ray said. “My nephew. My brother’s son. You know.”

I didn’t know much except that the boy lived in North Carolina and that Ray clearly cared for him, but I nodded.

“He needed help analyzing a recess game,” said Ray.

“Must have been a complicated game,” I said. I’d listened to more than ten minutes of interviews.

“Lots of rules. Lots of changes to the rules,” he said. “And some little twerp who always cheats anyway.”

We faced each other beside the door.

I laughed. “I guess nothing has changed.”

“No,” he said, holding my eyes for a beat too long before turning away. “It hasn’t.”

13