“Never mind,” I said, trying to stave off the pending condescension. “I hope you and Officer Thomas catch the bad guy and throw the book at him. Or her.” Then, to change the subject as quickly as possible, I said, “Are you going to sell your house downstate right away, or—”

“Mrr!” Eddie bumped my shin. “Mrr!”

To keep him quiet, I bent down to pick him up. He immediately squirmed out of my arms and raced to the front of the bookmobile, jumped onto the console, and bounced from there to the dashboard.

The three of us silently watched, and when Eddie flopped down, smashing the length of his back and tail along the windshield, where it was extremely difficult for me to clean away the loose hairs that would inevitably result, I turned my focus back to Pug and Hunter.

“Sorry about him,” I said.

Pug was still watching Eddie with a bemused looked on his face, but Hunter was focused on something farther away. “Is that Ryan Anderson?”

I looked out at the pickup truck in the parking lot and the figure climbing out, his brown hair mostly covered by a baseball cap. “Looks like it. He’s often at this stop.”

Ryan was a twentysomething young man who had wandered north a few years ago and hadn’t left. He made a living by cobbling together part-time jobs of all sorts. Waitstaff, ski lift operator, custodial and security work, construction, retail; he was a hard worker and took any job that came his way. He’d become a regular bookmobile patron and we’d bonded after he’d checked out books by Dick Francis, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Bernard Cornwell.

Over the nearly three years of the bookmobile’s life, I’d started to treat Ryan like the younger brother I’d never had. Our friendship had recently deepened when, over a pile of books we’d managed to mutually drop, we’d confessed to each other stupid things we’d done. His most recent was losing his wallet when he’d gone downstate last month and not noticing until the day before; mine was when I’d called my mom and, while on the phone, told her I couldn’t set a date for wedding dress shopping because I couldn’t find my phone.

“Do you know him?” I asked.

Hunter shrugged. “We play darts sometimes. At the brewpub. I didn’t know he was into reading.”

I folded my arms and looked fake sternly at the younger men as Ryan came inside. “So apparently you two know each other but don’t know each other. Why is it that men don’t talk?”

“All the important topics are covered,” Ryan said, smiling.

I counted. “Sports, beer, and . . .” I looked at my two extended fingers. “And that’s it, right?”

“Fishing,” Pug said.

My finger arrangement didn’t change. “Goes in the sports category.”