“I mean you’re the second person who wants to get out of town but has stuff at home they need tended to. So what if you swap?”

He removed her hand from his mouth.

“Swap. Like, swap houses?”

“Yeah! Oh shit, it’d be perfect. You both really need it. How do I end up with all these friends who need my wisdom and guidance so desperately,” she mused to herself, flipping through her phone.

“Do people still swap houses? Isn’t that, like, the beginning of a true crime podcast or something?”

Ramona ignored him.

“So, it’s my friend Greta. We were roommates before I transferred to Tulane. She’s great. Terrible boundaries. Wackadoodle family. But a total gem. She just had a fight with her family and wants to leave town. But she has tons of plants. They’re, like, her babies. And they need to be tended to. You go to her place in Maine and mist her plants or whatever. And she can come to your place and take care of Horse. It’s perfect!”

She sat back, arms spread, clearly quite pleased with herself.

“I can’t,” Truman said automatically.

She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

“Because…because I…I just…”

“Exactly. You can. You have money, you’re not afraid of flying, and you don’t like hanging out with your family for the holidays. But you’re gonna choose not to because it feels scary and hard. But you know what’s also scary and hard, Truman?”

“Lemme guess. Being a miserable, pathetic dope alone at the holidays?”

“Well, I was going to say waking up an old man and realizing that you never took any chances in your life and chose ease over adventure, capitulation over intention, and others over yourself, but yours works too.”

Truman laughed despite himself.

“I’ll just be miserable and alone in Maine if I go,” he warned. “It won’t be some cute holiday fantasy.”

“Speaking of fantasy,” she drawled casually, “isn’t the author of that batshit book you’re so obsessed with from there?”

Truman cleared his throat, preparing to say that he wasn’t obsessed. But it had been his first thought when Ramona mentioned Maine. Agatha Tark was from Maine. It was one of the only biographical facts known about her, aside from her insistence on complete removal from public life and her fondness for cats.

The Dead of Zagørjič was a fantasy series Truman had been a fan of since he was a child.

Okay, he’d been obsessed with it.

Fine, he still was.

The Dead of Zagørjič had been the comfort world he’d escaped into any time something bad had happened to him.

Maybe this was meant to be? Maybe he should pack some sweaters and his beloved paperbacks and his journals and his computer, get the hell out of New Orleans, and hole up in Maine like Tark had done.