“The diehard what?” He held his hand to his ear.

“Cruciverbalist. A person who is skilled at constructing or solving crossword puzzles.”

“Damn. You’re a nerd, Reese.”

“No. I just do slightly unusual things to keep the memories of my parents alive.”

“Parents? Your mom is still alive. You know this, right?”

“Yes. But I felt like I lost her five years ago.”

“Did you do something that made you think of her like your dad and the crosswords?”

On a nervous laugh, I glanced up from my pad of paper and watched the traffic for a few seconds. “I … do. Uh …” More nervous laughter filled the air.

“What?”

“Just … I collect stuff that she used to collect. Now that she’s out of pris—” It occurred to me that Fisher might not know her past. Maybe he didn’t do background checks on his tenants. I wasn’t sure if Rory freely offered that information to people.

“I know she was in prison.”

On a breath of relief, I nodded several times. “Okay. I mean, I figured she probably mentioned it. Background check. References. Surely she had to be accountable for the previous five years.”

“I didn’t ask. No background checks. She told me.”

“Oh, okay.”

After a few seconds, where I hoped he would forget what we were discussing, he cut his eyes to me for a few seconds. “So … what did she and then you collect?”

As a young girl, my mom’s hobby was cool. And I benefited from it. As an eighteen-year-old young woman with a slight crush on a guy ten years older than me, my mom’s hobby that I took over no longer felt cool. In fact, embarrassed was the only word to describe it.

“She collected…” I needed to remind him that it wasn’t really my hobby “…toys from Happy Meals.”

“McDonald’s Happy Meals?”

“Yeah. She felt certain that, eventually, they’d be worth a lot of money. So she bought Happy Meals. Lots of Happy Meals. Sometimes the same toy would be offered for a week or two, maybe even longer if it was really popular. When that happened, I scored a trip to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal. She’d get two so I didn’t feel cheated out of the toy. But when there were multiple interrelated items available at the same time, like collector cards or something like that, she’d buy so many Happy Meals just to get all of them. And since she was likely to get a lot of repeats before getting one of each … whatever it was … she’d buy more than we would ever consume, even taking a minivan full of my friends. So she’d take Happy Meals, minus the toys, and give them to homeless people. Well, I take that back. When the toys were repeats, she’d give them the toy too.”