Chapter 18

It was a perfect Halloween night. Crisply cold, the sky full of stars and clear and hard as glass. The breeze was low, twisting through the hemlocks with the sound of a great scroll being unfurled, carrying the salt of the sea. Indira brewed an enormous pot’s worth of hot cider, and Hemlock House was warm and bright and full of the scent of cinnamon and the sweet tang of apples.

And the trick-or-treaters didn’t stop coming.

As the most recent pack of them retreated (this group consisted of a witch, a zombie, two princesses, and a genuine masterpiece of a costume: a dinosaur wearing a fedora), I said, “I thought Hastings Rock was a small town.”

After closing the door behind them, we retreated to the reception room. We never used it, but it was conveniently located next to the front door, and there was enough seating for all of us. Plus Millie had hung about a million square yards of “spider webs” all over the main floor, so getting anywhere else in the house was an endeavor.

Keme, dressed in his “skeleton in a suit” costume again, gave me a disparaging look as he opened a fresh bag of candy and emptied it into the pumpkin-shaped bowl we were using. I went for one of the fun-sized Butterfingers, but he beat me to it. And to the next one. And the third.

“Hey!”

He was grinning as he passed me the bowl. (No Butterfingers left, I’ll have you know.)

“It is a small town,” Millie said in answer to my earlier statement. Her ’80s workout costume had made a second appearance, and the only good part of the night had been watching its effect on Keme. The boy had walked into two doors (yes, two separate, distinct, totally different doors); spilled his soda when he’d tried to take a drink without, you know, actually putting the can to his mouth; and flipped right over a hassock. (Fox had to tell me it was a hassock and not a footstool.) “And Vivienne always gave out the best candy on Halloween. Plus the house is spooky, but it’s GOOD spooky. Every kid in the area comes here on Halloween.”

Which, thank God, they’d warned me about in advance. We’d spent the day recovering from everything with Jen. Deputy Bobby was, technically, still staying at Hemlock House, but that seemed to be more in theory than in practice. I hadn’t seen him since the deputies had separated us the night before. My occasional texts making sure he was okay had been answered with the kind of short, declarative sentences that made me want to bum rush every man within reach off the nearest cliff. He was avoiding me. And he was avoiding me because he was angry, of course. Angry I’d interfered. Angry, perhaps, I’d ruined his life.

But, a little optimistic voice inside me said, he hasn’t left yet.

Be quiet, I told that little voice, or I’ll squash you like Pinocchio squashed Jiminy Cricket.

“What I don’t understand,” Fox said, “is why you didn’t pick a better costume this time. You had a second chance. And for the second time, Dashiell, you chose to be a cat that was beaten to death with a keyboard.”

“Not my costume,” I said. “Also, what is your costume?”

Fox gave me a scandalized look and then, with one arm, made a sweeping gesture to encompass their costume: a dirndl, welding gloves that went to the elbow, and tissue-paper butterfly wings that made it impossible for them to do anything but perch on the edge of the hassock. “I,” Fox announced, “am a human being.”

Keme and I rolled our eyes at the same time.

“I think your costume is very nice, Dash,” Indira said. She’d gone for her tweed-and-deerstalker look, and she glanced over at me now as she filled paper cups with hot cider. “Kitty cats are very cute.”

I hadn’t been going for cute, not exactly. I mean, I wasn’t West. I didn’t have zero body fat and perfectly sculpted muscles. I certainly didn’t have abs. But in a black tee and black jeans and black Chucks, with little black cat ears perched on my head, and for once in my life, my hair was actually doing a thing I could be proud of—well, I thought I looked good. The little keyboard letters CTRL + C glued to the front of my shirt were kind of like a safeguard. If I couldn’t be hot, at least I could be clever, right?

But I didn’t want to go into all that, so I settled for “Thank you, Indira.”

Keme made a gagging noise, which immediately made Millie start giggling as she tried to shush him.

The doorbell rang, and Keme immediately recovered. But I was faster. I grabbed the pumpkin bowl and sprinted for the door, and he let out a wordless shout of outrage as he chased after me. He caught up with me as I started to open the door, and it turned into a wrestling match that resulted in a lot of laugh-shouts of protest (me), weirdly unnecessary teenage boy aggression (Keme), and a lot of mini Charleston Chews spilling onto the floor. Finally, Keme wrenched the bowl away from me, shouldered open the door, and held out the candy, breathing hard.

Deputy Bobby was standing there with a group of children. The kids were staring with huge eyes. Deputy Bobby looked like he was about to haul me and Keme in for disturbing the peace. He gave us a withering look, took the bowl from Keme, and said to the kids as he turned to them, “This is why some people, even adults, shouldn’t eat too much candy. Here, everybody take two. Oh, George, that is such an awesome chipmunk costume. Are you Alvin? And Emma, are you Wonder Woman? Don’t get me with your lasso!”

Emma, the Wonder Woman in question, did some excited flailing with the lasso in question. If I hadn’t been wearing my glasses, I probably would have lost an eye.

A few moments later, Deputy Bobby sent the kids back down the hill to their waiting parents. As little footsteps faded into the night, he straightened and turned back to me.

He was dressed in a blue uniform, with shiny black shoes that had to be incredibly uncomfortable and a peaked cap. It looked like a lot of polyester. It looked itchy. It looked like it had been packed in plastic and hanging on the pegboard at the Keel Haul General Store. The patch on the sleeve said HAPPY TOWN POLICE DEPARTMENT, and somehow, he’d gotten a little brass plaque for his shirt that said OFFICER BOBBY.

He was looking at me with a funny expression on his face, and I realized I was staring.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

I nodded and made myself say, “Hi, Officer Bobby.”

(Yep. I totally nailed it.)

His mouth tilted into a smile, and he stretched up to flick the cat ears I was wearing. “Hello, Copy Cat.”

I forgot about everything else. Literally everything else. Except, maybe, slightly, about how it felt when his hand brushed my hair. “Oh my God, you got it!”

“Well, it’s not exactly hard—”

“Fox! I told you it was a good costume! Come on, you have to tell Fox.”

It was strange how easy the night was after that. Hemlock House was warm and bright and safe. There was plenty of hot cider to drink, not to mention all that candy. Kids came, kids went. Keme ragged on Bobby for going as a police officer, and Bobby, laughing, tried to defend himself by explaining that a deputy and a police officer were two different things (which made all of us groan). And at some point during the night, in the midst of all that laughing and talking and Keme trying to convince me to arm-wrestle him, I realized I was happy, and Hemlock House had become home.

The trickle of kids slowed, and then it stopped all together. I left some candy on the terrace and locked the front door, and we moved into the billiard room. Somehow, Bobby and I ended up on a settee that was technically big enough for two people, although that was probably only true if one of those people was a fainting Victorian waif and the other was a fainting Victorian maiden. Bobby, so that we’d both be comfortable, stretched one arm out along the back of the settee. Which meant, technically, his arm was behind me. Almost around me.

“HOW?”

Here’s a quick tip, totally free: cold showers? They’ve got nothing on Millie.

“HOW,” Millie asked again, “HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN HOCUS POCUS ?”

“I don’t know,” Keme said. “It’s a kids’ movie.”

“Oh my God, no. I mean, it’s about kids, yeah, but there’s also this talking cat, and there’s a zombie, oh, and there are WITCHES! It’s the BEST!”

“What about Scream —”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Indira said. “You’ll have nightmares for a week.”

The look on Keme’s face was priceless.

“Nightmares,” I said under my breath.

“Be nice,” Bobby murmured in my ear.

“ Hocus Pocus is great,” Fox said. “Put it on.”

That seemed to settle the matter for Keme (although, God knows, if I’d tried the same thing, he probably would have put on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre just to spite me). Millie, Fox, and Indira took the chesterfield, and Keme stretched out on the floor, and we started the movie.

Fox didn’t last long; they kept making a suspicious noise, their head drooping, and then jolting upright. Indira finally offered to drive them home, which Fox accepted. Then Millie stretched out on the couch, and I entertained myself by watching Keme try to sneak glances at her until Bobby poked me in the ribs and gave me a look. Millie went next; after a period of silence that was far too long for her to have been conscious, she sat up groggily, explained she had to be at Chipper early the next morning, and headed out (shaking her head at Bobby’s offer to make sure she got home safely).

Keme, meanwhile, had gotten glued to the screen.

“Why are they all so dumb?” he asked.

“We don’t have to finish it,” I told him.

“No, don’t turn it off. Millie said they sing a song.”

My eyebrows must have done some talking for me because Bobby whispered, “Let it go.”

So, we watched the rest of the movie—if you can call it watching when you’re hyperaware of the arm behind you and in a state of constantly escalating tension because he’s here and he’s right next to you, and oh my God every time he breathes you can feel his chest move against your shoulder.

When the movie ended, the credits rolled, and Keme’s soft breathing blended with the music. Bobby and I sat there, in the quiet, in the dark. And maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I felt something building, an electric charge that kept bouncing from him to me to him to me, until it felt like I had a ball of lightning spinning in my stomach.

Bobby sat up and whispered, “I need my arm back.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He squeezed my thigh in answer as he stood. When he crouched next to Keme, he whispered something, and Keme groaned in protest. Bobby whispered something else, and he helped Keme sit up, then stand, and a moment later, he was easing Keme down on the chesterfield.

By then, I’d recovered from my heart attack enough that I could get to my feet. (I could still feel where he’d touched my leg.) I found a blanket and unfolded it, and in the weak light from the television, Bobby helped me spread it over Keme, who was already asleep again. When we’d finished, Bobby was standing next to me, his shoulder brushing mine.

“You don’t mind if he sleeps here?” Bobby whispered.

I shook my head. Then, realizing he might not be able to make out the movement in the dark, I whispered back, “No.”

It felt like a long time before Bobby said, “I guess we should call it a night.”

We made our way out of the billiard room, and I closed the pocket doors gently. We fought our way through Millie’s spider webs (literally) and followed the stairs up to the second floor. We stopped. Bobby’s room was to the right. My room was to the left. Neither of us turned.

“So,” Bobby said, and he wore a strange half-smile, “I saw Damian today.”

“What? Oh. Okay. Wait, why?”

But Bobby ignored the question. “He asked me for your number. I didn’t know if you wanted me to give it to him.”

I made some sort of noise that might, somewhere, have meant something to someone.

“I guess he’s going to stick around for a while,” Bobby said. “He likes cold-water surfing. He’s got a free place to stay until someone figures out the legal mess of the camp.” And then that half-smile was back again. “He’s definitely interested in you. He’s also the jealous type; he stared daggers at me until he decided I wasn’t a threat.”

The best I could come up with was that noise again.

“So, do you want me to give him your number?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” I managed to suppress a wince as I heard myself, but only barely. “The arrest record does worry me a little. Plus, I’m kind of in a weird place still. After Hugo, I mean. And…” I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. “…stuff.” Seconds ticked past on the grandfather clock, and I managed to add, “Also, I have seriously bad judgment when it comes to men. Like, for a while, I even thought Damian might be the killer. He’s good with cars. He cares about the surf camp. He’s got some gray in his beard, but I think he wants to be a kid still, and he acted really strangely when he saw Gerry hitting on me.”

“Because he’s into you.”

“Maybe. He seems like he wants to mess around, though, not like he wants something serious.”

“Messing around can be fun, though.” His face was like a mask. A mask of someone happy, someone trying to be happy. “I think you should go for it.”

The hurt was so intense that all I could do was mumble, “Yeah, okay.” Somehow, I even added, “I guess I’ll think about it.”

“Okay,” Bobby said, but his tone was off. “Oh, I wanted you to know I can figure something out. A place to live, I mean. I don’t want to overstay.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’ll start looking tomorrow.”

I nodded. I couldn’t look at him because my eyes stung, and I was sure if I looked at him, I’d burst into tears.

“Okay,” Bobby said again. Tick-tick-tock. And then, in that stranger’s voice, “Goodnight.”

His steps whispered away on the carpet.

I wiped my eyes, and the words burst out of me: “Are you mad at me?”

Over his shoulder, he asked, “What?”

“Are you mad? Are you angry at me? Because I—like, do you hate me now, or something?”

“What?” he asked again, but this time it was his real voice, Bobby’s voice. He turned and came back. His breathing changed, which meant he must have seen the tear tracks, and he said, “What are you talking about? God, no. Why would I be mad at you?”

“Because—because it was none of my business, and I shouldn’t have said anything, and I ruined your life.”

Silence swallowed us.

And then Bobby laughed. It was an unsteady sound, unraveling at the edges, but it sounded genuine enough. “You didn’t ruin my life. And I’m not angry with you. I wasn’t thrilled with your grand plan to make yourself bait for a killer, but I’m not angry.” He waited. And then he asked, “What’s going on?”

“You’ve been avoiding me. And I get it: I should have kept my mouth shut, and it wasn’t my place to say anything, and if I hadn’t said anything, you and West would have worked everything out. And then, that night with Jen, you were there, and I thought—” What I’d thought was too embarrassing to say out loud, so I said, “And I know you’re trying to be nice by not making a big deal out of it, but you quit your job, and you’re moving, and I feel like I ruined everything.”

That laugh came again, and this time, even through my distress, I recognized the quality in it: strain, as though some other emotion were buckled under it. “I guess you figured it all out.”

I tried not to, but I could feel him waiting, and after a few seconds I had to look at him. In the hall’s weak light, the burnished bronze of his eyes looked like candle flames.

“You,” he said carefully, “have nothing to feel bad about. Do you understand?”

I didn’t say anything.

“West and I.” He stopped, and in the darkness, I could hear him swallow. “I should have done that a long time ago; it wasn’t fair to anyone, letting it keep going like that. But I didn’t know how. Or I wasn’t brave enough. Or something. You helped me, Dash. I’ll always be grateful for that. I’ll always be grateful for you. You—” He stopped, and the moment hung for what felt like an eternity. Then a smile sliced across his face. “It feels like I don’t know how to do anything anymore. How to—” He seemed to be searching my face for something. “How to say anything. How to tell you what I want to tell you.”

And then another of those eternal moments came. His breath had a tremulous quality. And I remembered what he’d said, how hard this was for him, to try to say the things that mattered most, and the spinning, slicing fear that came with it. He’d told me, not so long ago, that he didn’t feel that way with me. I wondered what had changed.

He still hadn’t said anything, and I realized maybe he couldn’t. Maybe this was one of those times I could do something for him.

So, I said, “Welcome to my life.”

That jarred a laugh out of him, and I laughed too—weak laughs, meant more for each other, I thought, than anything else.

But when the laughter had faded, a hint of that big, goofy grin lingered on Bobby’s face. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“We had a deal, right? You were going to send off that story. I was going to write down my feelings and talk to West.” He sounded like he was trying for lighthearted when he added, “I hope yours went better than mine did.”

“Uh, yeah, actually. My dad emailed me back this morning. Honestly, I haven’t really had time to think about it.”

“God, Dash, that’s great. I’m so proud of you.”

Which shouldn’t have made me feel the way it did, but I couldn’t stop the idiot smile that spread across my face. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Don’t make me shake you.”

A little laugh escaped me. “He said—well, he said it was great.”

“Of course it was,” Bobby said. He hesitated. “I haven’t been avoiding you, by the way.”

“Okay. That’s good.”

“I was getting my stuff out of the apartment before the movers came.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t help asking, “So, West is...”

Bobby nodded.

“He called Indira and told us not to come,” I said. “I thought maybe that meant he was staying.”

“No.”

“Where’s your stuff?”

That made him laugh again. “In storage.”

“Oh,” I said again. Because my brain works good sometimes.

“And I didn’t quit my job. The sheriff and I had a long talk.”

“Wait, really? Bobby, that’s amazing. God, that’s wonderful. You’re such a good deputy.”

“I don’t know about that. But the sheriff made some convincing points.” His eyes crinkled. “Among other things, she suggested you might get yourself killed if I wasn’t around to help.”

“Okay, first of all, how dare you?”

That big, goofy grin bloomed in full, and for an instant, he was the old Bobby again. “So, that’s that. I’ve got my job back. I’m not going anywhere. Everything I own is at the Park if I’d thought about it, I would have honestly, literally, instantly died. I leaned in and kissed his cheek. Just a brush of my lips, really. When I stepped back, my face was hot.

Bobby’s hand rose like he wanted to touch his cheek, but he stopped himself at the last moment. His eyes were wide. And then, slowly, he grinned.

The clock was still tolling. Twelve chimes. Twelve hours. Midnight, I thought. And then, more clearly: It’s a new day.

I caught Bobby’s gaze, held it for a moment, and let a smile of my own slip out. And then I said, “Welcome home.”