“How’s Audrey been?” I asked.
“Didn’t wake up once. Any word on Sam?”
I sank in the overstuffed chair facing her, hugging a throw pillow to my chest. “He texted that he’s sorry.”
“And . . . ?”
“That’s it. He’s sorry. Oh, and his car’s gone now.” I shifted in my seat and released my grip on the pillow. I suddenly had no more energy to hold it, and it slipped to the floor. “When I talked to Ozzy, he said he hoped we could work it out.”
Zoe’s face was a canvas, her emotions vivid brushstrokes impossible to misread. Currently, the color of choice was red. “What the hell did he mean by that?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You guys are solid.”
But was that true? I thought hard on this. When Audrey was a baby and needed a liver transplant, I hadn’t handled it well. I had let myself slide back into patterns abandoned years before—I drank a little more than was healthy, I worked longer hours at the clinic, so I could feel like I was actually of use to someone—because, as a mom and medical professional, I had failed my daughter. It had taken jaundice setting in for me to recognize the symptoms, and by then she was sick. Really sick. And I was angry. Really angry.
Sam, though—he took in my anger, and he took in our daughter’s pain, and he carried our family through the crisis. I could always count on him, even when he couldn’t count on me. But lately, I had been working longer hours again, and this time, Sam had pulled away. Just a little. Just enough for me to notice.
Part of me had been waiting for him to say: I love you, but I can’t do this anymore.
I filled Zoe in on Sam’s behavior that day and told her more about the assault I had witnessed the night before.
When I finished, she said, “You’ve always had a savior complex.”
Her comment surprised me, but then I remembered: she hadn’t known me before. She hadn’t known the Cassie who had watched while college psychopath Dirk abused his almost-girlfriend. I’d thought about that attack twice in as many days. Why?
I answered my own question, “There are a lot of things in my life I could’ve done differently.”
“Like what?”
That night in college, I’d been the one to call 911 when that girl had gone over the balcony. But I had watched from above when the police came. Everyone had watched, at least those who hadn’t fled the party, focused more on hiding their inebriation than the fate of the girl on the ground.
We were in shock, I had justified. Now I recognized that immobilizing emotion as guilt. If that girl had died in those minutes before the police came, she would’ve died alone.
I ignored Zoe’s question. “I’m just grateful I was on the trail that night.” I changed the subject. “I think Sam was in the house. When I went inside to grab our things, the glass I’d used to trap a Jerusalem cricket had been knocked over. So unless it had injected steroids . . .”
“I can’t believe you take the temperatures of bull mastiffs but are afraid of a bug barely bigger than your thumb.”
“Yeah, I know, and spiders are good luck. There’s something else.”
I took the chocolate wrapper from my pocket and showed it to Zoe.
“What’s this?”
“I found it on my nightstand this morning. It was folded in the shape of a dog.”
“Like origami?”
“Yeah. At first I thought it might be from Sam, but now . . .”
I let her sit with that a few seconds, waiting to see if she would come to the same conclusion I had. I recognized the moment she did. As I had done, she sniffed the wrapper.
“It smells like chocolate.” Her eyes and mouth widened, her voice breathless as she asked, “Lester?”
“I thought so, but I have no idea what the number two would mean.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
“Nothing. So it’s a two.”
“After I witnessed that attack, the detective asked if the number three meant anything to me.”
“Does it?”
“Other than being the number between two and four, I haven’t a clue. But it feels like a threat, especially after what happened with Lester.”
She paused, her face scrunching. “I thought you found it before Lester was poisoned?”
“I did.”
“Hmm.”
“I should call Detective Rico . . . What?”
“I know you’re upset.”
“Of course I’m upset. My husband might’ve just ended our marriage with a two-word text.”
“Remember when Bobby and I broke up, and I wanted to go see him?”
“You wanted to put sardines in his gas tank.”
“He cheated on me with my cousin. It wouldn’t have worked anyway. I would’ve had to pry open his gas tank, so he would’ve noticed that before the sardines could do any real damage.”
“Because that was the flaw in your plan.”
“Anyway, you stopped me. You knew I was upset, that I wasn’t thinking clearly, and you told me not to put sardines in Bobby’s tank.”
“You really think me calling Rico about Sam and that wrapper is the equivalent of vandalizing your ex’s car?”
“Not at all. It’s just . . . I’m sorry, Cassie, but you aren’t thinking straight. And you shouldn’t be, not with what you’ve been through recently, but as your friend, it’s my job to be the logical one here.”
“The logical one, huh? Weren’t we just talking about your plan to slip fish into your ex’s gas tank?”
Her expressive face split into a grin, but there was sadness at its edges. “Okay, so I’m not usually the logical one, but let me give it a shot here. First, the wrapper. When you showed it to me, I didn’t see a number.”
“What then?”
She turned it over and traced a section of raised foil, where the pencil mark on the other side had left it embossed with its mirror image. “The letter S. I guess it could be a two, or at least I can see where you’d think that. Power of suggestion. You were thinking of that detective’s question, so you saw a two, whereas I was thinking leaving an origami dog seemed like something Sam would do. So I saw an S.”
“But you agree it smells like chocolate.”
“I’ve been to your house. It’s a brand you use.”
“You think it’s a coincidence?”
“How would someone get into your house? Into your bedroom?”
“Carver took my van, which had my keys. We didn’t get the locks changed until late yesterday morning.” I thought of the bug freed from its jar. “If it’s related to that night and he’s done something with Sam—he’d have the new house key too.”
“It just seems a little—much. Isn’t it more likely that Sam left it for you as some romantic gesture that only seems sinister now that he’s gone?”
I took the wrapper back but said nothing.
“And isn’t it more likely that, given that text you received, Sam left because . . .”
“Because?” But I knew where the sentence had been headed.
Zoe flushed and reached out to rest her hand on my knee. “Because he wanted to.”