Sawyer chuckled, and Law showed up and set a beer in front of Jake. Jake remained silent.
Sawyer turned back to Nora. “We have meth, too. There are some dealers in town. Though it hasn’t been quite as prevalent since a lab was busted in Grand View last year. But I’m not sure how long the reprieve will last.”
“Oh. Right.” She had assumed that since Jake had arrived, the professional confab would come to an end, at least temporarily. “Fentanyl and meth. Got it.”
“I have one more for you, though maybe less dramatic: measles.”
“Yes, I read about the outbreak around here, and I know it’s a growing problem in a number of communities.”
“I had to drive a kid to the hospital in Zurich a couple years ago,” Sawyer went on. “He was having seizures.”
“Encephalitis?”
“Yep. Never want to see that again.”
“So,” she said, “fentanyl, meth, and measles. You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”
“Yeah, sorry.” He winced. “We also have amazing sunsets, a main street covered in moonflowers—and the lake, of course.”
“Don’t forget the mermaids.” A woman appeared behind Sawyer, and she wrapped her arms around him from behind.
“Evie.” His voice went all low as he leaned back against her.
“Happy Friday,” she said, her voice going husky, too.
Wow. These two were into each other. They were practically oozing pheromones.
“Nora, this is my girlfriend, Eve Abbott. She owns the Mermaid Inn—we both live there. Eve, Nora Walsh.”
Eve greeted her warmly, and Nora said, “I hear this town is a little mermaid crazy.”
“You heard right,” Sawyer said. “Wait until you see the Mermaid Parade.” He rolled his eyes. “There’s some kind of collective insanity that takes over—maybe you can diagnose it.”
“Oh, you love the parade,” Eve teased.
Soon they were talking easily, but an idea was starting to brew in Nora’s mind. She was going to honor her pledge to look into the issue of whether the local police force should carry naloxone, but beyond that, she wasn’t kidding herself that one cop and one doctor could do much about meth or the opioid crisis. But measles? At least locally? That might be a different story.
Her attention was drawn by a woman settling herself on the stool on her other side. She was— Nora shot off her stool. The newcomer was covered in blood. What was it about this town and medical emergencies? “What happened? Where’s the wound?” She turned to Law, who’d been drawn by the commotion. “Call 911.”
“It’s fake blood!” The woman held up her hands. “Oh my God, I’m sorry! It’s all fake!”
Nora sat, though her adrenaline was still pumping. But yes, upon further inspection, the blood was not quite the right color.
“Are you the new doctor?” the woman asked. Nora, still buzzing, nodded. “I’m Maya Mehta. I’m the owner and artistic director of the Moonflower Bay Theater Company. I run a theater camp for kids. We did stage combat today—the final swordfight scene from Hamlet. So sorry.” She waved her hand at the others. “These guys are used to me showing up in all kinds of disarray.”
Law reappeared with a wineglass and set it in front of Maya. He uncorked a bottle of white wine and silently poured her a glass. She must be a regular. “Maya.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Benjamin.”
Nora wondered what had happened to “Everyone calls me Law.”
“I need to talk to you about your monstrous pizza oven,” Maya said.
“You have pizza here?” Nora asked. She loved pizza. Rufus had not loved pizza. Therefore, Nora had had very little pizza in the last few years. But Nora was the mistress of her own destiny now, and that destiny, she decided right then and there, was going to include a lot of pizza.
Law slid her a small laminated menu. “I just built a wood-burning pizza oven out back.” He glanced at Aquaman. “Well, Jake built it.”
“And it’s belching smoke everywhere,” Maya said.
“It is not belching smoke everywhere. It’s properly vented and is one hundred percent to code.”
“My costumes are in the back of my building. The kids are doing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe next week, and Aslan’s head smells distinctly like smoke. And Aslan has asthma.” Then, seeming to forget her beef with Law, she leaned forward and slapped the bar. “Jake! Your stepmom found me a great old wardrobe, but I need to rip out the back of it for it to really work on the whole gateway-to-Narnia front. Can you help me?”
Jake answered without looking up from his beer. “Yep.”
It occurred to Nora that that was the first word she’d heard Jake speak since he’d arrived.
The thing about the new doctor was that she asked good questions. After Maya was done talking at him about her wardrobe, Jake listened to the doc talking to Sawyer and Eve about the town’s public health challenges. She’d listened intently and asked intelligent questions.
And the question she’d asked him last weekend was still rattling around in his head.
What was your son’s name?
Also, a question he had been asking himself: What the hell had possessed him to tell her about Jude? He never talked about Jude, and Nora Walsh was a complete stranger.
It was just that she was so competent. She had reacted to the chaos of the birth, and to Colleen’s fear, with the perfect mixture of detachment and compassion. Briskness leavened with dry humor. She seemed like the kind of person to whom you could say, “I had a son who died,” and she wouldn’t overreact. Usually people responded one of two ways. They made him feel like he was drowning in an avalanche of pity. They brought their casseroles and asked their hushed-but-entitled questions, as if they had a right to know what was in his soul. Or, worse, they stood there with their intact families and their not-dead children and told him that God worked in mysterious ways, utterly oblivious to the fact that he was often this close to punching their lights out.
But not Dr. Walsh. She just looked at him like a dead kid was a thing that happened—a sad thing, but a thing—and asked, “What was your son’s name?”
Not “How did he die?” Or “How old was he?” Those were the things people seemed to want to know. The salacious details. The things that would allow them to answer their real question: “How tragic is this, actually?”
“What was your son’s name?” though. That was a real question. Who was this person you had but now don’t have? It was a question about Jude rather than the circumstances of his death.
“Oh, I have a question for you guys.”
He jerked his head up. Was she including him in “you guys”?
“So I’m living in Southbank Pines. In Harold Burgess’s house.”
Sawyer glanced at Jake. “Yeah. How’s that working out?”
“Fine, except the major draw was supposed to be a deck out back. I’ve spent the last several years living on the twentieth floor of a high-rise, and I was really excited about a deck. But it turns out that what I actually have is a vaguely deck-shaped collection of rotten wood that disintegrated when I tried to stand on it. I know it’s just a rental, and it should be Harold’s responsibility, but I’m going to be here for two years, so I’m ready to throw some money at the problem. Jake said you guys have a carpentry business. Any chance I can hire you?”