“I guess he got a little better with age,” she noted. “But he still looks annoying.” Then, as I’d directed, she left. She didn’t say goodbye or wonder how I was going to get home and I watched her stride quickly out into the cold.

  Good. Except now, here I was with a roomful of sick and unhappy people, and…

  “Sophie.”

  “Oh. Hi, Danny.” I looked at him, now standing in front of me, and realized that he was a lot bigger than I remembered. He was obviously taller because before, my nose had come up to his collarbone. Now it was more at a nipple-level. He was larger all over, stronger-looking and tough. In high school, I probably could have taken him out in a fight but now…I wasn’t up to fighting anyone, not at the moment.

  “It’s Daniel,” he reminded me. “Is Brenna driving you home?”

  “Uh, no,” I answered, because my sister was long gone. “Did you talk to her?”

  “She stopped in front of me and said, ‘Oh, you’re that skinny guy who used to bother my sisters.”

  “You didn’t bother anyone,” I answered. “Brenna is…”

  “I remember her very well. Do you need a ride or did Nicola deal with it?”

  He would have also remembered how Nicola had dealt with everything in our lives. But I responded that I had paid Brenna to leave and now I was going to get a car, and he said that he was driving back to the same place, anyway. “We’re neighbors,” he stated. “You can come with me.” He also said that I should wait while he pulled up. He did, then got out and opened the passenger door of his truck and helped me into the seat. Things like that were exactly why Brenna hated him, all that niceness.

  For the first few moments of the ride, I readjusted to the light and the movement of the vehicle. When I was better, we talked, and he asked me about the treatment and follow-up for my various injuries. But I was more interested in his presence. What was he doing back in Detroit and why had he stayed in that hospital for hours, waiting for me?

  “I found you, my neighbor and former friend, naked and injured in the snow,” he stated in response to the last question. “Staying there was the decent thing to do.”

  “Why were you there in the first place?”

  “You screamed very loudly—”

  “Why are you in Detroit?” I interrupted. “I heard that you were working in Maryland.”

  “You were keeping track of me?”

  I shrugged. “Not really. I ran into someone a while ago who mentioned it. If I’d wanted to know exactly what you were doing, I could have found out very easily.”

  “Oh.”

  There was silence and I thought how rude that had sounded. I sometimes got crap from my sisters, the ones who paid attention to those kinds of things, about how I spoke without thinking. “I did wonder about you,” I told him. “You left after graduation and that was it.”

  “That was it,” he echoed. “I went to basic training and we fell out of contact.”

  I let my eyes close because the sun was bright when it reflected off all that stupid snow. Danny leaving for boot camp wasn’t the entire reason behind why we had lost touch but I was tired. I was also feeling really dumb now that I was remembering how I’d lain naked on my lawn in front of him. He had thought that I was a strung-out burglar, and who could have blamed him?

  “You ok?”

  I opened my eyes briefly to see him and then shut them because it was so stupidly sunny. “Thanks for helping me out, Danny.”

  “I go by Daniel,” he corrected.

  “Daniel,” I repeated. “Sorry. It’s funny that we’re neighbors, now.”

  “The world’s a funny place,” he agreed. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  He didn’t really sound like he regretted that, but I kept my eyes closed and didn’t think about it. Of course, insufficient use of my brain was how I’d ended up naked in the snow in the first place, but maybe I’d worry about that later.

  Chapter 2

  It was so totally inane that I wasn’t even sure of what to say. Also, I shouldn’t have been in the position to say anything at all—in my mind, this issue had been resolved and I was supremely exasperated that I was still dealing with it.

  “Mrs. Horner,” I typed, and then paused for about the tenth time. Because here was what I wanted to tell her: “Mrs. Horner, please wise up. I’ve already demonstrated that your husband is a terrible person who cheated on you repeatedly. Like, at this moment, I believe that he’s in Ohio with another woman. Who does that? Who takes a girlfriend on a romantic vacation to Cleveland? I’ve provided all the proof that a reasonable person would need and if you can’t accept what’s staring you in the face, then I would suggest therapy rather than continuing to use my services. My advice is to spend your money on that and on a good divorce attorney.”

  Maybe I didn’t always think before I spoke, but even I knew that I couldn’t write that to her. It was just so annoying—this woman was nutty, seriously delusional. I’d sent her my report on the night that I’d fallen in my front yard (or as I liked to refer to it now, the Naked Night). And by the way, there wouldn’t be a repeat of that because I had already sworn up and down to Nicola that I would not leave my house without proper attire, and I meant it—but in any case, I’d sent the report to Mrs. Horner and it had empirically demonstrated that that her husband was a jerk. Good luck, I’d signed off, and goodbye.

  It had taken her a while to get back to me (two weeks) and I hadn’t expected to hear from her again. Sometimes people had questions after they read my evidence, but more often than not, my final communication with them was the depressing chronicle of what their partner/wife/boyfriend/et cetera had done to them. Good luck, and goodbye.

  That was a point that my sister always argued about. She’d say things like, “Not everybody is guilty, Soph. Aren’t some of the people who hire you just a little too cynical?” That was Addie; she wanted to believe the best of everyone. But I’d found that when my clients suspected something, they were usually right. Maybe the problem wasn’t always exactly what they had been worried about—for example, I’d investigated a guy’s girlfriend and discovered that no, she wasn’t cheating, but she did have a giant gambling problem. Another woman’s partner hadn’t been stealing from their business, but she had been running a porn ring on the side (really gross, upsetting porn that had led to criminal charges).

  In my job, I’d learned that where there was smoke, there was fire—and that thought led me into the kitchen to retrieve the wings I was reheating from last night’s delivery so that they didn’t burn. I removed the chicken from the oven and looked for some kind of plate, but then shrugged and decided that the foil I’d used (the last of that roll) was a good enough dish for me. Less to clean up, which was lucky since the sink was already full and my dishwasher had stopped working a while ago. I wasn’t sure how long it had been out of service since I didn’t use it very often, but breakdowns seemed to be a growing problem with things in my house. The toilet in the only bathroom wasn’t doing a great job, and when I’d retrieved the leftover wings from the refrigerator, I hadn’t needed to heat them as much as I probably should have. It felt much too warm in there.

  Anyway, it had been two weeks since Naked Night and I’d just gotten a response from Mrs. Horner regarding the information I’d sent to her, my buttoned-up report that left no (or very little) room for her to doubt the conclusions. But despite my efforts, she had a lot of doubts. She wasn’t sure, she’d sent back to me. Could I please continue my investigation? She’d read all the terrible things I’d written but the man I’d described just didn’t seem like the one she knew, the husband with whom she shared her life. She was shocked.

  Of course she was! This didn’t seem like the man she knew because she didn’t really know him at all. He’d been lying to her since the day they met. He’d been putting on a show and I was sorry that she was such a gullible audience, but there it was. As much as I wanted to type exactly that back to her, I sat down with my aluminum foil plate and composed a message that was much more polite.

  Yes, I could continue to research her husband’s activities, I said, but I did not expect to find exculpatory evidence and I would not undertake the research with clearing him as my goal. If she understood that and also that my fee would be the same, no repeat-customer discounts, then I would begin round two. Since I was aware that she had a busy life, a few kids and a full-time job, I didn’t expect her to get back to me right away but I remained at my desk and stared at her email, thinking about what else I could do to establish the extent of her husband’s suckage. How I could verify once and for all that he was not, not in any way, the man she thought she knew?

  And speaking of…I got up and walked again to the window that faced the street. Since Naked Night, I’d frequently made that brief trip, enough that I could have worn a little path on the wood floor. I had been watching from behind the cold, glass panes, my (clothed) body tucked a little to the side so that I wasn’t on display to the cars and pedestrians who went by. Over the past two weeks, I’d learned a lot about my neighbors’ habits by standing here.

  First of all, I’d learned that there were a lot of those people. I hadn’t paid attention before to how many people and pets came in and out of the nearby houses. The humans seemed to know each other, too, because they usually waved and stopped to talk. They exchanged what seemed like pleasantries and the dogs sniffed one another cautiously and then romped on lawns. A woman from down the block walked a cat on a leash—yes, a cat on a leash, but it was very haughty when it encountered the other neighborhood denizens and wouldn’t do any romping while its owner chatted.

  I saw a lot of people but I only knew one of them: Danny Ryder, or Daniel, as he had said a few times. And it was true that his recent history, or at least everything he’d done post-high school, had been under his full name. I’d compiled a complete bio on him, just as I did for all my clients and for my sisters when they got involved with a new man (although some of their relationships didn’t last long enough for me to bother). Their boyfriends had mostly been normal, except I’d found weird stuff about one of Grace’s guys (who had used three different names and social security numbers) and one of Brenna’s (he bought way, way too much cough medicine online to be anything but an addict).

  Daniel Ryder had nothing weird. After high school, he’d enlisted, which I’d already been aware of. He’d served eight years in the military at various bases around the world, which was something he’d been interested in. He’d always wanted to see new places but he hadn’t been able to leave Detroit for as long as I’d known him, which was sixth grade up until we marched in our graduation. He had lived with his dad and that guy had a lot of problems, so all the money that Danny had earned from his various jobs had gone to household stuff instead of vacations.

  I had winced when I’d also discovered out that Mr. Ryder, his father, had died. It had only happened in September, so just over four months ago. His dad hadn’t been that old but he’d had a lot of problems that his son had tried to deal with. I remembered Danny coming over for dinner, squeezing in at the table between my siblings (whoever was around and didn’t have some kind of activity, sport, or job that was keeping them away). He had never said much, maybe because he couldn’t have gotten a word in due to how much the rest of us had talked, but maybe because he was a naturally quieter kind of person. He’d always thought before he spoke, and there wasn’t time for that in my family.

  Anyway, he’d sometimes eaten at our house, but he’d mostly gone back to his own to take care of his dad. That must have been why he’d returned to Detroit—

  There he was. His truck turned onto the street, and I recognized it by its lights. They swung into his driveway and I watched the garage door open, moving silently to display a neat interior partially filled with boxes. He didn’t park inside there and that was why.

  He turned on some exterior lights and then I could see a lot better. I kept watching as he opened the truck’s liftgate, removed more boxes, and added them to a stack. Then he stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, his head tilted down and his breath making white clouds in the cold air. He moved out of my line of sight and the garage door closed, and he didn’t leave again for the rest of the night.

  Well, this was just silly, I thought the next afternoon as I lay in my bed. I had been wishing that I had sheets on it, since this mattress was kind of itchy, and I had been looking outside again, this time up at a grey sky. I’d also been deciding what day it was. Saturday? Saturday, that was it, because I’d received another family dinner invitation for last night that I’d successfully avoided. It was maybe noon or just past but I was still tired. I’d stayed awake for much too long, sitting at my desk but not working, and telling myself that I was acting ridiculously.

  Now I was thinking that same thing again. Why had I been spying on Danny Ryder? I had been waiting for him to come home every day, watching at my stupid window like I was one of those pets I’d seen, probably a dog because the cat acted like it was too good for that kind of behavior. It actually reminded me of what I’d done as a kid when I’d waited for my father to get home from his office, how I’d hoped that he would be there before I went to bed. Now I was doing it as an adult. Why?

  Yeah, it was dumb. That was the reason I got up off my mattress—maybe there were spiders and that was why it was itchy?—and went to the bathroom to get dressed. It took me a while to shower and do all the preparatory tasks for going out, mostly because I hadn’t done them in a while and was out of practice. For example, I started to put on clothes before I remembered that I needed deodorant first, and then I thought I should use lotion, and did I actually have any makeup?

  I had a little, it turned out, but I spent much too long looking for it because the cupboard in my bathroom was disorganized and something, maybe an old tube of toothpaste, might have exploded in there. Or maybe an animal had gotten in. I wasn’t sure how that could have happened but in any case, I discovered a hardened mess of weird goo that made my search for beauty products a lot more difficult.

  Eventually I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that I’d done enough. I had certainly prepped more than I usually did. I hadn’t achieved the same results as when my sisters had worked on me for Nicola’s wedding or for our friend Liv’s before that, but I was ok. And who cared, anyway? I was only going to talk to an old friend. Anything was an improvement over the last time he’d seen me on Naked Night.

  I looked across the street from my usual spot in my office (and I did notice that there was a path that led to it, a shiny pattern of footprints marked in the dust). His truck was there, which probably meant that he was, too. So? This was no big deal. Lots of people chatted with their neighbors, which I’d witnessed from my window.

  I closed my front door and walked across the street, passing another pedestrian as I went. It was the woman with the leashed cat and I stared at the animal and at her, and she gave me a look right back, eying me up and down. Was there something wrong with what I had on? I checked myself in the window of Danny’s truck but everything seemed fine.

  He opened his door when I rang, because his doorbell worked. “Sophie,” he said, and he also looked over what I was wearing. “Hi. Did you need something?”

  “No,” I answered. “I’m here to say hello.”

  “Oh.” We both stared at each other. “Well, come on in,” he suggested, and I did.

  “I do get out during the day,” I commented as I followed him into the house. It was very well-lit, I noticed immediately, which was different from my own. There were some lightbulbs that I could have replaced.

  “I’m glad to see that you do. Are you going somewhere?” He gestured at my outfit and I also glanced down at it.

  “Oh, no,” I told him. “I just felt like dressing up.” I had put on what I’d worn to the recent weddings and my sister Addie had told me I looked pretty in it. This dress was the nicest thing I owned by far, because most of my other clothing had gotten ratty over time and I hadn’t done much to replace it.

  “Ok,” he answered. “Can you get you something? A glass of water? A beer?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Ok,” he repeated. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine now. No problems at all.”

  “Good.” We looked at each other.

  “I read about your dad,” I told him. “I did look you up and I saw that he passed away. I’m sorry.”

  Danny nodded slowly and sat down on his couch, a neat one with pillows that matched. “It wasn’t unexpected, I guess.” He held out his hand toward a chair. “Do you want to sit?”

  I did. “Even if it wasn’t unexpected, it must have been hard when it happened.” I wondered if he’d come back to see his father in the eleven years since high school. Had Danny been here in Detroit and I hadn’t known? I’d told him that hadn’t kept track of what he was doing, and that was true: it had been a conscious choice.

  “It was very hard when he died and it continues to be,” he concurred. “I was just getting ready to go over to his house again. Do you remember it?”

  The Ryder place would have been difficult to forget, even though I had only seen the exterior. They had lived on a big piece of land, a combination of several large city lots cobbled together, in what could have been called a shack. But the amount of square footage and the dilapidated building they’d occupied weren’t even the standout parts. His dad collected stuff—a lot of stuff. Their home had been surrounded by old cars, old bathtubs, old equipment, old everything. There had been a high, imposing fence that separated their property from the street and behind it, his father had created a personal junkyard. They’d been in a pretty rough part of town, an old industrial area, so there weren’t a lot of neighbors to complain that it wasn’t kept up, not like how the people on my street behaved. Everyone here seemed to have something to say when a person forgot to mow her grass for a couple of years.

  “I remember your house very well,” I answered. And I’d seen that the property was now in his name, instead of his father’s.

 

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