I did not, Marcus. I don't know what you do with your evenings. I put a child to sleep. After that, I go to sleep. Robert shook his head with the grief of a man let down by a friend.
They pulled it out in the ninth. You missed history. I'll read about it. It's not the same and you know it. Marcus accepted a paper plate and moved toward the food table, exchanging greetings along the way, pausing so Lily could pull him toward the other kids who had immediately gathered her into some version of a game that involved running and had no other apparent rules.
It was a good evening. It was genuinely good. The food was right. The air was warm without being heavy. The kids were happy.
Somebody had a Bluetooth speaker playing old soul music at a volume that respected conversation. And Marcus stood there with a plate in his hand and felt for a real and present moment, something close to peace. That was when he noticed Emma Carter. Emma lived next door. That was a fact so ordinary Marcus sometimes had to remind himself how strange it was that he'd never really thought about it much.
She'd moved into the house on the left about 5 years ago after her mother had come to live with her. Her mother's name was Ruth, and Ruth was a small, sharp tonged woman in her late 70s who had opinions about gardening, cooking, and the proper way to load a dishwasher, and who had taken an immediate liking to Lily on the grounds that Lily was quote the only child in this neighborhood with actual manners. Emma was a physical therapist. She drove a dark blue Honda. She kept a bird feeder in her front yard that attracted cardinals, which Lily had once spent an entire Saturday morning watching through the window.
She was quiet in the way that people are quiet when they're actually paying attention to the world around them rather than just waiting for their turn to talk. She was 35 years old. She had brown hair that she usually kept pulled back and brown eyes that had a way of making you feel like you'd been seen more carefully than you were ready for. Marcus had never really let himself think about Emma Carter. He'd been very deliberate about that.
But tonight, she was acting strange. He noticed it the way you notice something without deciding to a pull at the edge of his attention. She was talking with a small group near the dessert table, and she was smiling the way you smile when you're not listening to what anyone is saying because you're thinking about something else entirely. Her eyes kept moving, looking for something. Then her eyes found him and she looked away immediately.
Marcus turned back to his plate. Okay, he thought. That's nothing. People look around at parties. That's what you do at parties.
He went and found Robert again because Robert was reliable and was still talking about the Braves and that required absolutely nothing from Marcus emotionally. 40 minutes later, the sun was starting to settle and people were beginning to pack up plates and gather children. And Marcus was saying good night to Patricia Haynes who was explaining the correct way to store leftover potato salad. Cold sealed within two hours, no exceptions, when he felt someone step up beside him. He turned Emma.
She was standing very close, which wasn't like her. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her jaw was tight and she had the look of someone who had been arguing with themselves for a long time and had only very recently lost. "Hey," she said. Hey, he said good party. Patricia's potato salad.
I know. A pause. Marcus. Something in the way she said his name made him go still. Just one word, but she said it like it cost her something.
Yeah. She reached into the pocket of her cardigan. I need you to take this. She pressed a folded piece of paper into his hand quickly like she was passing something that couldn't be seen. Don't read it here.
Marcus looked down at the paper, then back at her. Emma, what? Please. She glanced sideways. Her cheeks had gone red.
Just wait until you get home. Okay. And she pressed her lips together. This stays between us. Before he could say anything else, she was already walking away, slipping through the small clusters of remaining neighbors with her head down and her arms crossed back over her chest. moving the way people move when they're trying very hard not to look like they're in a hurry.
Marcus stood there with the note in his hand. Patricia Haynes was still talking about potato salad. He heard none of it. Lily fell asleep at 8:45. Biscuit tucked under her arm, the nightlight making a soft orange circle on the ceiling above her bed.
Marcus stood in the doorway for a moment like he always did, just long enough to make sure she was actually asleep and not pulling the old trick where she lay very still until she heard him walk away and then started messing with her tablet. She was asleep. He pulled the door to left it open 2 in, her specification enforced rigorously, and walked to the kitchen. The note was on the counter where he'd left it. He'd been aware of it all evening.
The way you're aware of a sound you can't quite identify a low background pressure that he'd been deliberately not addressing. While he made Lily's dinner helped her with her bath, read her two chapters of the book about the dog who becomes a detective, which was Lily's current obsession. He picked it up, unfolded it. The handwriting was neat, slightly slanted to the right, written in blue ink. One sentence, that was all.
Meet me tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. at the old garden bridge. Come alone, please trust me. No name, no explanation, just that. Marcus set the note back on the counter and stood there looking at it for a long time. His first thought was practical.