“And he was just such a—such a man about it,” I said when I finished. “It makes me want to scream.”

Indira looked like she was trying not to smile.

“I know,” I said sourly. “I’m aware of the irony.”

“I’m sure you are, dear.”

“It was totally out of line. And inappropriate. And probably illegal. And he has no right to be snooping into my personal life, or trying to control what I do, or judging me for who I want to date.”

“Do you want to date this Damian fellow?”

“I don’t know. No, probably not. He seems like he’d want to get high and listen to Jack Johnson and go to parties all the time. It would be horrible.”

Indira made a small, polite noise that might have meant anything.

“But you know what? It’s nice to have someone be interested in me and not have that person be a murder suspect, or a murder victim, or—or living in their mom’s basement and trying to convince me that ‘online gamer’ is a real job.”

“And he looked like quite the stone fox.”

I blinked.

“Millie sent me a picture,” Indira said.

“What kind of life am I living? How did I end up in this micro-dystopia? Don’t answer that.”

“Are you going to text him? He might not be boyfriend material, but sometimes, Dash, I think you’re lonely. And it can be nice to feel appreciated.”

“I don’t know. I mean, it is kind of—it was for sexual assault, you know? The arrest. Maybe that’s not fair to him, but it does kind of worry me.”

Indira made that same small noise again.

“Oh no,” I said. “No way. Deputy Bobby was still way out of line.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”

I stared at her. There was nothing I could read on her face. “Why couldn’t he have, you know, pretended to ask for permission first? Or he could have lied. He could have told me it came up when they were investigating Gerry’s death.”

“Because Bobby isn’t a liar.”

In the distance, waves broke against the sea cliffs.

“He knew what he was doing,” I finally said. “And he knew it was wrong.”

With a nod, Indira sat forward and said, “That should tell you something about Bobby. Let me ask you a question: would you be this angry if it had been someone else?”

“What?”

“If someone else had brought you this information. If Millie had known Damian’s reputation because, as usual, Millie knew everything about this town. Or if Fox had figured it out—probably from rewatching another season of Law & Order. Or if I’d recognized him from somewhere else. Or if Keme had known because all the surfers talked about him.”

It took me too long to say, “But it wasn’t any of those things. And Deputy Bobby didn’t just know. He had to go looking for it. Because he thinks I can’t take care of myself. Because he thinks I’ve got terrible judgment in men. Because he thinks I need—I need to be fixed or taken care of or something. And I don’t need that. I certainly don’t need that from him, not when he can’t even handle his own—”

I managed to stop myself. A flush made me pull at my jacket, and sweat prickled under my arms.

“Do you really believe Bobby thinks those things about you?” Indira asked.

I didn’t answer.

“I won’t pretend I know what he thinks,” Indira said, “or that I know everything that’s been said between you two. It’s possible he’s told you something, or expressed in some way I haven’t seen, that he thinks those things. But from what I have seen, I can tell you that you are one of the most important people in Bobby’s life.”

“That’s ridiculous—”

“Dashiell.” The vexation in Indira’s voice, more than the use of my full name, cut through my hazy thoughts. She continued, “He comes over almost every day. Before his shifts start. Or after. On the weekends, you go on walks together—”

“Hikes,” I said.

“They’re only hikes if you actually go uphill,” she said with unnecessary, um, factitude. “You go out to eat together. Good Lord, last week, you dragged that poor young man to the outlet mall with you. How many times have I walked in on you reading a book, and Bobby’s lying on the floor listening to music, or you’re watching a show together, or he’s being admirably patient while you and Keme play those ridiculous games.”

Yes, I thought. Okay. True. “But he’s only over here when West is working, and West doesn’t like going hiking, and he needed new earbuds and they have a store at the outlet mall—” I stopped, my throat thick. “I mean, I’ve only known him for a few months.”

But that didn’t sound true, not when I said it out loud. Because it felt like I’d known Deputy Bobby for a long time. It felt like I’d known him forever. I texted him every day. Heck, as Indira had so ungraciously pointed out, I saw him almost every day. Everything about our friendship had happened so easily, so organically, that I’d never really stopped to think about it.

“He has friends,” I said, my voice a little too tight to sound natural. “He has West.”

“You should know better than anyone,” Indira said, “that it’s possible to have a life full of people and still be desperately lonely.”

I couldn’t look at her, so I looked at the table. Everything blurred and doubled in my vision.

When Indira spoke again, her voice was full of unexpected compassion. “I think that when you said those things to Bobby, you might not have said them because you believe he thinks them. I think, maybe, that Bobby touched a nerve without meaning to.” She was silent for a long time. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I nodded. “If he was—” So many words presented themselves to me. I chose the only safe one. “—worried about me, why didn’t he just tell me?”

The vexation was back in her voice as she said, “I believe you were complaining earlier about someone acting like a man.” She rose. “You might consider that he was trying to tell you, Dash, the only way he knew how. You might consider that this is hard for him, and he’s doing his best.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Because I didn’t know what to say. Because I didn’t want to think too much about what Indira was saying. About what she might be saying. Because it was all conjecture, assumptions, based on wildly inaccurate interpretations of, well, everything.

But when I looked up, Indira was staring back at me: those dark, knowing eyes, and that witch’s shock of white hair.

A knock came at the door. It had an unfamiliar cadence—labored, almost struggling. But it was strange how you could know a person. All the ways you could know them. The way they looked when they were trying not to laugh at you. (Because, for example, you’d fallen off your bike trying to do a trick you remembered from fifth grade.) The way a room felt when they were in it—how you could know, without even looking, that they were lying on the floor, earbuds in, listening to some band you’d never heard of. Their breathing, maybe. That hint of a clean, masculine smell. Heck, maybe it was their body’s electromagnetic field. The way they knocked on the door, and no matter where you were in the house, that sound sent something through you: like someone had plucked a string, and a single, perfect note ran through your body.

“I wonder,” Indira said, and her smile was kind because she was always kind, “who that could be?”

Chapter 8

The porch light rendered a chiaroscuro Deputy Bobby: the light gleaming on his hair, his eyes, along his jaw, where a hint of very un-Deputy Bobby stubble showed. The rest of him was shadows, just a suggestion of the hollow of his throat, slumped shoulders, the outline of those strong arms. His mouth did something strange, and I realized he was trying to smile.

My conversation with Indira flooded back to me: what she’d said about him; what she’d said about me. My mind went blank, and all I could come up with was “Oh. Hi.”