Page 7 of Welcome to Murder Week

Wyatt leans forward. “What was missing?”

“Heartbreak,” Amity says. “She gets standing ovations at every performance. She’s stuck with a choice—stay for fame and misery or go home for true love and mediocrity. And I’m stuck with a story going nowhere.”

“It’s a good ending,” I say. “That’s life. I like it.”

“So does my writing group,” Amity says. “But that’s not the kind of story I want to write. Despite everything, by which I mean the predictable saga of how Douglas—that’s my husband, oopsex-husband—dealt with turning fifty, I believe in romance. I can’t help it. I like making readers feel so tingly they want to go back to page one and bathe in the whole experience again. I want only enough tension to make it absolutely delectable to arrive at bliss.”

Amity takes a sip of tea. On the back of her hand are a few sunspots. My mother always chased a happy ending too. But somehow, Amity’s searching doesn’t seem frantic. The visions dancing in her head seem harmless, even pleasant, not dangerous at all.

“What about you?” Amity asks. “How’d you end up here solo?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Wyatt says. “It was ostensibly a gift from my husband.”

“Why ostensibly?” Amity tops off Wyatt’s tea.

“I’m not sure who the real beneficiary is.” This time, Wyatt puts three teaspoons of sugar into his tea. “I think Bernard wanted a break from me.”

“And shipped you all the way across the ocean?” Amity says. “That can’t be right.”

I’m afraid Wyatt might get offended, but he just laughs and says, “Let’s hope not,” though he doesn’t seem too convinced of it.

“I can’t compete with Bernard’s passion for birds,” he says.

“Is he an ornithologist?” Amity asks.

Wyatt shakes his head. “Technically, an ornithophile.”

“A bird lover?” I say.

“Through and through.”

“My neighbor has a bird feeder,” I say. “He calls it a squirrel jungle gym.”

“Tell him to get a squirrel baffle for the pole,” Wyatt says with absolutely zero enthusiasm. “Nineteen-inch width. $23.99 plus tax.”

“I’ve never really understood bird-watching.” Amity takes a sip of tea. “My husband and I went on a safari in Kenya for our honeymoon, and one day we were joined by an English couple on a birding trip. We’d be looking at a lion tearing into a gazelle or a baby giraffe wobbling on its long legs and the woman would be completely uninterested. She’d have her binoculars up to the sky saying, “Oh, look, Nigel, I do believe that’s a cinnamon-breasted bunting.”

“Pair of twitchers there. That’s what they call birders in England,” Wyatt says, and takes a big gulp of tea. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down his long neck. “I adore Bernard, but sometimes I wishhe’d put down the binoculars and watch me instead. That’s weird, right?”

“Not in the slightest.” Amity reaches across the table and pats Wyatt’s hand.

After a few moments of silence, I have the sinking suspicion that it’s my turn.

Sure enough, Amity says, “What brought you here?”

I try to figure out the best way to put it, to not elicit more sympathy than I want or deserve, yet also not sound callous. In the end, I blurt out, “My mother bought this trip for the two of us but didn’t tell me, and then she died, and here I am.”

I can tell from their expressions that this information didn’t land the way I’d hoped.

“You poor dear,” Amity says. “You’re much too young to lose a mother.”

She has no idea.

“So sorry,” Wyatt says. “That must have been tough.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “We weren’t close.”

“Is that so?” Amity says. “I always thought having a daughter would be like having a best friend.”

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