Page 63 of Finders Keepers
We look at each other, our gazes acknowledging the significance of the decision I made to include him this time. The fact that I didn’t have to, yet I did.
“Don’t look so surprised,” I joke. My smile is somewhat sheepish. “We’re in this together, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” he says. “We are.” He opens the door wider and motions for me to come in. “Come on. Don’t hold me in suspense. Tell me what you found, Dr. Hunnicutt.”
I step inside. My legs ache and my lungs still burn. I want to sit down, but…Right. Quentin doesn’t have any furniture here. I start making my way toward the stairs. “Okay, but give me like, two minutes to recover. It’s like ninety degrees out and I—”
“You can go up to my room if you want,” he says. “There’s a bed there to sit on at least.”
“Oh, sonowyou want me in your bed?” I tease, though I’m sure I’m not that attractive with sweat running down my forehead, conspiring with my heavy breathing to fog up my glasses.
He smiles anyway, then says, “Go up and settle in. I’ll grab you a glass of water and be right there.”
When he said there was a bed in here at least, he meant it literally. There is a queen-size bed in here, and very little else. I take my laptop back out of its bag, then set my things on the floor. The mattress is thick foam, probably of the purchased-online variety. I sit on the edge and toe off my sneakers. Thereare two pillows, one more indented, and before I can think it through, I grab it and hold it up to my nose, breathing in deeply.
I drop it back where it belongs just as he enters the room. “Were you being weird with my pillow?” he asks as he hands me a glass of ice water.
“Nope,” I say, and take a long drink as he watches me with suspicion. I drain the glass before long, and he takes it from me to place on the floor. “Nice bed, by the way.”
“Thanks. I had an air mattress at first, but it kept deflating on me. Also, as an unemployed single man in my thirties, I got tired of feeling like a sad cliché.” He moves to the other side of the bed, where he stretches out with his arms behind his head. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me what you found.”
I open my laptop and show him the passage that caught my eye at Flow State. Then I take him to the contact page of Emily Aaron’s website. “Maybe Fountain did give Edlo to Albert Aaron, whatever that actually means. And maybe Emily or her grandfather or someone else in the family can tell us more about it.”
He’s quiet for a long time, simply staring at the web page until the screen goes dark and I have to swipe the trackpad to wake it up again. “What are you thinking, Quentin?” I ask. “You don’t seem…You’re mad at me, aren’t you? That I reexamined the transcripts on my own. I’m sorry, I—”
“No,” he says. “I’m not mad. Just…trying not to get my hopes up too much, you know?” He turns over and props himself up on his elbow. “You’re a genius, Neen. This is a solid idea. Good job, cookiepuss.”
My heart fills with joy at his words, even though his expression doesn’t fully line up with them. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
He grins, and I’m glad to see the shift as his expression relaxes. “Because I know it bothers you.”
“Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I love it. Maybe I’m thinking about adopting it as my legal name.” I try to joke around with him, but the fact that he’snotupset that I did research on my own somehow makes the guilt of having gone to the library alone more intense. If he finds out later…“Quentin,” I say. “I need to tell you something else.”
His grin deflates as he registers the sudden seriousness in my tone. “Okay.”
“After the Sprangbur venue tour, I went to the library. To the special collections room. Without you.” I turn to face him more completely, folding my legs under me. “I was…I was feeling desperate to get this over with, because I wanted you so badly and I…I didn’t find anything then, I promise. It was completely uneventful.” I remember Mrs. MacDonald trying to coerce me into taking her job. “Except for Mrs. MacDonald thinking I should replace her.”
Quentin frowns. “She’s leaving?” he asks.
“She wants to. But she’s been waiting for the right successor. And, uh, she thinks I’m it.”
“Do you think you are?”
“I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing here. I am telling you that this was not the first time I researched without you, and—”
He holds up a hand, stopping me. “It’s fine. When you found something you came to me. I’m much more interested in this whole you-replacing-Mrs.-MacDonald thing.”
“I mean, it’s not a thing. It’s not happening.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Why?” I echo. “Because…because…it’s ridiculous.”
“What’s ridiculous about it exactly?”
“You think I should just stay in Catoctin and spend the rest of my life sorting through Mrs. MacDonald’s hoard of unlabeled bankers boxes?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he says. “Would that make you happy?”
