Three Weeks

Noelle arrives at seven the next morning with two duffel bags, a rolling crate of laptops and the expression of a woman who has been told there is gossip.

"I came as soon as I could," she says, wheeling the crate into the suite. "Winifred said 'help them' and I said 'help them do what' and she said 'survive,' which honestly felt ominous." She stops in the middle of the sitting room. She looks at the velvet sofa with your blanket folded on it. She looks at the bedroom doors. She looks at you.

"No," you say.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

"I was going to say what a lovely sofa." Noelle's eyes are shining. "Where do you sleep, Margo?"

Margo, at the desk with her laptop, doesn't look up. "In the bed, Ms. Oduya. I won it."

"You won it."

"Coin toss."

"Of course." Noelle drops her duffels and grabs your elbow and pulls you two steps toward the window. "You're sharing a suite," she hisses. "With her. For three weeks."

"The festival sold out the city. There was a man sleeping on a cot in a Holiday Inn ballroom."

"I'd have taken the cot."

"You're staying with your cousin in Indiana."

"Across the river, which is basically the same as a cot." She grips your arm harder. "Have you seen her in pajamas?"

"Noelle."

"Does she wear pajamas? Or does she just sleep standing up in a suit, like a horse?"

"Noelle."

Behind you, Margo says, very evenly, "I can hear you."

Noelle doesn't even flinch. "Good morning, Ms. Faraday. I brought scanners."

The next three days are a blur of paper.

You never knew a case could have this many boxes. Linwood Hollow has kept every invoice since 1938, in pencil, in ledgers, in shoeboxes, in a filing cabinet Corwin delivers in the back of a pickup with a cheerful apology. Noelle scans. You read. Margo builds witness outlines on the butcher-paper wall until it stretches across two panels and the racehorse watercolor is living permanently behind the sofa.

You eat at the desk. You sleep five hours. You find out that Margo hums when she's concentrating, very quietly, under her breath, the same four bars of something classical over and over. You find out that she takes her shoes off after nine p.m. and works in her stocking feet with one leg tucked under her. You find out that she says mm instead of yes when she's tired.

You find out, on the third night, that she wears reading glasses.

It's almost eleven. Noelle has gone back across the river. The festival is quiet for once. You look up from the 1974 general ledger, rubbing your eyes, and there she is on the far end of the sofa with a transcript in her lap and a pair of thin tortoiseshell glasses low on her nose.

Her hair is still up, but a strand has come loose and curls against her cheek. Her sleeves are rolled. She's chewing absently on the end of a red pen.

You stare. You can't help it.

She looks up over the glasses. "What."

"You wear glasses."

"Only after ten p.m." She takes them off, as if caught. "My eyes get tired. Don't tell anyone."

"Who would I tell?"

"Barrett. Winifred. The Chicago Lawyer." She folds them and puts them on the cushion beside her. "It's not on brand."

"Put them back on."

She goes still. You hear yourself a second too late. Heat climbs your neck.

"I mean," you say, "you're squinting. It's distracting. You'll get a headache and then you'll be unbearable tomorrow."

"I'm always unbearable."

"More unbearable."

Margo looks at you for a long moment. Then, slowly, she unfolds the glasses and puts them back on.

"Happy?" she says.

You go back to the ledger. You read the same line of Mae Linwood's handwriting four times. April 1974: forty barrels, white oak, char #4. You do not look at the far end of the sofa. You don't look at the loose curl or the red pen or the way she pushes the glasses up with one knuckle.

You are in so much trouble, Ava, you think, very clearly. You are in an enormous amount of trouble.

On the fourth day Noelle catches you in the hallway outside the suite, where you've gone to take a call from your mother that you mostly can't hear because your mother speaks only in capital letters.

"Okay," Noelle says, "I need to say something and you need to not throw me out a window."

"We're on the eleventh floor."

"So you agree it would be bad." She takes a breath. "She looks at you."

"She glares at me."

"No. I mean, yes, she glares. But in between glaring, when you're not looking, she looks at you. Like you're a painting she's not supposed to touch." Noelle shrugs. "I've been watching for three days, Ava. I'm a trained observer. I watched four seasons of a dating show for research."

"For research."

"For love." She grins. "Just saying. Something's going on in there."

"Nothing's going on in there except a case."

"Uh huh. Is that why you've moved your laptop six inches closer to her end of the desk every day?"

You open your mouth. You close it.

Noelle pats your arm sympathetically and goes back inside.

That evening, at 8:15, Margo's phone lights up on the desk between you.

She's in the bathroom. You don't mean to look. It's face-up, two feet from your hand, and the preview shows in big white letters before the screen dims.

Petra: I'm downstairs at the bar. For old times' sake? One drink. I'll behave.

You look away. You look at the ledger. You look at the butcher-paper wall. You feel something hot and sour and absolutely irrational climb up the back of your throat.

The bathroom door opens. Margo comes out, sees the phone, picks it up, reads it. You watch her in the reflection of the dark window. Her face doesn't change at all. Not a flicker.

She puts the phone face-down.

She goes back into the bathroom and closes the door, and when she comes out two minutes later, she's wearing lipstick. Fresh. Deep red. The kind you put on for a reason.

She picks up her coat.

"Where are you going?" You say it before you can stop yourself.

"Out." She buttons the coat. "Don't wait up, Wynne."

"It's a case night. We have the Voigt outline."

"The Voigt outline is done. I finished it at four." She pauses at the door, hand on the knob. For a second she seems about to say something else. Something true.

Instead she says, "Lock the door behind me," and goes.

The door clicks shut. You sit in the quiet suite with Mae Linwood's ledger in your lap and the smell of her perfume still in the air.

You last eleven minutes.

Then you get up, check your hair in the mirror, hate yourself thoroughly, and go downstairs.