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“Oh my God, you have no idea how much I needed that,” Ani said when she finally stopped laughing. “See? You did help after all.”
“I’m always happy to blurt out potentially tactless things. It’s not like I can help it, anyway.”
“Thank God for that.”
Charlie came loping down the brownstone’s front stoop, looking more worried than ever, with a glass tank cradled in one arm.
“She moved out three weeks ago. No forwarding address. She left enough rent to cover her last month and then some. Also, she left behind her rescue goldfish.” She presented the tank to them with a flourish.
“Really, she left Goldilocks?” Those alarm bells were getting louder for Molly.
“She had a rescue goldfish?” Ani murmured as she peered into the tank, which Charlie settled carefully on the seat next to her. “How perfectly Lila.”
Molly side-eyed the goldfish. “I can’t be responsible for Goldie. I don’t need another avocado situation.”
“I’ll take care of Goldie. You just get us to the graduation. After that, we have to figure out what to do.”
“What do you mean, what to do?” Molly started up the car. “Would you please buckle in your goldfish?”
Charlie wrapped the seatbelt around the tank. “We have to find out what’s going on with Lila. I mean, someone does. I have somewhere to go right after the graduation is over, so it can’t be me.”
“Really, where do you have to go? And what are you doing when you get there?” Molly couldn’t help asking the questions that were definitely not going to get answered.
“Marrakesh, Fiji, Oslo, who remembers? I’d have to check my calendar.”
Ani craned her neck around the headrest to look at the goldfish. “Poor Goldie, I hope she doesn’t get jet lag traveling the world like that.”
Charlie snorted. “You know perfectly well that you will end up being Goldie’s new guardian, so we might as well skip all the steps that lead up to that.”
Molly went back to the main topic. “Did Lila’s roommates have anything else helpful to say?”
“Not really. But she did leave a photo on the fridge that might or might not be significant.” Charlie shifted on the seat so she could pull the photo from the back pocket of her skin-tight jeans. “It’s a photo of us.”
“I want to see.” Ani snatched it from her fingers and stared at it. “Of course it’s significant that she left this photo. She’d never just forget it.”
Molly took her eyes off the crowded street long enough to see that the photo was from when they were sixteen. It had been taken right before the worst day of their lives. The day they all escaped disaster because Lila had insisted they skip the track meet that day.
“We were all hanging out in Lila’s room,” she said softly. “I remember trying on her new boots and cursing my big foot genes.”
Ani nodded. “She was trying to give those boots away because they hurt her feet.”
“No, she just said that to make me feel okay about taking them.” Molly shook her head at the memory. A cyclist zipped around the convertible, giving her a start.
“You took them, even though they were too small for you?” Ani asked in her sympathetic way.
“Until I got my first job after law school, I never once wore shoes that fit. I was used to it. Anyway, I agree that she never would have left that photo behind by accident. It’s a message.”
“What’s the message?” Charlie took it from Ani and turned it over to see if anything was written on the back. “There’s nothing here.”
“That photo was from that day. It means she’s doing something based on her intuition.” Ani took the photo back and studied it.
“So why didn’t she just tell us this alleged message?” Molly frowned at the traffic already backing up outside the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Maybe she didn’t think we’d listen.”
“Why wouldn’t we listen?” A nagging sense of guilt tugged at Molly. When was the last time she’d actually talked to Lila? Maybe a month ago? She waved her hand at the photo. “Maybe she’s telling us she doesn’t want us to find her. She left our photo on her refrigerator, after all. Maybe she’s metaphorically leaving us behind.”
Ani shook her head as if that was an impossibility. “It’s a refrigerator. Maybe she’s saying, ‘stay frosty.’ That’s what they say in the military to mean ‘stay ready for anything.’”
