I run the data.
Father is in Atlantic City. He is with someone. Someone who wears sequins and does not wish to be identified in writing. Someone who navigated three altercations and a marriage proposal in a single evening and did so, by Father's account, with grace.
"He's with someone," I say.
"He's with someone," Preston confirms.
"Who prefers not to be named in written communications."
"For reasons that are entirely legal."
"But moderately complicated."
I turn this over. The variables are insufficient. I do not have enough data to form a conclusion, which is a condition I find deeply uncomfortable, like a splinter in a place I cannot reach.
"I need to know who that is," Preston says, quietly, in the voice he uses when a case has hooked him against his better judgment.
"You are on a digital detox," I remind him.
"This supersedes the detox," Preston says. "Father is in New Jersey with a sequined enigma who has the social dexterity of a trained diplomat and the wardrobe of a Las Vegas headline act. This is not recreational curiosity, Maxwell. This is a clinical concern."
"We find out when we find out," I say.
Preston is quiet. Outside, the crickets continue their unnecessarily high volume. Inside the yurt, the buckwheat hulls shift.
"I hate that you're right," Preston says.
"I usually am," I say.
The silence settles. I should sleep. Jax is at his own stag, which is a word I find logistically imprecise but emotionally significant, and tomorrow is a day closer to the wedding, and I should be resting my prefrontal cortex rather than constructing profiles of unnamed sequined strangers in Atlantic City.
"Preston," I say.
"Yes."
"What do you think happened to Debbie?"
A long pause.
"Go to sleep, Maxwell," Preston says.
I close my eyes. The crickets persist. Somewhere in New Jersey, Father is eating Rocco's oysters with a person who may or may not be wearing sequins, and I have absolutely no further data, and the buckwheat hulls are, objectively, worse than the army cot Jax keeps in the on-call room.
I think about Jax.
I sleep.
Max
I wake up an hour later and cannot go back to sleep. The buckwheat mattress is a sensory nightmare.
I am in the garden. I have established a pattern to keep the logic loops from crashing my system: Twelve steps north to the weeping willow. Pivot ninety degrees. Eight steps east to the koi pond. Pivot. Twelve steps south to the rock formation.
North. Pivot. East. Pivot.
If I stop moving, the silence rushes in. I need a focal point. I need a list. I need Jax.
"You’re wearing a trench in the gravel," a voice says from the shadows. "The landscaping bill is going to be astronomical."
