At the table near the front, Nancy had already taken charge, pushing her chair in and planting both elbows on the table as she scanned the page. “Oh, I like this,” she said, tapping the clue sheet with quick, decisive energy. “I like this very much.”
Across from her, Hannah leaned in, quieter and sharper, her eyes moving quickly over the details. “Wait,” she said, pressing a finger to one line. “This doesn’t match the timeline from the intro.”
“It does if you’re reading it right,” Nancy shot back, not looking up.
Eliza sat beside them, elbow on the table, chin resting in her hand as she studied the page with the patience of someone who’d already decided to enjoy herself. “Or,” she said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, “one of them is lying.”
Jasper sat back in his chair, listening more than he spoke, his gaze moving between the three of them with quiet attention. I had drifted close enough to the table to check in, and I watched him for a moment without meaning to—the way he tracked the conversation, the small consideration in his expression before he spoke.
“Depends on how you’re reading it,” he said finally.
Nancy looked up. “Go on.”
He leaned forward and tapped the page once, lightly. “If this isn’t when it happened,” he said, “it’s when someone wants you to think it happened.”
Hannah’s eyes lit. “Oh,” she said, sitting up straighter.
Eliza straightened beside her. “That would explain the second clue entirely.”
Nancy narrowed her eyes at the page, her mouth pressing into a thin, thoughtful line. “Well,” she said. “Now I don’t like that.”
“You liked it a second ago,” Hannah said.
“I’ve evolved.”
I moved on before I smiled too visibly, the warmth of it following me to the next table. I glanced back once, just briefly. Jasper had settled back in his chair again, but his eyes had found me across the room, checking in the same way I had been checking in on him. I turned back to the table in front of me.
I kept moving. Table to table, nudging where people had stalled, answering questions without giving too much away, keeping the energy moving through the room. The nerves that had pressed into my ribs all week loosened as I worked, replaced by something steadier. This was what I’d wanted. Exactly this. People talking, thinking, laughing, leaning toward each other over warm cups of tea and handwritten clues.
At the table near the windows, Lucy and her boyfriend, Spencer, sat with their heads bent over the same sheet. Lucy hadher pen uncapped and was already making notes in the leather notebook, her handwriting quick and decisive. Spencer tapped the page with one finger.
“You’re skipping a step,” he said.
“I’m not,” she replied, already scanning ahead.
“You are.”
She glanced sideways at him. “Do you want to be right, or do you want to win?”
He grinned. “Both.”
She nudged his shoulder with hers and turned back to the page. As I passed, she looked up briefly, and her expression shifted just enough—a quick check, a small reassurance—before she went back to the clue sheet. She’d been doing it all evening, those small glances in my direction. Tracking the room the same way I was, just with different things to watch for.
I kept moving.
Eric was at the back corner table, and I felt him before I reached him. He wasn’t playing so much as performing. Leaning too far into the table, talking over the woman beside him, reaching across to tap someone else’s clue sheet without asking. “Look,” he said, louder than the room called for, “you’re all overthinking it. It’s obvious.”
“It’s really not,” said the woman across from him mildly.
“It is if you actually follow the clues instead of?—”
I didn’t stop. He was not my problem yet. I kept moving, checking in at the next two tables, answering a question about the timeline near the back wall, laughing with Grandma and Joyce when Joyce accused Grandma of withholding a theory she clearly had. The evening was doing what I’d hoped it would do. I just had to let it.
“Next set,” I called, gathering the second round of envelopes from the counter.
The room picked up again, conversations overlapping, someone laughing too loudly at something their tablemate had said, a chair scraping sharply and then settling. I moved through it, distributing the second clues, watching people’s expressions shift as new information landed and reshuffled what they thought they knew.
When I reached Eric’s table, he looked up immediately, like he’d been tracking my circuit through the room and knew exactly when I’d arrive.
