Page 52 of Wrong Mail

"You said that the last time," he says, mild.

"And I'm still thinking."

"Okay. Good," he says. He lets it go, and he shifts the conversation to something easier, and just like that we're two neighbors at a table again, and I can almost believe that's all we are.

Julia waits until we're back on the 520, looping under Yarrow Point, before she says it.

"So. Are you going to tell me? Was he shopping or stalking?”

I laugh. “Shopping.”

“Oh, sure.” She doesn't take her eyes off the road. "Henry drove to Bellevue for mayonnaise."

"People shop, Julia. And he bought more than that."

“I bet he did.” She glances at me and winks.

I roll my eyes.

She lets it go until we're at her kitchen table with the good bread and a bowl of tomatoes from her garden. The doors are open onto the heat and the cicadas. Then she comes at it from the side, the way she does.

"How are you?" she says. "Actually. Not the version you give Kane."

"I'm all right. Better than I was." I turn a tomato in my fingers, and she picks up on it.

"And?"

I smile. "Well... I've been thinking about looking at some of the old cases Henry has. Just looking. Giving him my opinion.”

Julia sets down her knife.

"And David's on board with this?" she asks.

"I haven't told David."

"Mallory."

"Listen, I know what you're going to say."

"No, I don't think you do." She isn't joking now, and Julia not joking is rare. "I love a bit of true crime, you know I do, I'd happily spend a wet weekend on an unsolved anything. This isn't that. This is a man none of us know. I mean, do I need to state the obvious? He turns up on this road out of nowhere. A package of his lands at your house, full of unsolved murders, and he still hasn't given a proper reason for any of it."

"He has. His sister."

"Oh, sure. His sister. Have you confirmed that?"

"No."

"Anyway. Then days later, Peggy and Brant are found dead in their home. I'm not saying a word about what that means. I'm just saying it's a fact, and it sits funny. And now he's turned up at your supermarket, thirty minutes from here, and bought you a coffee, and pitched you the same pile of Oregon murders." She spreads her hands. "Do you see where I'm going with this? You have to see it."

"I hear you, but it's what I used to do."

"Was it, though?" She asks as gently as she can, which isn't very. "From what you've managed to piece back together, love, you weren't exactly setting the world alight. You were freelancing. Scraping by. It wasn't a triumph you're getting back to."

It should hurt more than it does. Instead it lands like a key in a lock.

"Well, that's why," I say. "That's the whole point. I don't want it back the way it was. I want to be good at something again before I forget I ever was."

Julia looks at me a long time.