Page 81 of Not a Word

“I heard my mom talking. I heard your name.”

“Why would she be talking about me?”

“She got some forensic report or something.”

“Wait, what?”

“You don’t know my mom’s, like, a cop? A detective?”

Gage said nothing for several seconds. “Since when?”

“Whaddya mean, since when? It’s not like she became a cop on Tuesday. She’s been doing this for years. You must be the only one who doesn’t know. Why do you think everyone was freaked out when she tracked me down?”

But Gage had missed that, leaving moments earlier. “When was your mom talking about me? What did she say?”

“Okay, I don’t think she was actually talking about you, she said your last name, but she was talking to some guy about another Chartwell, and I figured that was your grandfather or something. Right?”

Gage let out a breath, nodded. “Yeah. He died.”

“And not, like, from a heart attack or something.”

“No. Is your mom here now?”

Moira shook her head. “She had to work. Because of the call she got. And I’m just hanging around, because I’m on lockdown and she’s supposed to come back and if I’m not here I won’t just be grounded for this weekend but probably till I go to college or something. She went nuts because she could smell weed, gave me the whole lecture about how even if I’m not smoking it, if some other cops came by I’d be in as much trouble as everybody else. Like, at least till I’m nineteen.”

“So your mom doesn’t know you were the one who brought the stuff.”

Moira grinned. “Yeah, and I’d kinda like you to keep that on the down-low.”

“How’d you get it?”

There were cannabis stores everywhere these days, but the owners were usually pretty strict about checking for proof of age.

“Guy I know, goes to Humber. He sold me some. You wanna sit down?”

She edged her butt over a couple of inches so Gage could plunk down next to her.

“You look deep in thought.”

“I guess,” he said.

“Were you close?”

“To my grandpa?”

“No, Batman. Yeah, your grandpa.”

“Yeah. He was great.”

“I don’t have any grandparents. I mean, I did, I must have, right, or I wouldn’t be here, but they were all dead before I was born.”

“You mean, your mom’s parents and your dad’s parents?”

She nodded, bit her lip. “Even if my dad’s were alive, probably wouldn’t see them because he’s not in our lives. He’s a gambler.”

“What, like, scratch and win tickets?”

That made Moira laugh. “Geez, farm boy, is that what you think gambling is?”