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“That’s kind of admirable,” I pointed out. “Also, it’s annoying.”

“Damned straight,” he huffed. “See that little red car? They’re going to do something dumb—yep.” The car had stopped in the middle of the block to let people out, without giving any indication at all. They had almost been rear-ended by a truck.

“How did you know that was going to happen?” I asked him.

“You just get a feeling about people,” he answered. “Let’s go inside. Now it feels chilly in this car without your Sahara heat on.”

A long time ago, my mom had said the same thing to me about getting a feeling about people. I thought about her that night as I sat near my window, watching. I really had to get a more comfortable chair…anyway, she had used her own particular phrasing, but she’d agreed with Gramps. “I don’t claim to read thoughts. It’s not a skill I possess,” she’d lamented. “But I can definitely intuit, to the point that I often know exactly what someone is going to do next.”

She hadn’t intuited anything about me leaving her and going away to school, or that her former boyfriend Daisuke was going to be arrested right in the middle of a dinner we were having with him. Everyone had been surprised, especially my mom, because she hadn’t even been aware that his “muffler repair shop” didn’t have anything to do with cars but did have a lot to do with meth production and sales.

But she had been right about other things. She had been able to see that one of her friends in Missouri, where we’d been trying our hands at wasp-keeping, was upset about a breech between herself and her parents. “I think you really want to make up with them,” Mom had said. “It’s damaging your psyche to be separated. They’re only asking you to pay for your own car insurance. Is that a good reason to stop speaking to them?”

It was an unusual take for someone who had never paid bills before and who also didn’t speak to her own parents. She’d been so upset when I had told her that they were helping me to apply to boarding schools. Well, their attorney had helped, but it had been at their direction.

I, on the other hand, could never have claimed to read people’s thoughts or even to get a feeling about them. They constantly surprised me and often, it wasn’t in a good way. Like, I should have expected gross stuff from my landlord when I was a sophomore in college. I had seen the way he looked at me, his eyes sweeping up and down even though I’d always worn my baggy business casual-casual clothes (pajamas) and there was really nothing to see. I shouldn’t have been so shocked when he’d tried to kiss me. On the other hand, he shouldn’t have been surprised when I had hit him over the head with my laptop, which meant that I’d needed a new one. I got that and I found a different place to live.

I continued to watch through the window and wasn’t rewarded with anything other than Mrs. Doyle’s exit. She left and moved faster down the block than I’d ever seen her go, except when Carmen invited her to have first dibs at the refreshments after mahjong. There was no sign at all of Oliver or his ex-wife. I imagined how pretty she must have been, probably blonde like he was and also tall, sort of regal with high cheekbones like he had, too. But she couldn’t have had eyes in such a beautiful color.

I still didn’t see her the next morning when he and I met up for our run. That was going better for me since I’d gotten more wintertime activity clothes, in addition to the gloves which he’d given me. I had tried to return those but he’d said just to keep them. He’d also loaned me a headband that he never used. It was pink, a color which he didn’t wear a lot of, so I figured that it wouldn’t have spent a lot of time in his rotation.

“Good morning,” he told me when I walked out, adjusting that headband. He was dressed in fewer layers but he’d told me that he never got too cold himself.

“Hi,” I answered. “Ready?”

We set off at a slightly faster pace than I’d gone in the past, according to his watch. If I wanted to check it, he’d said, I only needed to tap his arm and he’d hold it up. It was better than having my phone out all the time, since I could have dropped that. Having to look at his watch really did cut down on obsessively checking how many minutes and seconds had passed, a habit which seemed to make the run go slower.

“What did you do last night?” I casually questioned.

“I went to dinner. You’re planning to go to the library later, correct? Is Gramps taking you?”

“No, a rideshare will be taking me. I’ll be able to drive myself pretty soon,” I said confidently. If they didn’t ask me to perform left turns on the road test at the Secretary of State, then I had a very good shot.

“I can drive you today, because I want to look up a few things as well. Are you planning to buy a car once you have your license?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered with a lot less confidence. Then I’d have to take care of the car, and I’d have to do it better than how my mom had dealt with her own vehicles. Those had usually ended up in some type of terrible circumstance—not in a tiger enclosure, but broken down enough that they weren’t going to roll again. But what was the point of a license if I didn’t use it to get myself around?

I wanted to return to the important point, which was his activity the night before, but he was back to talking about the library. “What do you expect to find there?”

“I’m not sure,” I hedged. “I haven’t found much online.”

“Because there isn’t anything.”

“Well, what do you attribute this to, then?” I demanded. “We decided that we’re not mentally ill. It doesn’t seem to be from a physical source, like it’s coming through the pipes. That was what you said and you’re an actual water scientist.”

“I’m not a plumbing expert and it’s impossible to rule it out completely.” He hesitated. “Yes, I find it highly improbable.”

“So, what are the other options?” I questioned. “What could be another cause?”

Before, he had talked about AM radio signals and done research into their transmission. He’d closely questioned all the neighbors about their music habits, multiple times, so now they thought that he was both nosy and annoying. He had gotten sensitive microphones and set them up in his kitchen, then put that data into a program to distinguish between sounds. The report from that?

They had detected flowing water.

He didn’t answer my questions at first and we continued to run for several blocks before he spoke again. “I was thinking that I might try to look up historical construction plans,” he told me. “Maybe there’s something about the Milaflores Building.”

“Like what? What would the plans show?”

He didn’t seem to have a clear idea, but he did clearly believe that anything was better than what I was thinking. I had broached my theory to him the first time that we had talked about our mutual problem, but he had shot it right down. He did again now, too.