Chapter 14: The Girl With the Braid

Lincoln Square Veterinary had a green awning, a bench by the window and a front desk with a braid behind it.

She was real, and she was twenty-four, and she was laughing at something on her screen.

Reuben took the bench by the door with a magazine he did not read.

I walked straight to the desk.

"Hi," the girl said, bright and easy. "Are you checking in?"

"No. I'm a vet tech at Eastside. My name is Maddie." I kept my voice low. "In about ten minutes a man is going to walk in with an orange kitten."

"Okay?"

"He's going to be kind and a little lost. He'll say it belongs to a friend."

The braid stopped moving.

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

"The woman he did it to three years ago."

I put my phone on the counter, face up, with the picture of her in lavender scrubs.

She looked at it for a long moment.

Her smile did not go out all at once.

It faded, a little at a time.

"That's my desk," she said. "That's from last Thursday. I was laughing at a poodle."

"Someone stood across the street and took it."

"Why?"

"Because you have a kind face," I said, "and you stay late, and I'm guessing nobody is waiting at your place tonight."

She flinched, hard.

"How do you know that?"

"Because that's the list."

The bell over the door rang.

Dean came in with a cardboard carrier held in both hands.

He was wearing a clean shirt, which meant he had gone somewhere to wash, and he had put on his easy smile.

It lasted until he saw me.

"Maddie."

"Hello, Dean."

The girl behind the desk looked from my face to his.

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