Chapter 15: Pancakes

"A pattern," I said.

"His word. He lists the ring in the cup, the video, the house, his lobby, and the child." My lawyer sighed. "He makes it sound like a crime spree."

"It was a Tuesday, a Monday, a Sunday, a Monday and a Wednesday."

I hung up and walked out to the kitchen in his T-shirt and my boot.

Jesse was at the stove with a spatula and a mixing bowl.

He took one look at my face. "Bad?"

"Bryce is going to testify that I'm unstable."

"Are you?"

"Only about pancakes."

"Good." He flipped one. "Because I'm making pancakes."

I sat down at the yellow table and laughed until my eyes ran.

"What?" he said.

"Bryce texted me a picture of a diner booth that said pancakes score a two."

Jesse put a plate in front of me with three pancakes stacked on it.

Then he took the syrup and wrote a big sloppy number across the top.

"What is that?"

"It's a nine."

"It's a squid."

"It's a nine, Wardlow. Eat your nine."

I ate my nine.

That was the start of the best week I'd had in years.

On Sunday Mabel showed me the whole rock collection.

It lived under her bed in eleven egg cartons, every rock in its own cup, every cup labeled.

"Quartz. Granite. Lake rock. Lake rock. Fake geode. Real geode. Lake rock." She paused. "That one's a potato."

"Why do you have a potato?"

"It looked like a rock. Now it's a potato. I'm keeping it for science."

Jesse leaned in the doorway and didn't help at all.

On Monday Ronnie's wife came to my flat with a lasagna the size of a mattress.

Ronnie came behind her, still in her scrubs, already talking.

"He fired you in the hall," she said. "In the hall, Casey. At one in the morning. Like a guy breaking up by text."

"It was a letter."

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