Page 19 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“We thought you were dead,” Rachel said. “Or kidnapped, at the very least. Didn’t you get our calls?”

I winced as I remembered that I’d turned my ringer off so as not wake Arthur from his nap. The sleep had done little to improve either his color or his mood, but I was still glad he’d gotten it. And so, I think, was he.

“No, I didn’t check my phone. I knew I was running late, so I just jumped in my car and got here as fast as I could. Sorry.”

As if just noticing me for the first time, Mateo narrowed his eyes and cast a sweeping glance over my attire. “Why are you dressed for a heist at a yarn store?”

Rachel’s sob transformed itself into a snort. She covered it by taking her lower lip between her teeth and stepping slowly away. “I’d better let Brett know he can call off the search party. Mom’s going to be so disappointed. She hasn’t had a chance to pull out the church tree in ages.”

“Octavia, I don’t understand,” I said, since my boss was theoneperson who shouldn’t have overreacted to my late arrival. Mateo once forgot three shifts in a row after he got concussed from a flying puck at a hockey game, and all anyone said was that it was a good thing his skull was so thick. “I know I should’ve called, and I apologize for showing up late like this, but—”

“Where were you?” Octavia asked.

I blinked, unprepared for this sudden attack. Surely her relief at finding me alive should have lasted afewmore minutes. “Um. I overslept?”

“Incorrect. Your internal alarm clock goes off a half hour before your real alarm. Try again.”

She was right. No matter what time I set my alarm for, I always woke up an annoying thirty minutes before it started to chime. I liked to think it was because I was in tune with nature and the cyclicality of the sun, but it was mostly my anxiety refusing to let me lower my guard by so much as an inch.

“I had a doctor’s appointment,” I said, thinking fast. “They put me on a diuretic.”

My mention of an actual medication made Octavia do a double take. “What for?”

“Kidney stones,” I lied. I’d always known my Google searching skills would come in handy someday. I’d just never realized forwhat.

As this response was also accurate—and quick—enough for Octavia to question herself, I pressed my luck. “I have no idea why Brett is in such a tizzy over this. I told him I had an appointment this morning, but he must have forgotten. You know how men get…in one ear, out the other.”

“But Sloane, Brett swears you didn’t have an appointment.” Rachel returned to the conversation before I could think to hip check her out of the way. “He was afraid you went back to that crabby old man’s house and got yourself murdered.”

In that moment, I discovered another of literature’s great lies. A person’s life didn’t flash before their eyes in the moments before death; it did it rightnow. Caught in a lie and trapped on all sides, I saw everyone staring expectantly at me for an explanation that fit. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could say and no lie powerful enough to free me from this snare, and my brain knew it.

“Well. Um. Yeah.” I sighed. “Oops.”

“Don’t you dare say ‘oops’ at me like you just dropped a stack of overdue books,” Octavia said. “I mean it, Sloane. I’m too angry with you for deflection.”

“I’m not deflecting,” I protested. “I’m trying to come up with a believable lie.”

Octavia didn’t find this amusing. “There’s no point. I won’t believe you anyway. Did you go to Mr. McLachlan’s house this morning?”

Several pairs of expectant eyes turned my way. I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone completely dry. “Yes?”

“After I expressly told you not to?”

“Yes?”

“And did you go inside his house? Does he know you tracked him down?” I knew, before she even finished, what she was really asking:Can he file a complaint against the library and put both our jobs in jeopardy?

“Is it too late to plead the Fifth?”

“That’s it. Out.”

At first, I thought Octavia was orderingmeout, and that I was about to be forcibly removed from the best place on earth, but she turned her stare onto the rest of the assembled crowd instead. Pangs of proximal discomfort hit me from all sides.

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I had no idea who I was apologizing to—or, if I was being honest, what I was apologizing for. If given a chance to do this morning over, I’d still park myself in Arthur McLachlan’s living room and make sure he finished every bite of his cold toast and every sip of his even colder tea. “Please don’t make me leave. Not like this.”

“Oh, stop acting like I’m about to walk you off a plank,” Octavia muttered. It might have been hope rearing its feathery head, but I thought I detected a note of humor in her voice. “I looked it up when you left work last night. It’s only a suspension.”

“Wait. You looked it up?Last night?”