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Myla leans heavily against the refrigerator, nudging some photos out of place. “Holy shit. Okay. And so she sent you—?”
“A fuckload of information on some random person who might have known him and might have been in this area. I don’t know. I told her I don’t do this anymore.”
“‘Do this’ as in,” she says slowly, “look for a missing family member?”
When you put it that way, August guesses she does sound like a dick.
She doesn’t know how to make anyone understand what it’s like, how much she was hardwired to do this, to be this. She still memorizes faces and shirt colors, still wants to check the dust on every windowsill for handprints. Five years out, and her instincts still pull her back to this bootleg Veronica Mars act, and she hates it. She wants to be normal.
“It’s—” She trips on her words and starts over. “Okay, it’s like—one time, when I was in sixth grade, we had our end-of-the-year party at a skating rink. My mom was supposed to pick me up, and she forgot. Because she was at a library two parishes over looking up police records from 1978. I sat on the curb for hours, and nobody offered me a ride home because Catholic schoolgirls are really shitty to the poor latchkey kid with a weird hoarder conspiracy theorist mom. So I spent the first week of summer vacation with the worst sunburn of my life from sitting in the parking lot until seven o’clock. And that was just… life. All the time.”
August puts the file back in the envelope, shoving it on top of the fridge between a case of LaCroix and a Catan box.
“I used to help her—take the bus by myself to the courthouse to file public records requests, do shady shit for information after school. It wasn’t like I had friends to hang out with. But then I realized why I didn’t have friends. I told her when I left for college that I was out. I don’t want to be her. I have to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be doing with my life and not, like, solving cold cases that can’t be solved. And she can’t accept it.”
There’s an extremely long pause before Myla says, “Whoa,” and, “that’s what it is.”
August frowns. “That’s what what is?”
“Your deal,” Myla says, waving her screwdriver. “Like, what’s going on with you. I’ve been wondering since you moved in. You’re, like, a reformed girl detective.”
A muscle in August’s jaw twitches. “That’s… one way to put it.”
“You’re like this hotshot film noir private eye, but you retired, and she’s your old boss trying to get you back in the game.”
“I feel like you’re missing the point.”
“Sorry, like, it’s your life and all, but do you not hear how badass that sounds?”
And it is August’s life. But Myla is looking at her like she doesn’t care—not in the way people have for most of August’s life—but like how she looks at Niko when he recites Neruda to his plants, or Wes when he stubbornly spends hours disassembling and rebuilding a piece of Ikea furniture someone put together wrong. Like it’s another inconsequential quirk of someone she loves.
The whole story does sound kind of ridiculous. One of Myla’s traps snaps shut and flips itself off the counter, skidding across the kitchen floor. It stops at the toe of August’s sock, and she has to laugh.
“Anyway,” Myla says, turning to open the freezer. “That sucks. I’m your mom now. The rules are, no Tarantino movies and bedtime is never.”
She wrenches a tub of cotton candy ice cream from one of the overstuffed shelves and plunks it on the counter by the sink, then opens a drawer and throws down two spoons.
“You wanna hear about my mom’s second graders?” she says. “They’re nightmares. She had to get one off the roof the other day.”
August picks up a spoon and follows her lead.
The ice cream is a radioactive shade of blue and horribly sugary, and August loves it. Myla talks and talks about her adoptive mom, about her clumsy but well-intentioned attempts at cooking waakye for Myla growing up so she could feel connected to her birth heritage, about her dad’s woodworking projects (he’s making a guitar) and her brother back in Hoboken (he’s making his way through residency) and how their main family bonding activity is marathoning old episodes of Star Trek. August finds it soothing to let it wash over her. A family. It sounds nice.
“So… all these mousetraps…” August nudges the one on the floor with her foot. “What exactly are you making?”
Myla hums thoughtfully. “The short answer? No idea. It was the same with the frog bones, dude. I keep trying to figure out what the piece is for me, you know? The point-of-view piece. The thing that sums up everything I’m trying to say as an artist.”
August glances across the room at marshmallow Judy.
“Yeah,” Myla says. “I have no idea what the point of view of that thing is.”
“Um,” August attempts. “It’s, uh. A commentary on… refined sugars and addiction.”
Myla whistles through her teeth. “A generous interpretation.”
“I’m a scholar.”
“You’re a bullshitter.”
