“You are the smartest, bravest woman I have ever known,” she said. “How can I ever thank you for figuring all this out?”
“Those are some powerful drugs you’re on.”
“Pepper, don’t joke about this. My whole life, I’ve admired you, envied you, and I’ve let it get in the way of our friendship.”
felt like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. “You admired me? Maddie, that’s nuts. I dropped out of college, wasting the internship you wanted. I got divorced. I lost my dream job. You’re the one who was the star of every class, married a great guy, took over the family business. Heck, you figured out a way to buy back the family property, something even your dad couldn’t do. And don’t tell me that was Pat. He may have thought up the plan, but you had the guts to make it happen.”
“No.” She shook her head, the bandage smaller, the shaved hair turning to stubble. “Maybe it took you a while to figure out what you wanted, but you followed your heart. You made your own life. Me, I was the good girl who followed the path my family laid out.”
“And this wasn’t it?” I gestured, but I didn’t mean the hospital room, the monitors and the beeping machines. I meant what I’d seen as her picture-perfect life.
“I love Tim. I love our kids. I like helping people create the right space to make their dreams come true. Keeping neighborhoods vibrant and alive. It’s good work; I know that. It’s the work my father raised me to do.”
“You wanted a career in social services. I heard you say so.”
“I chose my family legacy over my dreams, Pepper. That was my choice, not your fault.”
The door opened and a nurse poked his head in. “Five minutes. Then we’ve got to get you moved.”
I reached for her hand. “It’s not too late. You can scale back. Sell the company. Hire a manager and work as much or as little as you want. Get that degree in social work. Take up pottery or hothouse yoga. Spend a year in Italy learning to make cheese.”
“Petrosian Parmesan,” she said. “I know exactly the place to put it in the new corner grocery.”
SOME shopkeeper I am, I thought as I angled across the intersection of First and Pike Place. I had missed most of the busiest day of the week.
It’s always amazes me how two people can remember the same incident, or the same time in our lives, so differently. Me and Maddie. Me and Tag. Me and Tag and Kimberly Clark. We view what happens through our own lens, and that lens tints our memories as well. Maddie might never be able to fully piece together what happened in her family all those years ago, but she might glean enough facts from Jake Byrd’s account, if she could see through the film of his bitterness, to clear the picture.
And that, I hoped, would give her a better vision of what her future could be.
Despite the crowds on the sidewalks, I could see the old lady perched on her stool outside the Asian shop. She wagged her head and Lily came rushing toward me. “Pepper,” she said. “We had tea and I helped walk the dog.”
“I’m so glad. Arf loves going for walks.”
“Guess what else? My daddy’s going to stay. He’s getting a green car. He and my mama are getting married. On my birthday.”
Green car. “Oh. You mean his green card? The paper that means he’s a permanent resident of the U.S., even though he isn’t a citizen?”
Lily bounced up and down. “Yes! We’re going to have a party to celebrate. Will you come? You and Arf.”
I glanced at her mother, smiling at us from behind the front counter. “We’d be delighted.”
Two blocks down the street, on the corner outside my shop, I spotted a tall, dark, and handsome guy talking to a blond with pink and orange streaks in her hair. By the man’s side stood a dog. My guy, my dog.
Nate and I embraced and kissed. I ran my hand through his dark hair. “You’re here. You’re really here.”
He kissed me again.
“I take it you two have met,” I said when I came up for air and saw Jamie beaming at us.
“You’ve been making new friends while I was away,” Nate said.
“Plus reconnecting with old ones,” I said. “Have I got stories for you.”
Nate took Arf home. Inside, in between helping customers, I told my staff what had happened.
“So Cody’s parents had nothing to do with it?” Reed asked.
“Looks that way,” I said, though it would be a long time before the Ellingsons’ family life returned to anything like normal.
Minutes before closing, the two detectives arrived.
“You look like you could use a pick-me-up,” I said, and poured cups of spice tea. We sat in the nook.
“Byrd confessed to both crimes,” Tracy said. “It would have taken us a lot longer to nail him without you.”
A weight I hadn’t known I was carrying slipped off my shoulders.
“He was waiting for an opportunity to get into the ICU, wasn’t he, to take another shot? When the guard took his afternoon break.”
“Looks that way,” Tracy said. “He was armed, and we’re pretty sure it was the same gun that shot both Mr. Halloran and Ms. Petrosian. We also found a burner phone, probably the one he used to set up the meeting with Ms. Petrosian.”
Making sure no one could track him.
“We’ve informed Mrs. Halloran,” Armstrong said, “of the arrest and confession. We’ve also made sure she knows Ms. Petrosian confirmed your theory about Pat Halloran’s role devising her property buy-out scheme.”
I hoped this put an end to Laurel’s nightmares.
“What about the Ellingsons?” I asked.
“We were
