“Quinn McKenna live here?” the postal worker asked.
Rory blinked.
The postal worker gave a lopsided smile. “Didn’t mean to stump you. How’s this: is Quinn McKenna your mom or your dad?”
“Dad,” Rory replied.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
The guy upended the handcart and an avalanche of letters and bills and boxes poured out onto the floor of the foyer. Rory jumped back, staring at the pile of stuff spreading out across the floor. He glanced at the postal worker, wondering if the man had lost his marbles. Lost his marbles was a phrase his mother sometimes used to describe people who behaved in a way that seemed illogical or somehow outrageous to her. She’d often said she worried that Rory’s dad had lost his marbles. She had never said it about Rory.
This postal worker, though—Rory felt sure his mother would have an opinion about this guy.
“His PO box payments are past due. Sorry,” the man said. He didn’t shrug, but Rory could hear the shrug in his voice. “Guess he’s… not around much, huh?”
Rory gave a small nod. The postal worker’s attention had already turned to one parcel, a big box that had been stamped and rubber-stamped and scraped and taped. Rory spotted the words consulate and Monterrey, Mexico, and thought: Mexico?
“That’s my dad’s handwriting,” he said, mostly to himself.
“Embassy stamps,” the postal worker said, studying the box like it was a cadaver and he was a TV detective. “He do some kind of government work?”
“MOS 11B3VW3,” Rory replied, pronouncing each letter and number with emphasis.
The postal worker stared at him the way so many people stared at him. Rory had come to recognize the dumbfounded expression of the eternally confused.
“Military designation,” the boy said. He paused a moment, but saw that the man still didn’t understand. “He kills people.”
The postal worker cocked his head and gave Rory an odd look. “You have a nice day, okay?”
Rory watched as the man went down the front walk, and then he closed the door. Frowning, he turned to regard the parcel from Mexico. After a moment, he picked up the box. It wasn’t very heavy—not like it had been packed full of books—but it wasn’t light, either. Why would his father have mailed this box to himself, and what was he doing in Mexico? More importantly, what was in it?
He wondered if it might be a present. His father always said he was going to bring Rory a surprise the next time he went out of town, but he always forgot. Maybe this time he had decided to mail something home, so he wouldn’t forget.
Rory shook the box, his curiosity growing.
He told himself he wouldn’t open it. Not without asking his father first.
But, of course, if it was a present, then it had been meant for him in the first place, hadn’t it?
4
Casey Brackett sometimes wondered why she did this to herself. On a beautiful day when she had no classes to teach, she could have done anything with her time. Her mother would have told her to find a boyfriend, because her mother had grown up as part of a generation that believed a woman needed a man in her life for security or a solid foundation or something. Casey didn’t mind the occasional man, but her mother’s attitude drove her nuts. She didn’t need a boyfriend… although she wouldn’t have minded an outing now and then with a circle of friends.
She didn’t have a circle. Laid out on a graph, her friends would have been more of a connect-the-dots. There were days this felt unfortunate, but when she was being honest with herself, Casey had to admit it was her own doing. After all, she didn’t really like people very much. Which was why, on this beautiful day, she was sat on a bench in a dog park just outside Johns Hopkins, Maryland, red-penciling papers from college students who were never as smart as she wanted them to be. She went through a lot of red pencils.
The papers were on her lap, the red pencil in her right hand. In her left, she held a braid of leashes belonging to her stupid, beautiful, goofy dogs. They were ordinarily very well behaved, which often lulled her into thinking that she could bring them down to the dog park and get some correcting done. Then one or more of them would start acting like a lunatic or begging for her attention, and she’d remember how she’d promised herself the last time that she wouldn’t fool herself like this again.
But it was a gorgeous day—and she did need to get her correcting done.
The eruption of urgent barking sounded like Casey herself, the day she’d reamed out the sacker at the grocery store for putting a jug of orange juice into a bag on top of a fresh loaf of bread. She knew that bark the same way a mother knew her baby’s cry, and her head snapped up in irritation.
“Summer! Stop it!” she snapped. “That’s not yours. Does it look like it’s yours?”
The dog barked twice at the toy she’d been trying to steal, and then darted away, but not without casting a rueful glance at Casey. She could be trouble, that one. Sometimes she would gather up the unattended toys at the dog park and piss on them, to claim them for herself. Marking her stolen territory like a furry conqueror with a fetish. Then there was the time she’d bitten the handsome firefighter who’d been working up his nerve to ask for Casey’s number. She’d given the guy her number for all the wrong reasons, thinking he’d call to make her pay for whatever shots or stitches he might need, but he’d never called. She’d been both relieved and disappointed.
As her red pencil hovered over the paper on top of the stack on her lap, a jogger ran by with his own dog on a leash. The guy slowed down. Even in her peripheral vision, Casey saw the way he craned his neck to get a better look at her.
Fantastic, she thought.
The rubbernecker backtracked, dog in tow, and jogged in place beside her. She wondered if he had any idea how much of a cliché he was in that moment, or if he would care.
“How’s it goin’?” he said, toweling his neck.
Another dog yelp came from across the park. Casey glanced over, rolling her eyes. “Teddy! Knock it off! You can see she doesn’t like that!”
The dog bolted across the park toward her, tearing up grass as he ran. Sometimes she thought the big stinker misbehaved just so she would admonish him. He rushed over and put his muzzle onto her lap, rustling her papers. Casey smiled, caressing one of his floppy ears, knowing it would calm him down. Teddy was a scoundrel, but sweet nonetheless.
The jogger stood watching this exchange, apparently unaware how intrusive it was.
“Seen you around here,” he said, extending his hand. “Doug Amaturo.” He scratched the ears of his well-groomed, designer dog, as if to mimic her interaction with Teddy. “This is Barkolepsy. She has a… sleeping thing. She’s a lab—”
“Labradoodle,” Casey said, frowning as she studied the dog. “Hypoallergenic cross between a poodle and a Labrador.”
Gathering her papers, she stood up abruptly and began to walk. The guy—Doug—trailed after her persistently.
“Right. That’s right,” he said, eager to please. “Are you a breeder?”
Casey shook her head, hating that the guy had diverted the conversation to his dog, the oldest trick in the book, and it had worked.
“Science professor,” she said. “Berkeley.”
He tried not to look intimidated. “What do you teach?”
Casey heaved a breath, wondering why men did this. Why push it so far that she would have to be blunt with him? Was Doug Amaturo really that oblivious, or did he think persistence would break down the walls of her disinterest? Would his approach have been different if he’d first spotted her teaching her self-defense students or practicing at the shooting range?