“What do you mean?”
“It’s like a poet who writes you a poem or a musician who writes you a love song. He made this for her; I bet it’s why he never made another wood duck. Maybe it had some special kind of significance to them, I don’t know. It’s probably why it has a different mark.”
“I want to see it,” he said.
“You’ve seen it,” she said.
“I want to see it again.”
“Okay.”
“You’re sure it’s the same one?”
A cold chill went up Laurie’s spine. “That’s not funny. Yes, it’s the same one. It has the same mark in the same spot, and there’s a little scratch under the tail.”
“You know, I think we all wind up with a scratch under the tail at some point.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“I don’t either. Hey, can I come over later, maybe? I’m off at seven. Bring you some pizza and beer?”
“Sure. Ryan will be gone by then, so it would be just the two of us.”
“Well, that’s good, because I was only going to bring one pizza.”
“Then you’re on.”
They said goodbye, and she composed a panicked—and, she would soon realize, rather hasty text to June: Nick is coming over for dinner later, and I can’t figure out if it’s the kind of dinner where I have to shave my legs.
She went into the kitchen to get something to drink, and just as she took the iced tea out of the fridge, her phone pinged with a response: You never have to do anything on my account, I’m super casual. The next several seconds were like falling down a well: First, she fell over the edge （realizing the response was from Nick and not June）， then she felt herself endlessly careening （figuring out that she had sent it to the group text instead of to June）， and then she hit the bottom with a thud （realizing this meant the entire thread, including her brother, had seen, or soon would see, her speculating about her sex prospects）。
My phone was hacked. By very dangerous hackers, she typed back.
Of course it was, Daisy answered.
I figured as much, Nick added.
Ryan came out of the bedroom with his overnight bag. “All right, my airport taxi is going to be here in about five, so I’m going to go stand on your porch like a doofus and wait.” He spread his arms wide. “This was so much fun. I’m glad I got to see you, Laur.”
She put her arms around him—he was so pleasantly tall and familiar, and out of all her brothers, he gave the best and most plentiful hugs—and said, “Thank you so much for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you. You’re a great liar.”
“It’s really rare that my profession comes in handy in a practical situation, so next time you need somebody to pretend to be somebody else in order to exact revenge, I’m here for you.”
She pulled back from him. “You’re the best. And thank you for the talk, too.”
“I meant all of it, you know. I think you’re exactly the right version of yourself,” he said. “And whatever it takes for you to be happy, I’m on your side. You know?”
“Yeah. I love you, buddy,” she said. “And don’t look at the group text.”
He frowned. “Well, now I’m going to look at it the minute I get outside.”
“Ugh, fine. Just don’t tell me you looked at it.”
“Deal.” He squeezed her hand and headed out the kitchen door.
When Ryan was gone, she looked at Dot’s wall clock. Enough time to get started.
She sat with her laptop and started with a simple search for “Rosalie Kittery-Kane.” At the top of her results, it said, Did you mean Rosalie Kittery-Lane? “What?” she mumbled. “No, I didn’t mean that, why would I mean that?” It spit out a lot of “Rosalie Kane” listings, and a smattering of Kitterys: Bruce, Donna, Daniel, Robert, Tom, Margaret. It seemed like there was only about a 75 percent chance that Ryan had remembered her name entirely accurately under such pressure, with a creep breathing down his neck and nowhere to take notes. Could he have remembered it wrong? Maybe she did mean Rosalie Kittery-Lane. But that turned up nothing.
Assuming that Rosalie was originally a Kittery and now she was a Kane, maybe she didn’t hyphenate under circumstances in which she wasn’t providing the provenance for a potentially valuable carved bird made by her grandfather. Maybe the “Kittery” was for emphasis. Maybe it hadn’t even said “Kittery-Kane”; maybe it had said “Rosalie Kittery Kane.” So she started digging into those Rosalie Kanes.