Bird’s mind was still meandering through a half year’s worth of memories—Lizzie Ouellette, Dwayne Cleaves, Adrienne Richards, Laurie Richter—as he pulled off the highway and followed the signs for a chain restaurant, the most reliable bet for a decent burger and a seat with a view of the TV. If not for the fact that he’d just been thinking of her, he might have come and gone without ever recognizing the woman sitting at the bar. She was four seats down, beside the wall, her body angled slightly toward him, her face upturned. She was sipping a beer and gazing at the television, where the Sox were down by one run. Her hair was different now, cropped to her shoulders and colored a reddish brown, but there was no mistaking her face. Bird shook his head in amazement.
When Adrienne Richards had disappeared from the public eye, everyone assumed she was living a life of private luxury at some seaside retreat. But now here she was: in a suburban Chili’s, drinking Coors and watching baseball.
He almost turned around and left. It wasn’t just that he wanted to avoid the inevitable awkwardness once she spotted him, if she spotted him. It was the look on her face: not happy, exactly, but comfortable. At ease. At home. Crazy as it was, Bird felt like he’d be intruding.
Then she looked up, and her eyes went wide, and the sip of beer she’d been about to take tipped down the front of her shirt instead.
“Shit,” she hissed, slamming the bottle onto the bar and fumbling for a napkin. Bird crossed the distance between them, his hands raised apologetically.
“Hey,” he said. “Sorry.”
She was blotting the spilled beer from her shirt, and lifted her eyes only briefly to meet his.
“Hi, Detective Bird,” she said. The corners of her mouth tugged down; she wasn’t happy to see him.
“Hi, Mrs. Richards,” he said, and she hurriedly shook her head, eyes darting around the bar. Fearful of attracting attention.
“Don’t,” she said. “It’s Swan, now, anyway. My name.”
Bird looked around, too; her nervousness was palpable enough to be contagious, but all the other patrons had their eyes on either the television or their drinks. He lowered his voice anyway.
“You changed your name?”
“Changed it back. Adrienne Richards just had a lot of . . . baggage,” she said, and he laughed in spite of himself.
“Adrienne Swan,” he said, trying it out. “Sure, makes sense. It sounds nice. Swan. Pretty birds, too.”
“They murder a dozen people per year,” she said.
“You’re making that up,” Bird replied, but in fact, he couldn’t tell, and that bothered him. When he’d questioned this woman six months ago, he’d been able to read her easily; he still remembered the confident moment when she’d lost control, said a little too much, and he was sure he’d gotten the truth. Now, he stared at her face and had no idea if she was joking or not. She gazed back at him, expressionless—and then the corners of her mouth twitched, and she shrugged.
“Look it up if you don’t believe me.” She took a long sip of beer, then turned to face him, frowning. “God, I’m sorry. Is this even . . . allowed? Me talking to you, you talking to me? It’s weird.”
Bird winced. “Look, I’m sorry. Really. I shouldn’t have come over. I was about to leave, actually, but I wasn’t even sure it was you at first. You look . . . different.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been that kind of year,” she said. “This shit puts lines on your face that no amount of Botox can fix.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, but she just shrugged again. “Anyway, sorry I startled you. Really. I’ll leave you to it.” He turned to go, and her voice floated over his shoulder.
“Weren’t you sitting down?”
“I can always go somewhere else.”
“No,” she said, and hesitated as he turned back to look at her. She chewed her lip, considering her next move, then abruptly nodded at the chair next to her. “Look, I came here because nobody knows me. The odds of us running into each other—it’s just too weird. It feels like, I don’t know, some kind of test. The universe, or something. So sit down if you want to, and I’ll buy you a drink. If you want to. Unless you’re on duty.”
Bird hesitated. Even if he’d expected to see Adrienne Richards, no, Swan, here, he would not have expected an invitation to sit and drink with her. He hadn’t exactly been nice to her when they’d last seen each other, and he hadn’t exactly been sorry about it, either. The case was closed, but if he thought about it—and he did think about it, every so often—he thought that she might have always known a little more than she was telling. He thought she might have gotten away with something.