“I’m quite all right. It was a silly accident.” Tova’s eyes make the tiniest flick toward the busted stool. “I’m glad Terry found you, Cameron. From what I’ve seen, your skill is adequate. As it turns out, for unrelated reasons, I may be away from my position longer than anticipated. This will be a good solution, perhaps.”
Cameron pauses, digesting this. An extended gig here wouldn’t be the end of the world. Two weeks and he’s no closer to finding Simon Brinks than he was when he got here. The contact info Jessica Snell had given him must have been dated; when Cameron called, the number was disconnected. “Yeah, that would be cool. It’s not a bad job.”
“It’s a lovely job.” Tova smiles, but it’s tight, like it’s holding back sadness.
Okay, so she’s nice, but who in their right mind loves mopping tile and scrubbing floors this much? He shuffles his feet. “So . . . do you just, like, stop by for fun sometimes?”
“I came to see Marcellus.” Her voice drops. “And I’m aware this may be improper to ask given that we’re barely acquainted, but I would appreciate your discretion.”
“Why?” Shit. This’ll get him in trouble with Terry after all.
Tova takes a deep breath. “Mind you, I don’t condone lying. But you see, Marcellus is a bit of a wayfarer at night, although until this evening I was not aware of his predilection to depart the building.” She frowns. “That part is new and troubling. But I’ve known of his wanderings for some time. He is remarkably adept at escaping his enclosure.”
“And no one else knows.” Cameron nods, starting to understand.
“Not with certainty, no. Terry suspects. If he knew for sure, he would certainly intervene.”
“Like, he’d nail down the top of the tank?”
Tova nods. “Marcellus would be devastated. But what concerns me is worse. Marcellus is old, Cameron, and a loose octopus is a liability.”
Is she really suggesting what he’s thinking? Terry, the fish geek, would put one of his animals down? Harsh. But what if it got out during the day and went after some kid on a field trip? The woman’s probably right about the liability. He folds his arms. “Marcellus is your friend.”
“Yes, I suppose he is.”
“When you went up there to save him, you weren’t afraid of him at all.”
Tova clicks her tongue. “Certainly not! He’s gentle.”
“Well, it was still pretty badass.”
“I appreciate you saying so.”
She looks at the ground briefly, then back up at him with her eyes, which are a shrewd shade of greenish gray. “So? Shall it be our secret?”
Cameron hesitates. For sure, if Terry finds him acting as an accomplice to . . . whatever all of this is, this job will be toast, and any hope of paying Aunt Jeanne back will be toast right along with it. And tracking down Simon Brinks? Toast city. He can’t get fired. Not this time.
But something about the thought of this sweet little old lady losing her friend makes him feel horrible. And the way that octopus had glared at him with its weird, humanlike eye, the threat of euthanasia . . . He shrugs. “Yeah, our secret.”
“Thank you.” She inclines her head.
Cameron picks up the broomstick from where he dropped it earlier and shoves the broken step stool against the wall for someone else to fix. “Conscience does make cowards of us all, huh?”
She freezes. “What did you say?”
“Conscience does make cowards of us all.” He feels himself start to redden. How does he always manage to drop this nerdy shit into conversation? He starts to explain, “It’s just some dumb Shakespeare quote. It’s from—”
“Hamlet,” she says softly. “It was one of my son’s favorites.”
Expect the Unexpected
Tova’s recollection of her voyage from Sweden is patchy. After all, she was only seven years old at the time, and Lars only nine. A train ride from Uppsala, a stiff goodbye to their father at their hotel in Gothenburg; he flew to America on an airplane, arriving several weeks ahead of the family in order to secure their paperwork and housing. The hotel had thick white sheets smelling of lavender and a television on a table, which Tova and Lars watched for several hours a day while they awaited their embarkment date, and there was a restaurant in the lobby that served chocolate pudding in tiny goblets, of which Lars once ate so many he got a stomachache and upchucked on the white sheets. She recalls how the SS Vadstena looked like a big gray layer cake alongside the dock when the driver dropped them off, that bright May morning in 1956. Two months later, they arrived in Portland, Maine, where they lived in an apartment for two years before uprooting again and relocating here, to Washington, to Sowell Bay, ostensibly to be closer to a handful of distant cousins, although Tova never met any of these supposed kin. It was always just the four of them.