“The Watson.” Peter sounded bored. “Of course. How can I help you?”
“We’re looking for your father,” James said. “Thought you’d know where we could find him.”
“Listen, if this is about Lucien, I—”
“Lucien? Moriarty?” Leander laughed. “No. This is about your father owing me money.”
Peter whistled. It echoed in the stairwell. “Didn’t realize Dad was still doing that shit.”
“He needs to keep less expensive mistresses.”
“I’m aware. Look, I’m not in touch with him. Last I heard, after his political campaign fell apart and Mum left, he took off to Majorca with his heiress to live off her wealth. Broke my kid sister’s heart. That was three years ago.” A pause. “Are you sure this isn’t about Lucien? Because my dad still blames him for it. All of it.”
“Makes sense.” That was James—warm, inviting tone, drawing Peter in.
“They had a contract, right? Was he consulting on his campaign, or managing, or—”
“Consulting. When Lucien bailed on him, it was at the worst possible time. Hard to make a mistress disappear when your fixer disappears the week before that.” Peter coughed delicately. “Anything else? Or can I go shower before I get back to the office?”
“One more thing,” James said, still friendly. “How much is Lucien giving your dad to rent out his son’s identity?”
So.
Leander was tracking down Lucien too. He knew at least as much as I did. It could be a matter of days before I was found, by him, and before everything would be ruined. I attempted a steadying breath through my nose and nearly gagged on the garbage smell.
Before Peter could answer, the buzzer inside his apartment rang.
“Of all the—” Peter swore. “Hold on.” A pause, and the door unlocked, and swung open.
A teenage boy walked in.
Jamie Watson pulled off his knit cap, ruffling the snow out of his hair. His hair was longer. Different. His coat was different. His shoes were the same, but the treads were further worn down, and there was a dusting of snow on his right trouser knee that wasn’t there on his left, and a scar on the back of his right hand that was too precise to be from rugby. (Glass? A razor? It had a straight edge.) But he was playing rugby, and his team was still losing, and he was up late the night before, studying, and then I couldn’t stop. I was greedy with it, the looking. He hadn’t finished his lunch, he had that peaky look that meant that he’d be grumpy until someone made him eat a protein bar. He had grown a full inch and put on seven and a half pounds. No. Seven. No, he . . . he had a girlfriend, one he’d had for a long time, now, at least several months, and she’d knit him the brown-and-white scarf he was wearing. The fringe was ragged. No one in his family crocheted. No one else would give such a haphazardly done gift that the recipient would then in fact choose to wear. As I watched, the tail of the scarf brushed against the floor.
Watson.
It had been a solid year since I’d seen him last.
Once I had learned his habits. Had them catalogued. Had known him down to the ground. The boy standing in front of me was a stranger, a house rebuilt exactly but from parts that were strange to me.
“Dad?” he called. “Are you ready?”
“Coming down,” James said. Footsteps on stairs.
I had missed the end of their interrogation.
Watson looked down at the floor. His eyes traveled over the mailbox, the dingy wreath, the bicycles, the bins—all the evidence that Peter Morgan-Vilk was a man who would pay the money to rent a bad apartment in an expensive part of town. It would be easy to theorize, from there, that he himself had negotiated the loan of his identity to Lucien for a substantial payout, that his father had nothing to do with it. If Lucien’s fake IDs were confiscated, this then would be his backup: entry into America without any repercussions, for three months at a time, as a man who actually existed.
And Peter taking money from the man whose misbehavior brought down the father he despised? That was a fair motive on its own.
I had arrived here with those theories, but I had, as I’d said before, learned my lesson. I was done beginning at conclusions; this time I would begin at the beginning, and I had planned to interrogate Peter myself. And still, despite this planning, I had missed obtaining the information I needed, and barely, and all because the only friend I’d ever had was standing so close I could see the crease in the corner of his mouth.
Perhaps I made some sort of sound. A whisper of disappointment.
Watson’s gaze sharpened; he was staring at the bins in front of me. Slowly, he took a step forward. Another.
I couldn’t breathe. I wouldn’t have been able to, even if I dared.
“Come on.” James thundered down the last of the stairs, Leander at his heels. “We’ll get dinner, get you home.” Watson looked again up the landing, at Peter Morgan-Vilk’s shut door. Then he shrugged, and followed James and Leander out.
I stayed in that stairwell a very long time.
Five
Jamie
“I STILL MAINTAIN THAT WE COULD HAVE JUST PHONED him, and saved ourselves the trip,” Leander said as we pulled through Sherringford’s main gates. “Especially since Jamie won’t even let us stay in Manhattan for dinner.”
I sighed. “I told you, I have—”
“A presentation,” the two of them said together.
“Well, I wasn’t sure you were listening. I’m sorry if I didn’t want to get designer grilled cheese—”
My father sighed. “It looked lovely, didn’t it? Through the window?”
I tried not to snap at him. We were approaching my dorm, and I had missed the dining hall’s dinner hours because of the traffic back into Connecticut, and I was starving. I was always a jerk when I was starving. Holmes used to—no. No matter what I thought I’d seen, I wasn’t allowing myself to go down that road.
“I don’t know why you took me with you,” I said patiently. “I thought I’d made it really clear. I like spending time with you guys, and I know you’re headed back to England soon, Leander, but next time, can’t we just, like . . . go to the movies? In town? I don’t want to do this . . . this playacting anymore. I think I’ve grown out of it. And anyway, if I need to study, that should take priority.”
It felt good to say that. Final. Adult.
“Priority,” my father echoed. He and Leander exchanged a look, and then Leander turned back to me.
“Jamie,” he said. “You will get into school somewhere lovely, I assure you. You can study literature, and read on the weekends, and go punting or whatever they do at Oxford—”
“Hush, you went punting,” my father said, pulling up to the curb. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what punting is.”
“Well, then, your son can punt too, the rivers there are lovely for boating.”
“Punting?” I asked. “Also, who just, like, gets into Oxford?”
Leander cleared his throat. “Listen, Jamie—you can behave yourself. You can play by the rules. And I’m sure after that you’ll get a job working for some newspaper, or writing your novel in a little turret room somewhere, just like you’ve always talked about. Of course, in those lives, you wouldn’t possibly need any of the investigative skills we’re offering to teach you now. None of the learning to read people, or to understand them, or sort through their motives—”
“Oh, come on—”
My father nodded. “No, it’s not at all useful to learn to catalog the world and then winnow it down to the most important details. Especially for a writer. Can’t have that.”
“You’re not asking me to do that, though,” I said, a bit desperately. “This isn’t solving puzzles or logic problems, this isn’t a second stain under the carpet or some ginger encyclopedia league, this is Moriarty shit, and Leander, I was there on that lawn, too, in Sussex. I heard what you said. I heard it. You said you were done. So why are you out here, looking for Charlotte?”
His eyes darkened. “We’re looking for Lucien.”
“Dad,” I said. “Please.”