A Study in Charlotte

“What my mother was afraid of was sentiment,” she said. “Of my being sentimental. With my particular skill set, it’s a liability. With what I felt for August, I became . . . a worse person. I was sent away to think on what I’d done. It was never about keeping me from the drugs. It was about keeping me away from myself.”

“Jesus, Holmes, that’s horrible.” What kind of monster would demand that her daughter not feel?

“Is it really? I think my mother was right. I don’t trust myself anymore. No one does.” She lifted her head to study me. She’d gone so pale that the veins on her neck stood out like pen marks. “Not even you.”

It was awful to see her like this. “Holmes—”

“You thought I killed him. And it’s almost true. He lost his life because of me. He got a job, finally. Works for my brother in Germany doing data entry. What a waste. But he’s forgiven me. He’s a sentimental fool. August even demanded his family leave me alone. I was disturbed, he told them, and no good would come of it. They listened. It was their last favor to him. You see, his family disowned him for taking my fall.”

“You aren’t disturbed,” I said, trying to mean it, to make her feel better. “You aren’t disturbed at all. You just made a mistake.”

“I don’t make mistakes,” she said, and pulled away from me. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Even if you did. You were still forgiven. They forgave you. And accepting their forgiveness isn’t a sign of weakness.” I was desperate to pull her back to me, back out from where she’d gone, deep inside herself. I’d never wanted this. Never. “I wouldn’t have thought any different of you, if you’d told me.”

“You wouldn’t have?” she asked, the last vestiges of the haze gone from her voice. “How interesting.”

“Unfair.”

“You keep using that word like it has any real-life implications.”

“It does,” I insisted.

“Fairness, Watson, would see August Moriarty restored to school and family and his fiancée—he really could have told me about her when I first confessed it to him, I wasn’t about to stalk and kill her—but no. He’s alone, in a foreign country, and friendless. Really, the parallels are striking.”

“You’re being melodramatic,” I said, and her eyes flashed. Good. Any reaction was better than none. “I’m sitting right here, being your friend, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’d be fine if you did,” she snapped.

“I don’t doubt that. But I’m still not going anywhere, and because I’m not leaving, I need you to listen to me.” I took a breath. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. I am. It’s awful, and the fallout from it was . . . unreal. And I’m sorry I broke your trust. I never wanted to hurt you. But I only did it because I was desperate. Don’t you think that your trust in him and his family might be a touch unfounded? Like, have you had Milo look into their activities? Has August been in Germany all this time, or has he made any trips to America—”

“He isn’t responsible,” she snarled. “I’ve told you that from the start. He may hate me—he should hate me—but he isn’t a killer. And if you can’t believe that—Watson, I will not work with someone who refuses to trust me.”

“But you refused to trust me in the first place,” I said. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth? I know you have personal stakes in the matter, but so do I!”

“What stake could you possibly have in this?” She was inches from my face now. How could she not understand?

“Your life. Your life, and mine. Are they really worth you being right in this?”

“I would never let you die,” she said, her breath coming fast and shallow.

“But what about you? What’s going to happen to you?” I could hear my voice breaking as I pictured it. Her on the concrete, the blood a halo around her dark hair. Her under a slab of granite in her lab. On a slab in the morgue. In a bath of shattered glass, or poisoned in the night. Her curled up under the goddamn porch to die, her stone-blank eyes staring up at me, Jesus . . . it could happen to either of us, but if my being there meant she had any more of a chance of staying alive, then I would be there. Full stop. I was saying it to her out loud, now, pleading. “I know you don’t need me, any fool could see that, but we are in this together. I will be here, right here, until it’s over. You . . . you’re the most important thing to me, and I can’t imagine being without you, but if the moment it’s over, you want to send me away, I will, I’ll go—”

“You should.” It tumbled out of her in a rush. “You don’t see it—that I’m not a good person. That I spend every minute of every day trying not to be the person I know I could be, if I let myself slip. And I’ll bring you down with me. I have. Look at us. Look at where we are.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Is it?” she asked dully. I was losing her again. “Are you blind?”

“You can’t be a bad person,” I told her, “because you’re a robot, remember?”

It really was the lamest, most halfhearted joke I think I’d ever made. But there wasn’t anything else that I could say. I’d betrayed her trust; she’d kept things from me I’d needed to know. She’d endangered our lives; I’d endangered our friendship. I had no idea what was next. All I wanted was for her to look at me the way she used to, with that wry half-twist of her mouth, and make some deduction about the sandwich I’d had for lunch.