A Study in Charlotte

“Actually, I’ve heard that someone got me a full scholarship for the year.” I’d hidden my smile. “And though the creative writing teacher left something to be desired, I did make one or two good friends. And I found out my stepmom makes really amazing mac and cheese.”

His eyes had shone. “Ah.”

“Dad,” I’d said. “If your methods were a little obnoxious . . . well. I’m still happy to be here.”

He’d patted me on the arm. “You’re a good man, Jamie Watson.”

It might have even been true. At least, I was trying.

We both were.

“Well, if you stay, you can take over my duties as Robbie’s Mario Kart opponent,” Holmes said now with a wry smile. “That little bugger is very good. I’m used to playing by myself, though, so maybe I’m just easy to beat. Milo was never one for games.”

“You had a Wii,” I said, disbelieving.

“Of course.” She raised her eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I?”

I shook my head at her.

We’d been spending our days in my father’s house after my brief stint in the hospital. After I’d been released, Dr. Warner had stayed on in a nearby hotel, coming by each morning to examine me. But other than a lingering veil of fatigue (I was sleeping fourteen hours a night), a sickly sheen to my skin, and a tremor in my hands, I was well and truly cured.

Despite my clean bill of health, Holmes had appointed herself my nursemaid. This meant I was served endless bowls of tasteless soup (rule #39 finally rearing its ugly head) and gallon after gallon of water while confined to the living room couch. She kept the room dark, the boys from pestering me (when they’d actually have been a welcome distraction), and the television firmly off. I couldn’t so much as stand without her appearing at my elbow, ready to bully me back into lying down. When I asked, plaintively, for something to do, she’d brought me a biography of Louis Pasteur. I promptly used it as a coaster. (“But he invented vaccinations!” she’d cried, seeing the water marks on its cover.)

That isn’t to say that I didn’t have visitors. Mrs. Dunham came by, with a present of Galway Kinnell’s first book of poems. She took one look at my face—I did look kind of like a ghoul—and burst into tears. Which was strangely okay. It sounds stupid to say, but after several months of being unparented (my father clearly didn’t count), it was almost nice to have someone make a fuss.

Detective Shepard came by, too, in a bluster of frayed nerves and exhaustion. After railing at Holmes for her unprofessional behavior—“You confronted a murderer! In her own apartment! Without telling the police, and with your best friend dying at your feet! And now we have nothing to show for it!”—for a good half hour, he paused for breath. And Holmes produced a flash drive from her inner pocket.

“You recorded her confession,” the detective had said, weakly.

Holmes smiled. “My brother did, but yes, I thought you’d like this. Though I gather you’ll have some difficulty finding Bryony Downs, née Davis. Milo has—what’s the term? Oh, that’s right—disappeared her.”

“Holmes,” I’d hissed. Wasn’t that supposed to be a state secret?

“What?” She was clearly enjoying herself.

The detective was not.

“Oh,” I’d said then, remembering. “I guess there’s something I should probably tell you about my creative writing teacher.”

“Is there anything else?” Shepard had snapped, when I finished speaking. “Missile codes, maybe, that you happened to pick up? No? Good.” He’d left in a huff, slamming the door behind him.

“I rather doubt we’ll be invited to assist with solving future murders in the sunny state of Connecticut,” Holmes had sighed. “More’s the shame.”

Lena came by, too. In her bright coat, she perched at the end of my father’s armchair and caught us up on all the gossip I’d missed. (Tom had come with her, but Holmes had barred him at the door.) She and Tom were still together, she told us. Holmes forced her mouth into a smile that morphed into a real one when Lena asked if she could come visit over the holiday. “For a few days in January,” Lena had said carelessly. “I’ll be coming through on my way back to school and I thought it’d be fun to tell my pilot I needed a long layover. We could hang out!”

We both agreed. I always did like Lena, after all.

On the quieter afternoons, when no one came by the house, I found myself sorting through my journal from the last few months, looking at the notes I’d made, the crackpot theories I’d had as to Dobson’s murderer, the list of possible suspects that seemed so laughable now. To these, I added sketches of scenes. The jar of teeth on Holmes’s laboratory shelf. How her eyes dropped closed as she danced. My leather jacket around her shoulders. The way my father stood so nervously as I walked toward him for the first time in years. It all began to form a story, one I wanted to continue, one thread at a time, onward without a visible end.

Maybe Charlotte Holmes was still learning how to pick apart a case; maybe I was still learning how to write. We weren’t Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I was okay with that, I thought. We had things they didn’t, too. Like electricity, and refrigerators. And Mario Kart.

“Watson,” she said, “you don’t need to pretend that you’ve forgiven me.”

This came out of nowhere. “For what?”