“Shit.” I picked up a shard of obsidian, careful not to cut myself on the sharp edges. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Hey, Nick?”
I glanced in the direction of my wife’s voice, still crouched on the living room floor. To myself, I whispered another, “Shit.” Then, “I’ll be right there.”
I had about nine seconds to figure out where the rest of the obsidian was and figure out why it was broken. The harsh and profound downside of opening our home to friends and coworkers on a regular basis was that those people left the place in shambles. Usually it was spilled wine and stray bits of cheese between the couch cushions. Sometimes some vomit in the hydrangeas. Tonight it was a specimen from my wife’s rock collection.
“Nick,” Erin called again, “did someone bring a dog?”
Horrified, I stared in the direction of the hall. “Please tell me you didn’t find a dog out there.”
At a cookout last summer, a few interns found a stray cat on the way over here. They fussed over the poor thing for hours but come to find out, they were holding pagers for four different services and ended up leaving the cat in our bathtub when they were called in. We didn’t realize that part until my brother-in-law asked as only Riley Walsh could, “Did you know there’s a pussy in your bathroom?”
Erin let out a groan. “Not…exactly.”
I slipped the obsidian in my back pocket and pushed to my feet with a grumble of my own. These parties required a recovery and restoration team. It was a good time but Jesus Christ, it was always something. “Do I want to know what that means?”
When I reached the hall, I found her with one hand pressed to the wall like she needed something to keep her upright and her gaze lifted toward the sweeping staircase. Her brows pinched in concentration, she said, “What is that smell?”
It took me a minute but then— “What the actual hell?”
“So, it was a dog. Right? It had to be a dog. Someone brought a dog. Or a dog wandered in while the door was open, peed in the middle of my entryway, and then showed himself out. Because the alternative explanation—“
“Residents.” I ran a hand down my face. “The explanation is residents.”
She paced away from the wall. “You’re telling me one of your residents just—what? Gave up trying to find the bathroom and—and used the floor like a puppy?”
I stared at her. “You’ve met these residents. I almost carded a few of them. And we had a lot of beer and wine tonight.”
“Never in all the years we’ve invited residents here for parties and dinners have we”—she waved a hand at the floor—“has this ever happened.”
“Yeah, well, this new class of first-years is a special bunch.” Come Monday morning, I was poaching O’Rourke from Stremmel’s service and putting him on the case. If anyone could source information, it was that guy. And Stremmel owed me. He could do without his partner in trauma surgery crime for one day. “Go upstairs.” I flicked a hand toward the staircase. It had already been too long a day for Erin. She’d been on her feet all night. “I’ll take care of this.”
She shook her head. “There’s more.”
“Don’t say that.”
She arched a brow. “There’s more.”
I brought both hands to my face. “Jesus Christ, why? Why do we do this?”
She headed down the hall, toward the back of the house. “Because we both know what it’s like to be alone during the holidays and even if our home gets slightly trashed in the process—“
“Slightly?” I snorted from behind her.
“—it’s worth it to give people a place where they can be welcome and with people who are happy to see them.” She held open the door to the bathroom. Always the scene of the crime. The number of condom wrappers that ended up in and around the wastebasket was another story altogether. It was great that they practiced safe sex but my god, why was my house the hookup spot? “I don’t know what happened in here but all of the towels are gone.”
I poked my head inside, not willing go any further. “And I take it that’s…a lot of towels?”
“We had three out on the rack and at least two in the drawer.”
I nodded as I considered this. “And we’re sure someone didn’t put them in the laundry room or some other non-ridiculous location?”
“I’ve looked everywhere. I went in there to grab them so I could start a quick wash tonight—”
“Why?” I asked, as much why the hell are you doing laundry at midnight, honey? packed into that word as I could manage.
“Because I know what happens in here and I didn’t want to leave it for the morning,” she said, and that was the end of that. “When I couldn’t find them, I went looking. The pee hall was my last stop and you know how that went.”
I dropped my head to her shoulder with a groan. My arms loose around her waist, I said, “Erin. Lovely. We’re not calling it the pee hall ever again.”
“I don’t know why someone would take all these towels but I hope it worked out all right for them. I hope they’re okay.”
I grumbled some sort of agreement as I turned my lips to her neck. I had to tell her about the rock. She’d notice soon enough and she’d be devastated. She’d go looking for an excuse to hop on a plane to return to the rock’s birthplace and scavenge another one. Then she’d tell stories about when she’d found the original and the replacement, and how the two were different but also alike.
For a girl who liked to say she didn’t care about anything, she was secretly precious about everything.
But I really wanted to take her to bed.
“I’m going to grab the mop,” she said through a yawn.
“You’re tired, darlin’. Go upstairs. I’ll handle this.”
She didn’t argue which meant she was exhausted.
It didn’t take long to wash the floor—three times—or shove the last of the food in fridge. I searched the living room once more at the hope of finding the rest of the palm-sized obsidian piece but that search came up empty. My best guess was that it fell and shattered, and the fragments were hidden somewhere behind a book or in a drawer. An accident, of course, but I was putting O’Rourke on this case too.
I’d heard that kid could be bribed with a good trail mix.
I found my wife in bed wearing a UT-Austin t-shirt she stole from me years ago. It dipped off one shoulder and I could taste her freckles from across the room. The little thief set her glasses on the bedside table and started rubbing lotion into her hands, saying, “Tell me you didn’t discover any other casualties.”
“Like a trio of interns passed out in the driveway?”
She froze. Her eyes flared wide. “What?”
I laughed as I yanked off my shirt. “Nah, I didn’t look outside.”
“Should you? I mean, what are the odds we’ll find some intern popsicles in the morning?”
“Nope. Not our troubles.” I stepped out of my jeans. “They know how to resuscitate each other.” I checked my phone before adding, “There’s one other thing.”
She dumped the night’s medications and supplements into her palm with the same wry smile that had made me fall for her before she’d spoken a single word in my direction. “Better than the pee hall?”
“We’re selling this house if you call it the pee hall again and you know how much it would piss off Stremmel if he couldn’t walk down the street and invite himself in whenever he fuckin’ feels like it.”
She rolled her smiling eyes as she swallowed the pills.
I pulled the shard of obsidian from my jeans, held it up. “I found this.” Her lips parted as the realization hit. Her shoulders sagged. My heart twisted. “I’m not sure what happened but I didn’t find anything else.”
“That was from Krafla,” she said, a faraway note in her voice. “I found it the first time I went to Iceland and it was the perfect shape and—” She held out her palm for the shard. Looking it over, she added, “This came from a rhyolite deposit. The eruption melted through forty meters of ice to form an obsidian ridge almost ninety meters tall. See, there’s a gorgeous conchoidal fracture surface. You can see how it turned to glass within seconds.” With a sad sigh, she set it beside her glasses. “I’ll have to go find another one.”
I slipped in beside her and pulled her close to me. She nestled her head under my chin and drummed her fingers over my heart. I stroked down her spine, over her side, around to her belly.
“Not right now, you’re not.”
She pressed a kiss to my neck. “No, not tonight.”
“Or tomorrow.”
“Well, we’ll have to see if anything is erupting tomorrow and then—”
“No,” I said, shifting a hand to cup her ass, “not tomorrow either. You’re mine for the rest of the weekend.”
I felt her smile against my neck. “I’m yours for longer than that.”
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