a chill out, man attitude to everything in Callinas, including the Brand drama.
“I don’t know where he lives,” Kate said. “Esme won’t tell me. She says she has to respect his privacy. But I think actually she just wants me coming back to the store. She makes, like, fifty bucks every time I come in.”
“You buy something every time you go there?”
Kate frowned at the small paper bag on the stool next to her. “It always seems like I need it.”
Nikhil snorted. “If Esme won’t tell you, ask Louise,” he said, draping his bar towel over his shoulder. “Louise knows everything.”
Kate shook her head. Louise would want to tag along, which would be a nightmare. They were supposed to go visit Chief Velázquez tomorrow, and Kate was already unsure how to manage her aunt while also getting the relevant information out of the retired cop. She would have to be extra careful with her questions, to avoid revealing too much about the Brands (Louise would definitely tell the rest of town) or about her fascination with them (Louise would definitely tell Kate’s mother). And if Louise went off on one of her beloved tangents about Kate being delicate …
“Do you ever get sick of it?” she asked Nikhil, turning her pint glass in her hands.
“Of what?”
“It. This. Callinas. It’s so … small.”
He shrugged. “I think it’s sort of cute. Everyone looking after each other.”
“I guess I’m just tired of being looked after.” She was thinking about the past months in Connecticut, the solicitous concern constantly affixed to her parents’ faces.
“Oh, come on.” Nikhil grinned. “You’ve only been here a month. It can’t be that bad yet.”
She looked up, surprised. She kept forgetting that Nikhil didn’t know how she had ended up here. Everything that had happened back on the East Coast was invisible to him. She should have felt relieved by his cluelessness; this had been the whole appeal of California in the first place. But instead she only felt exhausted, like she had been ripped in two, and part of her was still all the way across the country, and she only had half her energy to work with.
Behind her, the bar door opened, and two women came in. One was in her late fifties, one in her thirties, and both were wearing athleisure. When they came up to the counter, Nikhil introduced them to Kate as Roberta and Wendy.
“Three-time champions of the Point Reyes mother-daughter 5K,” he said. “And two of my best customers.”
“We come here after yoga every week,” Wendy explained to Kate. “To undo all our hard work.”
Kate recognized Wendy as one of the yummy mummy crew that was always stroller-jogging around the neighborhood, a type more likely to drive to the wine bars in Sonoma than make do with Pawpaw’s house red and house white. So she was not exactly surprised when Wendy whipped out an antibacterial wipe and swiped it across the barstool’s seat.
“I’ve been dying to meet you,” Roberta said to Kate as Wendy ordered two vodka sodas. “I’m friends with your aunt. She’s been so excited to have you here.”
“I’m excited to be here,” Kate said. She wondered if Louise knew about the antibacterial wipe situation. She would have a field day.
“We have lots of questions about what you’re doing up at that house,” Roberta said, wiggling up onto the stool.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes.” Roberta did not elaborate. She simply stared at Kate, waiting for information.
“I can’t really talk about it,” Kate said, apologetically.
“It’s not like we’re strangers,” Roberta said, even though they were, of course, strangers.
“You know, I went to school with Theo,” Wendy told Kate, leaning forward to talk around her mother. “Actually, we got paired on a lot of projects, because our last names were next to each other alphabetically.”
Kate’s ears pricked up. “Were you friends?”
“No, not exactly. He didn’t really have friends, per se. He was sort of a weird kid, you know? Like super quiet.”
“But we went to their house once,” Roberta said. “Theo had been over to our place a bunch of times for other projects, but this assignment was to make a diorama, and I figured, who better to help with an art project than two famous artists?”
Wendy rolled her eyes. “You just wanted to see inside their house.”
“Okay, so I was curious,” Roberta said. “Sue me. Anyway, I drove Wendy up there to drop her off, and oh my God, what a pigsty. All these papers piled everywhere. And Miranda’s photos, really gross stuff, right where