They left the house shortly after that. Gabriella was too shocked to do much more than stare blankly out the kitchen window as Patrick’s team wrapped up their exploration and packed their gear. Her mother came in a few minutes after Elliot left and took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“I won’t ask,” she said as Gabriella turned, dreading the question and how Gabriella would have to hurt her with the answer.

“You can tell me when you’re ready,” Mom continued. “But are you alright?”

The question nearly made her break down again. “Yeah,” Gabriella said through tears, more stupid tears, as her mother pulled her into a tight embrace. “I am.”

James, Graham, and Bradley helped the team seal off the back room temporarily and cleanse it as much as possible. Her mother was going to go stay in a hotel room tonight and Patrick’s team was coming back within the next couple days to complete the work. Gabriella doubted whatever they were planning would be enough. There was something more to the story, something in the house that she was missing. Maybe she was too close to the case, but this felt personal. The way those plates and cups had slid from the shelf wasn’t a random energy surge. No, it had been a temper tantrum. And if it was that personal, then a cleanse and some incense weren’t going to solve everything.

But it wasn’t their case, so it wasn’t like Gabriella could do anything about it right now. Not that she’d have the brainpower to do anything at all after being very publicly dumped less than an hour ago, at work no less. So she didn’t bother to argue when James cautiously came over with the update from Patrick. Some distant part of her was still working at the historical angle, but she couldn’t get herself to consciously think about it yet.

A little while later, they were in the van heading back to headquarters. James was driving, with Graham in the seat beside him. Bradley was in the middle seat, writing up a report on his phone as they drove. Gabriella had the backseat to herself and she was grateful nobody talked to her as she looked out at the passing gray scenery. The snow was still coming down in soft clumps that bounced off the windows and vanished as they drove over the back roads through the woods toward home.

This was her fault. She could be mad at Elliot, and she was. But she was angrier with herself. Both for waiting this long and for getting her hopes up that maybe he would understand once she actually told him. He was so kind and so thoughtful in every other way. Yet when she needed him to believe something like this, something outside of his own life circumstances, he couldn’t even grasp it until it literally picked him up off the floor. And even then, he hadn’t been able to understand that Gabriella had to stay and deal with it.

They rode in silence all the way back to headquarters. Gabriella’s shift wasn’t supposed to end for another two hours and as painful as this silent ride was, she was dreading getting back to work where she’d actually have to do something other than stare blankly ahead. She knew James would let her go home in a minute, but she didn’t want to. Not that she wanted to do her work right now, but maybe she’d be busy enough not to think about how humiliated she was. And besides, all she was going to do was go home and stare at her ceiling, anyway. So why not stay?

As soon as she walked in the door at headquarters, she could tell one of the others had texted ahead to let them know what had happened. Madelyn was nowhere to be seen, but Amelia grimaced at her as she came up the stairs. While the guys started to unpack from their trip, she pulled Gabriella aside.

“You okay?” she asked, her voice low so that the others didn’t hear her.

“I’m so embarrassed, I want to die.”

“That was shitty of him.”

Gabriella shrugged, that numbness still sticking to her brain like cobwebs. “It was my fault,” she said. “I put off telling him clearly what my life actually was. I can’t blame him for being shocked.”

“There’s shock and then there’s being a total asshole.”

As much as she appreciated Amelia’s concern, Gabriella just wanted this conversation to be over. “Yeah.”

The rest of the afternoon was stilted and awkward. They did some follow-up on the case, James gently asking her questions about the historical resources she’d gotten. She provided it, spitting out the sparse details with a lack of cohesion that she could have easily avoided this morning. As she expected, he’d offered to cut her for the day almost immediately after getting back, but she’d turned him down. She didn’t regret doing so, but the time crawled until it was finally five o’clock and she and Amelia were both getting ready to go.

“What are you doing tonight?” Amelia asked her.

Gabriella shrugged, then pulled on her jacket. “I have absolutely no idea,” she admitted. “I was possibly supposed to meet Elliot for dinner, but…”

The sentence caught in her throat and she trailed off as James made his way over to them. “Listen,” Amelia said. “Let me buy you a drink, yeah?”

Most of her wanted to refuse. But the rest of her knew that sitting home alone would be excruciating. So Gabriella nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.”

“You off?” James asked.

“Just about,” Amelia replied. “We’re going to go hit Cooper’s for a beer. Want to come?”

“I wish,” James said. “But I’ve got a meeting with McGovern in about ten minutes. Then I might just stay here tonight, I have to be back at six.”

“Your house is as many steps away as the back bedroom,” Amelia pointed out.

James made a face at her, and she made one back. Through her misery, Gabriella was relieved to see Amelia getting on his case about this.

“Ugh, whatever, yeah, I’ll go home after.”

“Meet us at Cooper’s if we’re still there.”

---

Gabriella realized pretty much immediately that Amelia’s actual plan involved getting her wasted, which she had no problem going along with. An hour and a half later, they were sitting in a booth at the small bar downtown with beers in front of them and an overflowing tray of nachos on the table.

“He just left,” Gabriella said again as she finished her third beer and set it back down on the ring of condensation it had left on the sticky tabletop. “I mean, he tried to get me to go with him, to be fair. But he just left my mom’s house, with all that shit happening to us. I’m sure he’d be fine if we all left, but he only said it to me. Like I was going to leave my mom there with a ghost chucking my grandmother’s china off the shelves. But if he told me to go with him, then maybe he would have stayed with me if I’d gone?”

“Maybe,” Amelia said, taking one of the heavy chips from the center of the plate and swearing as it collapsed under the weight of all the toppings. “Or maybe he’d get you out of there and dump you. Besides, did you want to leave?”

“Fuck no,” Gabriella said, tugging a chip out from beneath a pile of jalapeño slices. “It’s my mom’s house, I didn’t want to leave her there. Plus, it was just a case. It’s not like he got me out of some of the worse ones, you know? Where was he when that gremlin got into Market Basket?”

Or when the shadow creature grabbed her from under the bed? Or when Robin pulled that knife? But those thoughts led down a road she didn’t want to go down tonight, so instead, she just crunched the chip between her front teeth, catching pieces in her hand as it shattered.

“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry,” Amelia said. “I know you liked him. It’s this field, people are either in or out when it comes to dating someone who does this shit. No in-between.”

“Yeah, that’s what Bradley said.”

Amelia looked up from where she was trying to put some of the lost toppings onto a new chip. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Gabriella said. “He said he had a boyfriend who dumped him for the same thing.”

“You and Bradley had a heart-to-heart?”

“No.” Gabriella couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. “No, fuck no. He was a dick in the car coming back from the historical society before Elliot’s interview and I swore at him. But then he said that his boyfriend dumped him when he started working in Essex County.”

“I didn’t know that,” Amelia said. She managed to fit the entire chip into her mouth and tried to say something else, but it was too garbled for Gabriella to understand.

“What?”

Amelia held up a finger, then swallowed. “I said, I’m getting another round.”

Gabriella reached for her wallet. “Let me get this one,” she said. “You got the last three.”

When Amelia didn’t refuse again, Gabriella got up and made her way over to the bar. Three beers in, she was feeling better than she’d expected. The thought of Elliot walking out the door still made her eyes prick, but it felt good to be out with Amelia right now. The bar was pretty quiet still, so she got their beers quickly, then hurried back over.

“Though,” Gabriella said as she slid into the booth and passed Amelia her beer. “I thought Bradley might fight him. Elliot starts in on him and Bradley calls him ‘big boy’.”

Amelia choked on her beer. “What?” she exclaimed through a coughing fit.

“Seriously!” Gabriella handed her some napkins. “They’re like, face to face and Elliot says to stop and that you’re all going to leave me and my mom alone. Which, I appreciate I guess, even though he had no idea what he was talking about. But then Bradley goes, ‘not your choice to make, big boy.’”

Amelia howled with laughter, eventually coming up for air as she wiped her eyes. “And the best part is that it was actually kind of impressive,” Gabriella said. “Elliot had about a head on him, but Bradley didn’t give a shit.”

“He’s tough,” Amelia said. “I wouldn’t mess with him. The thing is, he’s speedy. So that kills the size advantage when someone has it. Oh, there’s James.”

She waved toward the door, where James was making his way through the gradually growing crowd. He spotted them and hurried over.

“You made it!”

He sat down in the booth next to Gabriella and gave her a hug. “How are you doing?”

“Better,” Gabriella said. “Amelia bought me three drinks and finally let me buy her one.”

“Perfect.”

She didn’t have work until noon tomorrow, so whatever. If she was drunk, at least she’d have a better time here than she would sitting in her apartment sober. Her phone beeped, and she pulled it out of her pocket a little too quickly.

“My mom,” she said, reading the text. “Just checking in.”

She sent back a reassuring message with a heart emoji, then slid her phone back in her pocket.

“Graham wanted to join tonight, but he’s still doing some work for his old job at Cleary House,” James said. “He sends his regards though. The other two are working the overnight. I offered to bring back takeout on my way home, but they refused.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Amelia said. “We’re just hanging out here, trying to get Gabriella to forget her troubles for a little while.”

“You have the right idea,” Gabriella said to James, running a finger through a circle of condensation on the table. “Relationships suck. Don’t bother.”

“Now that’s just depressing,” Amelia said, waving her statement aside. “Besides, James, wasn’t there someone recently?”

Gabriella looked at James, who was now studying the beer taps behind the bar with a little too much interest. And as he refused to meet her eye, it clicked.

“No!”

“I’m going to get a drink,” James said.

“Not Zach Delinsky!”

“There was nothing there!” James protested as he stood up.

He walked toward the bar, and Gabriella knew the triumphant smirk wasn’t leaving her face. “Called it.”

“He says nothing happened and I believe him,” Amelia said. “But the tension between them?”

She let out a low whistle and Gabriella laughed. “I fucking knew it.”

James came back a moment later with a light beer and a glass of water. “I’m back in the morning,” he said as Amelia looked at his drink with distaste. “You two get tanked all you want.”

“Not me,” Amelia said. “I’m on at eight.”

“Who did that to you?” James demanded. “What asshole scheduled you that early?”

She glared at him and James looked back innocently. “Noon,” Gabriella said, toasting him with her beer.

It wasn’t the little restaurant where she and Elliot had finally been able to potentially plan a date tonight after weeks of trying. But even though she knew she’d be miserable and hungover tomorrow morning, at least she wasn’t alone right now.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 10