Pinewood Corner Kitchen Chapter 15
Graham came out of the back bedroom a few minutes later. He looked like he might have been on the verge of tears, something Gabriella had never seen from Graham before. “Fuck,” he murmured.
“Is she okay?” she asked quietly, moving toward him in the hallway.
“Yeah,” Graham said. “She just asked me to give her some space.”
Gabriella grimaced, then hoped it hadn’t been obvious. “Just give her a little time.”
“I didn’t mean to say it like that. I don’t count her as a problem. She’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Give her time,” Gabriella repeated.
“How bad did I fuck up with James?” Graham asked her in a whisper.
She glanced unsubtly over her shoulder into the living room, where James was looking at the folder again as Bradley sat silently nearby. “He might need space too,” she admitted. “Or to talk immediately, I’m honestly not sure.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Graham said.
He went into the living room, Gabriella following behind him. “James, I swear I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it sucks that this comes home with you,” James said. “I’m sorry I’ve made it harder. I gave her a key to our house.”
“You weren’t in your right mind. I was never angry about that!”
“You got stuck taking care of me,” James continued like he hadn’t heard Graham, “and that’s not fair to you.”
“I was happy to do it,” Graham said, an unfamiliar tinge of desperation in his usually calm tone. “James, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You literally tracked my heartbeat,” James said. “And, um, and made me eat. The camera’s still up for me, not you. Or- or, I don’t think I even said thank you.”
“You did,” Graham said. “Four or five hundred times. None of it was your fault. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you and I didn’t mean Madelyn. And I spoke before I thought about how shitty that was going to sound toward both of you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” James said, but his smile looked sick. “Hey, I have so much work to do. I’m going to get that going. Um, I guess just keep going with everything you guys have been doing. Gabs, are you alright?”
“Fine,” she said, meaning it. “I’m going to do some more digging, I guess. Unless there’s something you want me to do?”
“No, that sounds great,” James said. “Graham, um, yeah, if you’ve got something right now. Sorry, I should check.”
“I was going to check on Market Basket,” Graham said.
“Great, go do that.”
“Do you need anything while I’m there?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks.”
“Want some lunch?”
“I’m not hungry, thanks.”
Gabriella doubted that, but one battle at a time. “Alright,” James said, looking a little dazed. “Gabs, research. Graham, Market Basket. I’ll go check on Madelyn, I think she’s off soon. Bradley, um, stay here and look pretty. I’ll be right back.”
He went down the hall, knocked on the back bedroom door, then slipped inside. Graham looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him. “I’m such an asshole,” he said.
“You misspoke,” Gabriella said. “You’re not an asshole.”
“You guys aren’t mad?”
“I’m not your roommate or your girlfriend,” Bradley said with a shrug.
“I can’t judge anyone for fucking up here,” Gabriella said.
Bradley looked slightly surprised, but tried to hide it. Graham sighed.
“I’ll go get that done,” he said. “Should I stay on comms?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it,” Bradley replied, rolling his office chair back over to the comms in a clear move to avoid having anyone see him limp.
Gabriella sat down at one of the other computers and tried to focus enough to even figure out a starting point.
It was tempting to go ask the Chapmans who they attacked and when. But that was an easy way for her to get blown up, so she didn’t. Instead, she started with their website, taking some time to look through the stories in their posts over the past two years, which lined up with when they said the attacks began. She didn’t see anything, but there were a few negative comments, some from other blogs, others just mentioning other blogs, so she wrote those down, hoping maybe they’d point her in the right direction.
About fifteen minutes after Graham left, James came out of the back bedroom, Madelyn behind him. “Sorry,” she said as she came into the room.
“Don’t worry about it,” Gabriella said with a smile.
Graham’s voice faltered on the comms midway through saying something to Bradley and Madelyn pretended not to notice. “I’m going to head out,” she said. “Unless anyone needs anything?”
“No,” James said. “Go ahead. See you tomorrow morning.”
James went into his office and Gabriella was about to follow him in when she got a better idea. She went into the kitchen and dug through the cabinets until she found some peanut butter, then made a quick sandwich, cutting it into neat triangles before going into the office.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, what’s up?” James asked, rubbing his eyes as he did something on his computer.
“I’m trying to see if there’s any record of any of the attacks from the Chapmans on other bloggers,” she said. “I guess attack is a strong word, but you know what I mean.”
“It fits,” James said.
She slid into a seat across from him. “There’s some mention of other sites in their comments,” she said. “So I’m spending my afternoon reading through the comments section of a cooking website for drama, something that I only do at home for fun. So that’s a nice surprise.”
James laughed, finally looking away from his computer and at her. “It’s slow going, but I don’t think it’s worth going back to the Chapmans for information,” Gabriella continued. “It’s not safe. But if I get enough information online, I could maybe confront them with it. Or maybe not confront, that’s not the best word, is it? I’m kind of torn between not letting them know I know they attacked me or calling them out. But for now, I think I’m going to compare the comments with anything that might be written on other sites about things going wrong or, you know, maybe a mysterious fire or car trouble or something. Graham got a timeline from them, so I’ll use that for comparison. What do you think?”
As she spoke, keeping up a steady patter she’d learned from him, she set the sandwich plate on the desk, taking one triangle for herself and handing one to James as he listened to her story. He didn’t seem to notice that she’d handed it to him, probably a mix of fatigue and focus on what she was saying.
“I think that’s good,” James said. “Don’t contact them, I don’t trust it. Don’t contact anyone, actually. If there’s some kind of cooking website psychic war going on that we aren’t aware of, we don’t want any part in it.”
“Bradley can cook, we’ll send him in for negotiations.”
She took a bite of her part of the sandwich and he looked at the one he was holding. “Since I’m grounded today, I’ll focus on that,” Gabriella said. “But let me know if there’s anything else you want me to do.”
“No, yeah, that’s good,” James said, looking puzzled to see the sandwich in his hand.
“Eat up,” she said.
He actually laughed slightly. But then his smile faded. “You guys don’t-”
“Eat,” she ordered, taking an exaggerated bite of her own as though to demonstrate.
James laughed again, and took a bite.
***
About forty minutes later, Gabriella had her first breakthrough. She’d moved to a laptop on the couch and was on her third cup of coffee for the day . So she was pretty sure her eyeballs were shaking, not the screen. But there was Whispering Tea Room, one of the other most popular food blogs in the world, reporting they were sorry for the delay, but their entire site went down and they had to rebuild from their backups.
“Hey, Graham?” she said.
Graham looked up from the report he was clearly not writing right now. “Yeah?”
“Are you familiar with a site called Whispering Tea Room?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice still a little dull. “Why?”
“Their entire site went down on October nineteenth. That lines up with one of the attacks on the Chapmans. I don’t know the time, but they were the same day.”
“Weird.”
“They said it was…” Gabriella flipped through her notes. “An issue with their internet access. The company couldn’t figure it out and it lasted for three days. Which lines up with this post here, saying it took them three days to redo their site.”
“The fucking Resurrection,” Bradley muttered nearby.
“I still don’t think anyone is attacking them,” Gabriella said. “I think it’s them. If they’re powerful enough to do this, then they’re really powerful. But they aren’t trained, so they’re messing up. Or maybe they’re distracted by something when they’re doing it.”
“Every time?” Bradley asked, sounding skeptical.
“Yeah,” she said. “But I don’t know why.”
“Maybe they feel guilty,” Graham suggested.
She and Bradley exchanged a quick look that Graham might or might not have seen. Even with talks and apologies, Graham was still sitting here looking like he’d committed an unforgivable sin.
“That’d be distracting,” Gabriella said.
“You think these idiots feel so bad about what they’re doing that it’s bouncing back on them?”
“Maybe,” she said.
Graham glanced at his phone. “Are you okay?” Gabriella asked.
“Madelyn’s not answering my text.”
She looked over at Bradley, who was trying not to look at her. “Do you want to quit?” she asked Graham.
He looked at her in surprise, then looked into James’s office. “James isn’t in the building,” she said. “Honestly. Do you want to leave?”
“I don’t know,” Graham admitted. “I like the work. I really, really like the work. And I really like all of you. But I don’t…” He groaned, looking up at the ceiling, then back at her. “This is taking over my life and I don’t know how to not let it do so. And I miss teaching. I don’t miss academia, but now that I’m out of it, I really miss the teaching and the care and all of that. I like taking care of people. And, like, not in a way that’s creepy or anything, but that includes James. And I feel so bad that he thinks I resent him for it. But as we’ve been doing this case, I’ve missed my old work more and more. And now I’m thinking maybe I’ll never be able to get another position like that again.”
“Out of all of us, I think you’re the one who could really succeed somewhere else if you wanted to.”
Both men looked at her in surprise. “I mean it,” Gabriella said, unsure how many people she was about to insult. “You’re really smart and you’re really talented. You have Cleary House already, you have two advanced degrees, and a really solid work history. I’m just saying, you could. And it wouldn’t have to mean losing what you gained working here.”
“No, I managed to do that without quitting,” Graham said.
“Can I be really blunt with you?” Gabriella asked.
“Yes, please.”
“If you want to leave, leave,” she said. “Get out of the web. I’m not saying it’d be easy, or that you don’t have anything working against you. You absolutely do and I don’t want to minimize it. But okay.” She glanced at the office again, as though she didn’t know for a fact that James was out. “I’m sure James could find a job. When he was talking about leaving, I knew there were ways to not mention ghosts in his past fifteen years of work experience. But he’d never be happy in another field. He’s been meant to do this since he was a kid. He’d be okay, but he’d never thrive. Or Madelyn. She’s smart, we all know how fucking smart she is. But there are jobs she just can’t do anymore. If she left here, would she be able to find an accessible job? Would she get past an initial interview?”
“I know,” Graham said. “We’ve talked about it a lot. But that’s not necessarily true for everyone. Amelia-”
“Has a criminal record,” Gabriella said, lowering her voice. “Remember? The drug charge for her girlfriend? That’s not going to help her get a job. I could probably get an entry level interview, but then I’d have to get them to focus on anything other than my scarred face. And if there was a choice between me and someone else for, like, a front-facing job? Someone pretty? They’re not choosing Frankenstein’s monster.”
Graham went to protest, but she shook her head. She knew. “And- Well, actually, maybe Bradley could get out too. If you wanted to.”
“I’ve got my own shit.”
Both Gabriella and Graham stared at him. “What is it?” Gabriella asked.
“None of your fucking business,” Bradley answered. “It’s nothing exciting. It’s not like I killed someone.”
As tempting as it was to try to get him to say anything else, she knew it was useless. “Anyway,” she said. “What I’m trying to say is that if you want to leave, leave. Go teach or do whatever it is that really calls to you. James meant it when he encouraged us to last spring.”
Graham groaned. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t know. No, I don’t think I actually want to quit right now. I was mad. I don’t think this is my permanent career, I don’t see myself working in a field branch forever. But I want to stay in this field and I don’t want to leave right now.”
She was selfishly relieved that he didn’t want to leave. Graham looked from her to Bradley, who shrugged. “She’s right,” he said.
Graham looked over his shoulder, then back at them. “Can I tell you guys something?”
“Of course,” Gabriella said.
Graham hesitated for a second. “If I didn’t just fuck it up beyond repair, I want to marry Madelyn someday. I really think she’s it. Not right away,” he added. “We haven’t even been together a year yet. But I want to ask her eventually.”
“That’s good,” Gabriella said. “That’s…I think that’d be really good.”
“But I was going to ask her if maybe she’d want to move in together,” Graham said. “Probably not for a little while, we just re-signed for our place for another year back in February. But she and Amelia are month-to-month at their place. And I don’t know, I feel ready to take that next step if she is.”
Gabriella wasn’t sure why this surprised her so much. They were two adults who had been together for almost a year now.
“What’s the problem?” Bradley asked. “I mean, beyond the obvious.”
Graham looked toward the door again. “I haven’t talked to James about it,” he said. “I don’t want to screw him over, he’s been good to me. Like, the best roommate I’ve ever had. And yeah, that includes that month he was out. He was dealing with immense amounts of trauma and a kidney injury and he still kept his space pretty clean. I was braced for a lot worse and I would have been fine with it. But our place isn’t cheap. I don’t know where he’d go if I moved out. And I wouldn’t want to leave early and fuck him over with the lease.”
Gabriella glanced over at Bradley, who had apparently made the same connection she had and was trying not to laugh. “So if you moved in with Madelyn, leaving your place with James,” she started slowly, unable to keep from smiling a little. “And Madelyn moves in with you, leaving her place with Amelia. Oh no, what would James and Amelia possibly do?”
Graham stared at her, then covered his face, laughing. “God dammit, I’m a mess,” he said. “That didn’t even occur to me.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” she said, patting his arm.
“Assuming either Madelyn or James ever speaks to me again,” Graham said. “I’ve got some stuff to do. I’ll be in the pink bedroom if you need me.”
Gabriella went back to her laptop. There was another site, Ivy’s Kitchen, that had similar ratings and exposure online, though maybe a little less so than the previous one. Gabriella opened entries for each day the Chapmans claimed there was an attack on them. At first she found nothing, but then, six days after one of the attacks (an attack on the site to make it appear malicious), there was a similar situation discussed on Ivy’s site.
I’m sorry, it took us several days to get it taken care of, Ivy said. And it cost me my marketing budget for this month, I’m not too embarrassed to tell you. Anyone who’s doing this, it’s a sick joke to play on someone just trying to build a career online.
There were three other attacks listed by the Chapmans. Which meant three other potential victims out of the thousands of food and cooking websites out there. And Gabriella loved to cook, but she was not in touch with this world the way that Graham was.
“Can you help me?” she asked him a little while later when he came down the hall. “When you have a chance, I mean? I don’t know any of these websites that might be rivals for the Chapmans.”
“I have to go,” he said, looking apologetic yet again. “I’m out now and I really want to go talk to Madelyn.”
“Yeah, absolutely,” she said. “I understand.”
He looked at James’s office, where James was now working at his desk with the door halfway open. “I should talk to him too.”
“Are you going to get anything new out of it?” Bradley asked, his voice almost a whisper.
“I should still apologize again,” Graham said. “I told him for months it was okay. And it was, it is. But I had a bad moment and I didn’t even think of him. Or her. Or anyone, apparently. I was too wrapped up in the Chapmans turning out to be terrible. I’m sorry to you too, Gabriella.”
“Me? Why?”
“I defended them, didn’t I? They were shitty to you, and then I justified it.”
“People are shitty sometimes,” she said with a shrug. “Doesn’t mean they’re all evil psychics.”
She wasn’t going to look, but apparently her eyeballs had an agenda of their own, so her gaze slid toward Bradley, who scowled.
“I’ll be right back,” Graham said.
He went into the office. “Hey, man,” Gabriella heard him say.
“What’s up?” James greeted him, sounding fairly normal now.
She wasn’t going to eavesdrop. But she also wasn’t going to get anything else done right now, so she was going to go down to the gym and run off some of her frustration.
