Boo and Harry park in the crumbling driveway of what was once Martha's house. Harry leads the way to the backyard while Boo stumbles along behind him. The smell of rosemary and lemon lingers in the air, ramming through her with the force of a train. The broken back gate hangs off one hinge as they pass through and onto the edge of the cliff, where Jack Creek Lake sits below.

Harry sits in the empty grass with his long legs stretched out while Boo plops down beside him. A silence drags on as Boo studies the placid lake and Harry studies Boo, who's pretending not to notice his intense gaze or the way it brings a rising blush to her cheeks.

"What's on your mind?" Harry murmurs, his words hanging in the still air. Boo glances over into magnetic green eyes.

"What isn't?" she mumbles glumly. Her gaze flits to the matte gray clouds overhead, stretching out to cover the sky over the lake.

Harry makes a noise similar to a sigh before leaning back on his hands. "Let's play a game," he suggests lightly.

Boo eyes him. "Nothing with the name 'strip' in the title."

He cracks a goofy smile. "No, more like a trading game. A fact for a fact, a memory for a memory. That sort of thing. I'll go first."

"Go on then," she urges.

Harry hums contentedly. "I cannot sleep at night without having a cup of tea before bed. A very specific cup too-Earl Grey, splash of milk, and no sugar. It's ritualistic at this point."

Boo finds herself smiling wistfully. "I can't sleep without one of my dad's shirts. He only had really old shirts from decades ago so all the fabrics are soft and comfy. They remind me of him a lot."

"Were you two close?" Harry asks.

Her gaze drops to her lap. "Very. He died when I was young but it still hurts like it was yesterday. Besides Nana, he was the only person who understood me. Now that I'm older and I see how this town works, I miss him even more."

She picks a stray blade of grass and begins absently shredding it into thin slivers. "Some of my favorite memories are from when he would read to me before bed, usually either the Hobbit or Harry Potter."

Harry laughs softly beside her. "My mother used to read to me too. It's a shame I don't remember what she read, I just remember how safe and peaceful those moments were. Just me and her, sometimes my sister too, curled up together. I miss that kind of innocence."

Boo bites her lip. Especially now in the thick of disaster and grief, she too misses the simplicity of sitting with her father on the couch, book in hand and the lights on low, while he read stories of adventure and bravery to her.

"Next fact," she says quietly, feeling a familiar sense of nostalgia stirring in her stomach. The longer she dwells on memories of her father, the more they become tainted with her misery at missing him so badly. She prefers not to think about him too long, to keep his memory clothed in light.

"I have an unusual amount of love for terrible puns," Harry says with a grin. "The cheesier the joke, the funnier it is."

"Why didn't the toilet paper cross the road?" Boo asks, poking her tongue into the corner of her mouth.

Harry rolls onto his side, cheek cupped in his hand as he gazes up at her with puppy-dog eyes. Boo has to refrain from swooning into the grass. "I have no idea."

"He got stuck in a crack."

His head falls back as a roar of laughter erupts from his pretty pink lips, and Boo knows she's just found her favorite sound in the world. "That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"You're childish," she giggles.

"Tell me you didn't enjoy that," he simpers. "What's your guilty pleasure?"

Boo chews on the inside of her cheek, pondering how much she wants to freak him out. "Pimple popping videos."

Harry pulls a disgusted face. "Oh, those are so gross. How can you like watching that?"

"They're very satisfying," she grins. "I love knowing all that gunk isn't inside someone's body anymore."

He gags dramatically. "That doesn't mean anyone wants to see it!"

Boo smiles in amusement at his theatrics. It's been a long time since she could have a conversation this natural. "My turn to ask the questions."

"Go on then."

She twirls her fingers together absently, debating if she's crossing a line. "Tell me about when they arrested you."

The smile fades from his lips and is replaced by a small frown. "Why would you want to know about that? I told you it was all a mix-up."

"Call it polite curiosity," Boo says nonchalantly. In reality there's nothing polite about the burning desire she feels to know more about the police and their recent activities. Part of her is hoping she'll find a commiserator in him.

Harry blows a breath out of his lips and rolls onto his back, hands folded on his stomach as he looks at the clouds overhead. "It was really early in the morning and I woke up to some kind of commotion happening outside. When I went to see what was happening, there was one cop in my yard and two more in the street, arguing with a homeless man. I think it was about where he'd stayed the night before, maybe someone called a complaint on him, I don't know the full story."

He shakes his head. The frown on his face grows deeper. "Normally I don't intrude where I'm not wanted. I've learnt my lesson about what situations I involve myself in. But they were really going in on this poor man: shoving him, yelling, just berating the hell out of him. So I stepped in, just to tell them to lay off and take the situation off my yard, but they did not take that lightly."

A shrewd glance is thrown Boo's way. "One second I'm telling them to leave, next thing I know they've knocked me on the grass and I'm getting cuffed. I didn't want to worsen the situation so I just let them take me downtown. We argued for a bit in the cruiser, lot of he-said she-said type stuff, before they dragged me inside. I was thinking about how I'd talk my way out of that situation when you and that detective came round the corner."

Boo can't help but laugh awkwardly. "Certainly wasn't expecting to see you standing there," she admits.

"And I, you," he grins. "But as I said, all that commotion upstairs was quite unnecessary. Tensions were too high too early in the morning, you know. But I will say I wasn't responsible for all the noise or the papers on the floor."

Boo giggles again. "So what would you have said if I didn't come to your rescue?"

"That I'm a foreigner who has a poor understanding of this country's legal system, and I meant no harm nor malice by my actions," he says smoothly, as if reciting lines for a play. "But I doubt they'd have believed me."

"Why do you say that?"

His mouth opens as if to continue, but then he merely closes it and shakes his head. "Story for another time."

Her lips slide out in a confused pout, but she decides not to press him further. "Your turn for questions."

"Why did you help me?" he smirks.

Boo can't help but roll her eyes. "I told you, the cops in this town aren't people you want to be around for too long."

"Yes but you could've chosen to let me handle my own and you didn't. Why not?"

His words force her to reflect on the day before; why did she actually help him?

"I don't know," she admits softly. "I just felt compelled to. That was probably Nana; she was big on helping people."

"Yes, she was," he murmurs in agreement.

A moment of silence passes before Boo feels the urge to speak again. "I'm sorry for my behavior at the cemetery, and at your house," she apologizes. A lump builds in her throat. "I . . . I was angry and lashing out."

"Boo, it's alright, I don't hold any of that over you," Harry says in earnest. "You're in mourning. People need to be able to feel what they feel."

In mourning. She hates those words; she doesn't want to be viewed as fragile, or broken, and yet here she's been for days, still unable to escape the storm of emotion inside. For the second time today, Harry's words hit the nail on the proverbial head. Her throat grows tight as the pain resurfaces unabated.

"Why would he do it?"

She sees Harry look up at her but she doesn't meet his gaze.

"Who?" he asks gently.

God. Why would he take her away knowing how much I need her?

Her lips tremble and her hands begin to shake. Suddenly it feels as though the earth below her may cave in at any moment and send her tumbling to the depths of the lake.

"I should've been there," she rasps, changing the subject. Guilt floods her stomach and sends a sharp taste shooting up her throat. In the corner of her vision, she sees Harry suddenly sit up.

"Boo, there was nothing you could do against a hurricane."

"I should've been there to protect her," she snaps, eyes welling up with angry tears. "I was supposed to be there with her and instead I had to go to my stupid job and stay there all night while she died alone and probably terrified. It . . ."

She stops, overwhelmed by the trembling in her voice as she does her best to hold back the floodgates.

"Don't," he says quietly, firmly, knowing precisely where her thoughts are headed. One hand comes to rest on her forearm.

"It should have been me."

He exhales deeply, shouldering the blow of her words. "It shouldn't have been anyone."

"But it was," she cries in protest, glaring at him through watery vision. It isn't his fault, but she's angry and he's there. "It was her and it should have been me."

"You're right," he whispers. Her ribcage almost shatters with the forceful way her heart jumps at his words. "It was her. And no amount of anger or wishing it away is going to change anything."

Boo's chin continues to quiver as she fights back her sorrow. Her fingers absently reach into the field before her, pushing her nails into the dirt and raking her skin across the blades of grass. Her fingertips brush a stray dandelion growing amongst the grass.

She plucks it, rolling the stem in her hand and staring at the fluttering seeds.

"I've lost so much of what makes a person whole," she says in a small voice. "My dad, Nana, my house . . . sometimes it feels like everything is falling apart around me and I'm going to blow away into the wind if I'm not careful."

To make a point, she huffs a breath on the dandelion and watches morosely as the seeds scatter into nothingness.

hmm lots of heavy things to think about in this chapter. what do you think harry's "other story" is?

another morsel to chew on - how did harry know loughton was a detective?