I was halfway through my first cup of coffee when I noticed something that immediately felt wrong. The apartment was quiet. Not unusually quiet, exactly. Mr. Whiskers was sitting on the windowsill watching birds with the kind of concentration normally reserved for brain surgery, and the coffee maker was making its usual bubbling noises. It was just missing one thing.
John Mercer. I glanced at the clock. It was 7:47. John was almost always awake by now. We weren’t strict about mornings, but we’d usually cross paths in the kitchen before the day really got started. Sometimes we’d read the news. Sometimes we’d debate whether cereal counted as breakfast. Sometimes we’d simply drink coffee in companionable silence. This morning, though, his bedroom door remained closed, and that tiny change was enough to send my imagination wandering.
I told myself there were perfectly sensible explanations. Maybe he’d stayed up late reading. Maybe he’d found a new game. Maybe he simply needed the sleep. Those were all reasonable ideas, and any reasonable person would have accepted one of them without another thought. Unfortunately, I’ve lived with my own brain long enough to know that ‘reasonable’ is usually where my thinking begins rather than where it ends.
Pandora had mentioned the previous afternoon that she planned to stop by after work. We hadn’t decided what to have for dinner, but she’d suggested bringing something from the little Italian restaurant down the street. As I stared toward John’s bedroom, an entirely unnecessary thought arrived. What if he’d heard those plans and decided to sleep through the morning simply to avoid the awkwardness of whatever conversation he imagined might happen later? The theory made almost no sense, which was precisely why it refused to leave me alone.
Mr. Whiskers stretched, jumped gracefully from the windowsill, and padded down the hallway until he was sitting outside John’s bedroom door. He stared at it for several seconds before giving one quiet meow. Nothing happened. I folded my arms. Even the cat, I decided, had noticed something unusual. Of course, the cat offered no further evidence. He simply wandered back toward the kitchen as though his work was done.
A knock at the door interrupted my investigation. Mrs. Jenkins stood there holding a covered bowl while Mr. Jenkins balanced a folded newspaper beneath one arm. She smiled warmly. ‘I made too much oatmeal.’ I thanked her, and after a few minutes of pleasant conversation they headed back to their apartment. Before leaving, Mrs. Jenkins glanced toward the hallway and asked if John was sleeping in. When I admitted he was, she chuckled. ‘Don’t invent too many theories before he wakes up, Hal.’ She knew me far too well.
At 7:58 the bedroom door finally opened. John’s hair looked as though he’d spent the night negotiating with a tornado. He shuffled into the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, and yawned with complete contentment.
“Morning,” I said. ”Morning.” ”You slept in.” ”I noticed.” ”Anything you want to tell me?” He frowned. “About what?” ”Pandora is coming over later.” ”So?” ”I wondered if you were avoiding her.” John stared at me for a long moment before laughing so hard he nearly spilled his coffee.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I stayed up until almost three because I couldn’t put my book down.’ He picked up the paperback from the table and held it out. ‘I told myself I’d read one more chapter. Then there was another. Then another.’
I looked at the book, then at the clock, then back at John. I had spent the better part of twenty minutes constructing an elaborate theory about hidden motives, strained friendships, and disrupted routines, when the truth was simply that he’d found a good book.
Mr. Whiskers rubbed against John’s leg, accepted a scratch behind the ears, and wandered away with the quiet confidence of someone who had known the answer from the beginning. I took another sip of coffee and admitted, if only to myself, that perhaps I had overthought the situation just a little. It wouldn’t be the last time. Somehow, I doubted it would even be the last time that week.