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Nancy isn’t the type to worry—one doesn’t just fly to another country with zero money or enter a strange hut in the woods at night alone, for example, without a certain amount of confidence. Still, city hall had been closed for hours and Deirdre still hadn’t made it back to the Parry home.
She can only walk back and forth between the guest room bed and window so many times before she wears a hole in the floor, she figures as she reaches for her phone, and that would be unproductive to the case.
On the third ring, Deirdre finally picks up. “Nancy, this better be an emergency. Do you know what time it is?”
“I think the better question is if you know what time it is. Are you planning on coming back at all tonight?”
“Well, it takes a certain amount of skill to sort through all the microfiche, Drew,” Deirdre replies, “I realize your detective skills aren’t quite as advanced, so you may not appreciate the work I do but it takes time.”
“I’m sure it does Deirdre, but that’s not what you’re doing right now. Didn’t city hall close at 6? Where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Why do you even care? You managed on your own just fine today.”
“It’s late and we have an arsonist on the loose. Of course I care. Plus, I’m still a little shaken up by what I saw last night,” Nancy pauses then, “Look, it would make me feel a lot better if you were safe. You probably enjoy making me worry, but please come back, I’ll owe you a favor or something.”
“I don’t want you to worry about me, Nancy. It’s just. Rooming with Mei is difficult. It brings up some things that I’d rather not think about.”
“Take my bed then—I’ll sleep on the couch. Just come back, please?”
“Fine,” Deirdre says and Nancy can practically feel the eyeroll over the phone before the call ends. A little rude, but at least Deirdre agreed with her and she can stop her pacing.
Still, her case partner never actually said where she was and the town is big enough that it’ll probably take her a bit to actually make it back to the house. Nancy makes her way downstairs, looking for something she can do with her hands while waiting.
Once in the kitchen, she realizes that Deirdre probably hasn’t eaten. They both tend to get caught up in their work and lose track of time. Her case partner didn’t seem to hate the pancakes she had made for breakfast, so she pulls the ingredients out of the fridge and glances at the recipe book.
She notices there are a few fun variants of the basic recipe and decides to throw in some fruit as well, hoping Deirdre will appreciate it.
She’s just flipped the last of the pancakes when Deirdre walks through the door.
“Hey, in here. I made a late-night snack in case you’re hungry.”
“Oh, that is surprisingly thoughtful of you.”
Deirdre still has her coat on when she sits down at the table, wringing her hands together as Nancy brings the stack of decorated pancakes over.
“Huh, there’s a cat on here. Did you seriously cook these for me? What am I to you?”
“A Friend…who likes cats?”
Deirdre giggles then, “It is kind of nice of you, not unexpected but still. Now please stop looking at me like that before I barf from all your positive friendship energy.”
Nancy slides into the breakfast nook on the opposite side from Deirdre and decides to let the conversation drop.
“So you’re not going to ask me where I was tonight?” Deidre asks her after finishing her first pancake.
“I figured you wouldn’t want me asking you all of my tactless questions,” Nancy says, miming air quotes, “Do you like the added fruit? It’s mango and blueberry!”
“Ugh, you are so frustrating, Nancy Drew. Have I told you that?”
“Not since breakfast. Look, if you want to talk, we can talk. If you just want to go to bed, you can do that too.”
“I don’t think I want to sleep just yet, but I’m not sure I want to talk either.”
“Why don’t we go up to the guest room and just listen to some music for a bit? You can play me the first album from that band we listened to yesterday, since they were so much better before they switched bassists and all.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that actually sounds nice.”
Nancy cleans up in the kitchen while Deirdre makes her way upstairs, surprised the other woman wanted to spend anymore time with her. Finishing up, she heads to the guestroom herself, and grabbing her pajamas to change into.
When she comes back, Deirdre is sitting up on the bed, leaning against the headboard.
“Alright, let’s get your proper music education started.”
They sit side-by-side on the bed, mostly silent, just listening to the music for a while and Nancy thinks they might actually fall asleep this way before Deirdre speaks up.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, y’know?”
Nancy has never been the best at having normal emotional conversations, so she opts for a short reply, “I know.”
“It’s just hard to talk about the past. I don’t do the whole feelings thing,” Deidre scoffs, “Sometimes I wish I could say what I really mean but the words just get lost along the way.
“Hey, why don’t we both take a sip of this truth serum? Made it myself at Lauren Holt’s shop!” Nancy grabs the bottle out of her bag lying next to the bed, liquid strangely blue.
“Ha. Yeah, right. Like those work,” Deidre says, crossing her arms.
“We won’t know unless we try it.”
“We? I’m not drinking that.”
“So you don’t believe it works, but are too scared to try?”
“Alright, fine. Give me that. One sip for me. Two sips for you, one at a later time of my choice, in case it actually does work.”
Nancy twists the lid off before taking a quick swig, then hands the bottle over to Deirdre.
A few moments pass before Nancy speaks up, “Hmm, I don’t feel any different.”
“No surprise there! The clever Nancy Drew hoodwinked by magical potions.”
“You think I’m clever?”
“You’re the brightest girl I know. No! Wait, that came out wrong. I meant to say I admire the way you—I wish I was more—Gah! I’m shutting up now.”
“I think you’re really intelligent too, Deirdre. You make a great private investigator. And you deserve to find a boyfriend who appreciates you and is just as much as an intellectual as you are.”
“Or a girlfriend. A girlfriend would be nice.”
“Oh! Or a girlfriend. I’m bi too, by the way.”
“I didn’t know that,” Deidre says, considering her words, “What’d Ned say when you told him you’d seen a ghost?”
“Oh shoot. I totally forgot to call him back.”
“You forgot? Do you even want a boyfriend, Drew?”
“Of course I—well, I love him. Ned is safe, you know? We’ve dated for four years. He doesn’t get why I need to go off on adventures all the time, but. Maybe after this is over, I should take a vacation with him. Just relax, no mystery solving.”
“You would hate that. You need a case to crack. You’re a mystery addict. Get him to help. Romance, adventure! A tropical location with stunning sunsets, sounds perfect to me.”
“I can’t say no to a good mystery; you’re right. Even when I do try to go on a vacation, I end up finding a case anyway. I feel like Ned wouldn’t enjoy that either. I wonder sometimes if this is how my dad felt about my mom.”
“Your mom? Wasn’t she a journalist?”
“She was. Last year I found out that she was also a spy and was working on a case when she died. Part of a group called Cathedral. She left it behind when I was born, but an old rival-turned-friend called her and begged her to come back for one last case. Huh, me and you are a lot like my mom and Moira, now that I think about it.”
“Wow. That is…a lot. How did you find out?”
Nancy huffs out a laugh then. ‘A lot’ is really the perfect description for everything that happened to her over the last few years.
“My mom stopped a biochem weapon from being deployed on that last mission. Turns out the group was still out there and they thought they could use me to track down the original virus formula. That case was the hardest of any I’ve ever been on, but I don’t regret it. Seeing the work my mom was doing, reading her notes, it made me feel like I was closer to her than I ever was before. I just wish—” Nancy trails off.
“Wish what?” Deirdre prompts her.
“Well, I just wish I had found something where she was writing about me or my dad. It’s selfish but I just wanted to find some journal completely unrelated about the case where she wrote about teaching me piano or something like that.”
“That’s not selfish at all, Drew. I guess since we are doing the whole mushy feeling sharing, I can at least tell you about Mei.”
“You don’t have to--,” Nancy starts to say before Deirdre cuts her off.
“No, I need to. I don’t want to lie to you. The fire Mei was in as a child, I was there that night. I was supposed to be watching her since Teegan was out with her friends. But I didn’t pay enough attention. At some point she got into that shed and the fire started and now she has scars for the rest of her life and this entire dumbass town thinks she burned down the Hathorne House despite a total lack of evidence. And it’s like ‘does Salem just automatically need to go on a literal witch hunt every 400 years?’ but this whole situation is all my fault and how can I even share a room with Mei when she might go to jail because of me? She should hate me.”
Nancy grabs Deirdre’s hand, thankful the other girl doesn’t recoil at the gesture.
“Whoa, Deidre, okay. First of all, I appreciate you trusting me with that. Second, you were what, eleven, when that happened? You were a kid and the fire was not your fault. Just like the Hathorne House fire is not Mei’s fault and we’re going to prove it.”
Deidre turns a bit on the bed to look at her then. “You really think we’re going to be able to prove she’s innocent? This town is so gung-ho on convicting her.”
“We’re a team, remember? Side-by-side. Of course we will. Also, it’s totally up to you, and I’m not an expert at this at all since I’ve only been going for like seven months, but I started seeing a therapist after I found out about my mom. It’s still new but seems to be helping. Maybe it would be good for you too?”
“Ok, yeah. I’ll think about. Can we maybe talk about something lighter though?”
“Did I ever tell you about the time I broke up a crime ring in Venice? It involves me dancing in a black catsuit to tea kettle noises.”
“You in a catsuit?” Deirdre asks, considering, “Sounds like a good look. Ok, start from the beginning.”
It feels nice sharing with Deirdre, their hands still intertwined, but without the pressure of any eye contact. She realizes then that she hasn’t even told Bess or George, or even Ned all of this story as she starts in on a bit about Colin Baxter.
“So then he says ‘let me show you my tesserae’”
“Please tell me that’s not a reference to his dick.”
“I sure hope not given we had to look at them under a microscope! Sometimes in my nightmares I still hear him say ‘I adore this shade of crimson’ while the tesserae slideshow plays on repeat.”
Maybe the night is just a fluke, and everything will reset in the morning, but a part of Nancy really hopes it doesn’t.
When she wakes up, Deirdre is already gone. Not surprising given what a morning person the girl is, but Nancy wishes she would have woken up to being the little spoon or something cute like that.
As she makes her way down the stairs, she hears Mei asking Deirdre about the prior night.“What, sharing a room with me to sleep was too much or something?”
She hears Deirdre sputter a bit and decides to jump in as she rounds the corner. “G’morning Mei, Deirdre and I were going over our case notes last night and didn’t realize how late it was. She didn’t want to accidentally wake you up, so we both just crashed in the guest room.”
Deirdre shoots her a thankful look before corroborating, “There’s just so many people with motives and yet no evidence linking anyone to the arson.”
Mei seems satisfied with the excuse and breakfast runs smoothly after that. She and Deirdre decide to investigate the courthouse break-in, but Nancy feels like they must address the moon-sized elephant in the room before they can get anything done.
“Hey Deirdre, I think once this case is over, I’m going to drive over to Emerson so I can talk to Ned.”
“Oh,” Deirdre practically whispers, face fallen.
“We’ve dated for four years now, and given we’re nearby, I feel like I should probably tell him in person that I’d like to break up.”
“Oh,” Deirdre says again, somehow making the word sound completely new.
“After, I want to take some time for myself and just be single for a bit. But after that? Definitely interested in exploring something if I’m reading these signals right? Maybe there’ll be another mystery in Austria that I’ll need help solving—I think you’d like it there.”