They choose a diner they say they used to frequent when they were teenagers together and, for a diner, it doesn’t look bad. The customers are around Stacy’s and Candace’s age or older, the servers wear genuine smiles, and the food smells great.

  I explained to Stacy on the way over that I got Candace’s number from a nameless person as someone who could help me. I don’t enjoy lying to her, but the truth could scare them. Maybe it should. I feel a moment of crushing guilt as we settle into an overstuffed booth and our waitress, an older lady with fading red hair, offers us each a menu like everything’s normal. Like I’m not some kind of time bomb. I should get out of here. I’m putting everyone here at risk, aren’t I? Yeah, it’s not for sure, but I don’t know what step to take next. Where to go. I still need help. Besides, if I can be a danger, I can also be a benefit, so maybe it evens out? Am I selfishly rationalizing? I don’t know for sure. I’ve no reason to trust my analysis. Not with all this going on.

  Shit. I’m a mess.

  Stacy has been chattering away. It’s calming, I think, for both Candace and me. It’s easy to get caught up in her stories and inanities. Calming for me to know that she’s not scared of me. For Candace, it seems to pull her out of her own head as Stacy reminds her old friend of mutual acquaintances and whatever tragic or amusing gossip relates to them, and then she reminisces about their shared adventures back in the day. Candace is soon laughing despite herself. It’s a brilliant and gentle monologue for both of us.

  We were lucky to get a table. The place fills up, running out of seating in the waiting area. A harried manager pushes a few tables together to accommodate a couple of big parties that arrived all at once. The thinly organized chaos that’s a busy restaurant has me Pushing against little patches of darkness that keep cropping up. Eventually, I’m going to miss one and the cook will burn himself or an old man will trip or the ceiling will collapse or something.

  Then Stacy arches an eyebrow and says, “So, I heard you married Craig?”

  Candace collapses into herself. For a wild moment, I think that she’ll continue to do so, that my luck has gone crazy and she’ll spaghettify and get sucked into a button on her blouse because it’s turned into a black hole. Her face screws up, flushes with shame, and she starts to cry.

  Stacy moves from beside me to sit by her friend and embraces her. “What’s that shit gone and done, eh?” says Stacy. “Who could hurt a sweetheart like you?”

  Candace laughs despite herself. She says, “He caught religion a few years ago. One of those mega-churches? I went a few times, but it wasn’t for me. They’re a bit narrow-minded for a girl who grew up with Sesame Street and Diff’rent Strokes.”

  “Oh, one of those,” says Stacy, shooting me a meaningful look I’m not sure I understand.

  I nod.

  “Yeah,” says Candace. “Jesus this and Revelations that. Church should be uplifting, you know? That doom and gloom and scare them into the pews stuff was supposed to be over with the Salem Witch Trials.”

  Stacy barks a laugh.

  I smile and nod.

  “But he’s gotten worse,” says Candace. “He’s alienated our friends and family. He hasn’t touched me in months.” She looks up at me. “Sorry.” She blinks and leans into Stacy. She sobs. “This morning, he took the kids to a retreat, he says, but he won’t tell me where or when they’ll be back. They both hate that church, but Craig doesn’t care.”

  “What an asshole,” says Stacy, rubbing her friend’s back.

  “He’ll barely talk to me, Stace,” says Candace. She sits up and looks Stacy in the eye. “I haven’t spoken to anybody in weeks. I’ve been so alone.”

  Stacy tears up and they grasp each other.

  I choke on a sob of my own. I have no one who would hold me like that. Not in this world, and it fucking hurts.

  Stacy catches it.

  She stands, bringing Candace with her, and I’m astonished to be pulled into a hug with both of them.

  It is so what I needed. It’s like I didn’t know I was starving and she’s put a perfect cheeseburger in my mouth. With bacon and onion rings. A dash of sriracha. Something the salivary glands meet with painful eagerness, right?

  I guess I know what I’m going to order.

  We stand in the aisle beside our table and have a good cry.

  Then I hear a sound. At first, it’s so out of place, so extraordinary that I can’t recognize it. The eighties music that was playing has stopped and one woman, over in the corner, is singing. Then another and then a third. The notes diverge into discord that shimmers beautifully. More women join and now it’s their entire table. A man stands and conducts with a table knife.

  Stacy, Candace, and I sit, captivated by the wonder of it.

  The music pulses in its phrasing and soon the other crowded tables join. Men’s voices blend effortlessly into the women’s, creating something so ethereal, so otherworldly that I’m weeping now, not in pain but with the gorgeous surprise of it all.

  The song swells, the sound vibrating in my chest and head. The conductor’s eyes are closed as he moves, not just his choir but everybody in the room.

  We get so caught up in popular music, don’t we? With its sexy fun, its catchy tunes that get stuck in your head, its commercial shallow awesomeness, that sometimes we forget, I think, that music can be beautiful. It can be so lovely that it restores your faith in humanity or yourself. If you’ve never heard a song that made you cry, not because of the words — I can’t understand a single lyric of whatever they’re singing now. I think it’s in Latin — but from its majesty and wonder or sheer fucking beauty, then I wonder if you can actually say you know what music is.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  This flash mob in the diner? These singers remind me, and my eyes aren’t the only wet ones in the place.

  It’s wonderful.

  The end of the piece steals my breath. The soprano and alto are so pure as they refrain with the bass and tenor supporting as they all bring the song to a shining conclusion.

  There’s electric quiet for a moment and then applause. Many of the diners pull the singers and the conductor into hugs, offering heartfelt thanks. I’m surprised to find I’m one of them.

  Candace, Stacy, and I sit there afterward, stunned.

  “I think that was one of the most beautiful moments of my life,” Stacy says in a near whisper.

  Candace and I nod.

  There are all kinds of luck. Whatever else my life has become now, it includes things like this, too.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  It’s Stacy that brings us back to ourselves. She proudly displays to us a paper napkin with two names and a phone number. “This,” she says. “Is the name of that wonderful conductor and his phone number.” She giggles. “I wonder if he conducts himself just as well in the bedroom,” she says with a wink.

  Candace rolls her red eyes, but she’s smiling fondly at her friend.

  “And this,” Stacy’s finger taps beside the other name. “Says Knut Nystedt. I was sure to spell it right. He’s the composer. I think I’m going to make a playlist with everything he’s ever done on it. My God, wasn’t that wonderful?”

  Candace and I nod.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if he caught on?” says Stacy. “Instead of ‘Send nudes,’ it could be ‘Send Knuts.’”

  We laugh.

  “I mean, the poor guy probably had to write such wonderfulness with a name like that in pure self-defense. Named after a type of lizard,” says Stacy, deadpan.

  She cracks more jokes and the combination of her humor, and the music has restored us quite a bit, Candace and me.

  Candace laughs so hard she soon excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She leaves her purse behind, and Stacy snatches it up with a determined expression, opens it, and roots around.

  “Whoa, Stacy, what—?” I begin.

  But Stacy plops down a full bottle of prescription pills in front of me. Then she sets another down beside the first.

  “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, Ben Walker,” Stacy tells me. She pulls out a bottle of whiskey that’s still a quarter full and sets it beside the pills. “But I think you saved my friend’s life today. Take those to the men’s room, will you, sweetie, and destroy them?”

  I nod, gather up the pills and the bottle without a word, and take them to the bathroom where I empty the pills and the bottle down the toilet. I’ve heard that you’re not supposed to do that, but I’m sure I’ll be forgiven, considering.

  When I return, both women are standing and ready to go. Candace frowns at the sudden lightness of her purse, but she doesn’t say anything.

  I pay the bill and we’re off.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  I have instant reservations when we pull up in front of the office used by Candace’s brother and his wife. There’s a sign on the wall of a robin’s egg blue trailer reading, “Alex W. West, Attorney,” and “Myra West, CPA.” The trailer is just outside town in a lot with nothing else around.

  Candace shrugs. “It doesn’t look like much, I know,” she says. “Alex says the taxes out here are cheaper and both of them are just starting out their own practices. He’s really good. So’s she. Myra’s odd, but a whiz with numbers.”

  Candace leads us up to the door and opens it. When she sees Stacy still waiting by the car, she says, “No, uh uh, you’re coming too. They’ve got cucumber water.”

  “Oh. Well,” says Stacy. “Cucumber water.” But she comes inside with us.

  Inside, instead of where in a regular trailer you’d expect a living room, there are matching desks to either side of us. Behind each, I’m sure, sits Alex and Myra West, respectively.

  Alex is a big man. He’s a few inches taller than me and broader by a quarter. Heavier too, by at least fifty pounds and maybe more. He looks like a bricklayer or a professional wrestler rather than a lawyer. “Hello!” he booms in a big bass voice. “You must be the guy my sister texted me about.” He turns to Stacy. “Stacy Nostrum,” he says. “A vision. You haven’t aged a day since high school.”

  “And you’re not doing your profession any favors,” says Stacy. “Lying like that.” But she giggles, pleased.

  Alex turns to his wife, who’s still sitting behind her desk. Her glasses are big and round. She is little and waifish with a pixie-cut hairdo and an owlish expression. “Myra? Did you ever meet Stacy?”

  “Nope,” says Myra. “I don’t think so.”

  Stacy says, “Myra, I’ve heard such great things.”

  Alex says, “Do you need advice too, Stacy? I’m always available to help a friend. Myra and me both.”

  Stacy says, “Nah, I’m just the driver.”

  Alex blinks. “Driver?”

  “Yep,” says Stacy. She turns to Candace. “I believe I was promised cucumber water?”

  Candace snorts. “They’ve got a little room back here to wait in. Come on.”

  Alex looks back at me. He looks skeptical. “Stacy’s your driver?” he says.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “It’s kind of a long story and, if you’re going to be my lawyer and your wife’s going to be my accountant, then I’d better tell you all of it.”

  I do. Every last bit.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  “No way,” says Alex when I’m finished.

  Myra looks deep in thought.

  “Stacy and Candace were there for the flash mob. Stacy can tell you about the pills. I don’t know if Candace is ready to talk about that yet. For the rest, well, the sheriff’s department and the FBI might tell you.” I shrug.

  “I’m going to kill Craig,” says Alex. “What’s he done with my niece and nephew?”

  “You can’t kill Craig,” says Myra. “You’re an officer of the court.”

  “Exactly,” says Alex. “I know people.”

  Myra just looks at him.

  Alex rolls his eyes and smiles fondly. “I’m not going to kill Craig, Myra.” Then, to me, he says, “Myra’s very literal. You get used to it.”

  Myra says, “I’ve been working for a client, doing some forensic work on his books.” She leans back in her chair. “I know I’ve seen the evidence I need to prove his partner’s embezzling, but I can’t find it. I know it’s here.” She indicates a file cabinet. “I work better with print.” Then she points a finger at me. “Find it.”

  That’s fair.

  Shrugging, I walk over to the cabinet and Push. I open a drawer at random and pull whichever file seems brightest. I open another and pull two more. Then I walk over to Alex’s side of the office, where he’s got a matching set of cabinets, open one of his drawers, pull one last file from there, and deposit them all in front of Myra.

  Alex says, “What the hell? She didn’t even tell you—.”

  Myra holds up a finger as she goes through what I brought her. After a minute or two, she says, “My God, this is it.” Then she says, “I think. What the fuck is this?” She holds up the file I brought over from Alex’s stuff. His folders are all blue while Myra’s are green. “Never mind,” she says. “I’m convinced. Alex, you and I will take a look at this,” she holds up the blue folder, “Later. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but it’s in your bailiwick, after all.”

  Alex looks doubtful. “Well, if you say so, Myra. Mr. Walker, you’ve got yourself a lawyer and an accountant in one fell swoop. We charge a thousand-dollar retainer, payable now, if it’s convenient.”

  Myra snorts. “And even if it isn’t.”

  I hand over my bank card.

  Alex takes it to his desk, pulls out one of those reader thingies you attach to a tablet, and swipes it.

  After a long moment, he swipes it again.

  “Um, you got another card?” asks Alex.

  I have a sinking feeling. Sure enough, when I check my bank app, all my money is gone.