Chapter 27: The Inside Reference
The motel steps had become our neutral ground.
Two beers—cheap Canadian domestics that tasted like water with ambition—and the view of a parking lot that rarely held more than four cars. The evening air carried the particular chill of early March, cold enough to require jackets but warm enough to suggest that winter might eventually end.
Stevie settled beside me with the practiced ease of someone who'd shared this space before. With the real Mutt, I assumed. The one whose body I inhabited, whose history I was supposed to remember.
"Long day," she said.
"Aren't they all?"
"Some longer than others." She took a sip of her beer. "The Roses are settling in. Johnny's actually making improvements. David didn't insult anyone today—that I know of. Even Moira seems less..." She searched for the word. "Horrified."
"Give it time."
"Time for what? For them to like it here? Or for them to leave?"
"Maybe both." I watched a car drive past on the main road—the first in twenty minutes. "People adapt. Even people who don't want to."
Stevie was quiet for a moment, and I could feel her attention shift—subtle but unmistakable. The casual conversation taking on an edge I couldn't quite identify.
"Remember when we used to do this? Before everything changed?"
The question landed like a trap I couldn't see the shape of. Before everything changed—before the Roses, she probably meant. Before whatever had shifted between her and the original Mutt.
"It feels like a long time ago."
"It does." She turned to look at me directly. "Remember that night at the quarry? With the fireworks?"
My mind went blank.
The quarry. Fireworks. A specific memory that she expected me to share, details that I should have access to, history that belonged to the body I wore and the life I'd inherited.
I had nothing.
The pause stretched half a beat too long—long enough for someone paying attention to notice.
"That night's blurry for multiple reasons," I said, forcing a laugh that probably sounded more natural than it felt. "You'll have to remind me which part you mean."
Stevie's expression didn't change. But something behind her eyes shifted—calculation, maybe, or confirmation of something she'd suspected.
"Right. You were pretty wasted."
"Wasn't I always?"
"Not always." She returned her attention to the parking lot, but I could feel the temperature between us cooling. "Just the nights that mattered."
The silence that followed wasn't comfortable. It was the silence of something unresolved, a test I'd failed without fully understanding the stakes.
I knew I should fill it. Should say something light, something deflecting, something that would smooth over the gap my hesitation had created. But everything I thought of felt like it would make things worse—would draw more attention to what I didn't remember instead of less.
So I waited.
Stevie finished her beer in three long swallows. Set the empty bottle down with careful precision.
"I should head back."
"It's early."
"Long day tomorrow. Johnny wants to review the quarterly numbers." She stood, brushing off her jeans. "Thanks for the beer."
"Thanks for the company."
She paused at the door, her hand on the handle, her back to me.
"You know what I remember about that night? The way you laughed when the first firework didn't go off. You said..." She stopped. Shook her head. "Never mind. Doesn't matter."
The door closed behind her before I could respond.
I sat alone on the motel steps, surrounded by the quiet of a small town at night, holding a beer I no longer wanted to drink.
That night at the quarry, with the fireworks.
I had no idea what she was talking about. No memory to access, no history to draw from. Just the hollow space where someone else's life was supposed to be.
The Skill Sharing Network connected me to Stevie—I'd felt it during the Room 7 renovation, the way her techniques improved while we worked together. But the Network shared skills, not memories. It couldn't give me the experiences that the real Mutt had lived, the moments that had formed the foundation of whatever relationship they'd once had.
And Stevie was testing for exactly that.
I replayed the conversation in my mind, searching for where I'd gone wrong. The hesitation had been brief—half a second, maybe less. But half a second was enough when someone was watching carefully. And Stevie watched everything carefully.
She wanted him to remember specifically. He didn't.
The beer went warm in my hand. The parking lot stayed empty. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a clock started ticking—time running out before Stevie's suspicion crystallized into certainty.
I needed to learn about the quarry night. Needed to find details that would let me reconstruct what had happened, what had been said, what the real Mutt would have remembered if he were still here.
But how do you research your own past without revealing that you don't have one?
I stood, finally, and went inside. The motel hallway was quiet, the rooms occupied by sleeping guests and Roses who'd retreated to their separate spaces. Stevie's door stayed closed as I passed.
Tomorrow, she'd look at me differently. The warmth that had been building between us would have an edge to it—the sharpness of someone who'd noticed a crack and was waiting to see if it would widen.
I couldn't fix this. Couldn't explain. Couldn't tell her the truth without unraveling everything I'd built.
All I could do was keep going. Keep being helpful. Keep hoping that consistency would outweigh the suspicion, that reliable presence would matter more than perfect memory.
But the weight of the lie sat heavier than it had before, and I understood something I should have known from the beginning: you can't inherit someone's life without inheriting their ghosts.
The quarry. The fireworks. A night I'd never lived but was supposed to remember.
I added it to the list of things I needed to learn and hoped I'd have the chance before Stevie decided that the Mutt who came back from wherever he'd been was somehow not the same Mutt who'd left.
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