We Find What Is Lost: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 1)

Chapter Twenty: Rachel, Fall, 1978

Dad wasn't comfortable leaving Rachel on her own that night, and for a horrifying minute he floated the idea of her staying with Mrs. Anderson. Luckily Lauren stepped in and said, "You can sleep over at my place if you want."

"You need to ask your parents if that's okay, first," Dad said.

"But can I?" Rachel asked him. "If her parents say yes?" The idea of a sleepover was thrilling to her. She'd never had one before.

"I don't have a problem with it. We've taken a lot of Mrs. Anderson's time lately, I'm sure she'd like a break."

Not only was Rachel allowed to sleep over, she was invited to dinner. She didn't often get to see what her friends ate or partake in same. Joe's mom took the most interest in feeding her. "You too skinny!" she would admonish her in that thick Italian accent. "You gotta eat! Don't you daddy feed you?" Sunny's house often had some wonderful, exotic smells wafting from it, but she could never find a way to invite herself over to eat there. And Al... well, Hunter and Duchess were there, and his dad never liked having company over, so she didn't take advantage of many opportunities to eat there.

Lauren's family ate roughly the same as she did, except for those shrimp crackers, and the addition of rice to every meal. Rachel had rice before, but this was different; it had a pleasing stickiness and it was slightly sweet. She liked the chew between her teeth.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Rachel," said Toshiro Hasegawa, Lauren's father, a slender, powerful man with ropy arms and a chiselled face sporting a Van Dyke beard. He wore a blue chambray work shirt with the sleeves rolled up. "Lauren has told us a lot about you."

"She has?" Rachel looked at her friend, who was busy stirring her food around.

"When we first moved here, we were unsure if she would make friends. She had some problems with bullying where we used to live. Yet we learned that, on the day she met you and your friends, you immediately included her in your games. For that we are grateful."

Rachel blinked at Mr. Hasegawa's forthrightness. "Well," she said, "it wasn't really a game we involved her in. It was a dead dog."

"So unfortunate," said Ellen, Lauren's mother, a small, pale brunette wearing a creamy cable-knit sweater. "It was good of you to stay with it until Animal Control picked it up. We heard it belonged to a little girl, and that you worked with the girl's father to supply a replacement that looked like it?"

"Yeah. It seemed to work." She said no more about it because she didn't want to cry again, not in front of these new grown-ups who were still a little mysterious to her.

"That was very clever of you," said Toshiro. "If I were the girl's father, though, I don't know if I would have lied to my daughter like that; if she discovered the truth, it would do great damage to our relationship."

"Yes," she said, not knowing what else to say.

"Still," he said, smiling, "if he wanted to do business with you and spend that kind of money, why should you be concerned with the ethics of the venture?"

This was venturing too far into the kind of conversation that had caused the brief rift between her and her dad, even if it did seem like Toshiro was taking her side, so she decided to change the subject. "Thank you for helping us make the contraption to carry the papers. It helps us do it all in one go."

"It wasn't that hard," he said, shrugging. "I use a lot of rope in my work and make a wide variety of knots."

"He has to untie them every time I need to make a run to the store," Ellen said, chuckling and giving him an affectionate look. "That's my good shopping cart, but who am I to stand in the way of my daughter's industry?"