When Clementine asked if they both wanted to sit down, she gestured with her glass to a couple of chairs at the back of the yard and led the way. The dogs were busy playing, so Harper didn't have to worry about Jill doing something stupid or the three dogs trying to run away for the time being.

"What's going on?" Clementine inquired, following Harper's gaze as she kept looking at the neighbors, her eyebrows furrowed in suspicion, "Is something wrong?"

"Curious eyes," was Harper's casual and at the same time discouraged reply, without taking her eyes off the houses as she walked next to Clementine, "Some people are too bored and have nothing to do in life."

Like Nicole, for example. A woman who had married her first boyfriend and relatively quickly quit her job to become a housewife. Nothing against housewives, it could be worse than a lot of eight-hour jobs, because there was always something to do and it "never' came to an end because you thought something had to be done. However, this was not the case for Judith's old 'school friend'. Her job was to know EVERYTHING. To want to know everything. To find out everything first. Not to mention telling you about it first.

░

Today, in the last two hours, Harper had exchanged more words with Clementine than she had in all the years since she had first met the blonde with Eve.

At first, Harper had been confused because she had recognized Eve, but with the "wrong" person walking the dog, she was unsure if it was a case of mistaken identity. It wasn't. There was no mistaking Eve, and since Harper never had a problem approaching strangers, she had asked if it was Eve. It was her. Unmistakably.

Harper still felt a little out of place, though, because it felt 'wrong' to be sitting here. The quote, "Have you ever felt lonely in a crowded room?" applied to Harper right now. Basically, she was the new girl among the people she already knew. A fifth wheel on the wagon, or the person who was left out of partner work because she was third in the group and now had to see who else was left.

"Marcus," Harper's bottle head was held level with her glass by a beer as it came from Jill, who had settled down to sleep with Leon and Koda, looking towards Nicole's garden as the suspicious paranoia returned.

"Got that already," Asher's friend pressed his lips together at Harper's absent words and began to nod knowingly, followed by a sideways glance at what appeared to be an ignore, "Harper."

"Got that already," a response that caused Harper to gradually look at Marcus and bump her glass against his bottle, "Let me guess. Someone you absolutely can't stand lives in one of the last houses."

That's one way to look at it.