A Lesson For A Detective
After breakfast, before they left for the riding stables, Mira opened her notebook.
She wrote at the bottom of Case 10:
*Case 10: voluntarily UNSOLVED.*
*Lesson: a detective's job is to find the truth when the truth is missing. Not every secret is a missing truth. Some secrets are gifts. The job of a detective is also to know which is which.*
She put the notebook in her drawer.
The riding lesson was wonderful. The horse was a small brown one called Hazel. Hazel had a slightly grumpy expression and walked very gently. Mira sat on her back for the first time and felt a feeling she did not have a word for. The instructor was a kind woman called Ms Lukas who told Mira to keep her heels down and her hands soft.
Afterwards, riding home in the back of the car, Mira looked out the window. She felt happy.
She was happy because of the horse, of course. But also — she was happy that she had let her parents surprise her. The surprise had been a gift she gave them, not just one they gave her.
When she got home, she took out the notebook. She added one more line at the bottom of Case 10:
*A surprise is a thing two people make together — one by hiding it, the other by not looking. That is teamwork.*
She put the notebook back. She had a lot more cases to solve, after all. And tomorrow she would investigate the loud noise that had been coming from Mrs Hagen's shed at night.
But that