When Devils Sing(16)
Neera spoke up before Nani could respond. “That’s all we have.” Her words were final, definitive.
Sheriff Buckley picked up his cup, seemingly to take a sip, but instead he spit his dip into the chai. The force of the blackened wad sent the drink spilling onto the table. “Oh, would you look at that,” he said benignly, making no move to clean it up. “Forgive my clumsiness.”
Neera bit down hard on her tongue. She grabbed napkins from behind the front desk and cleaned up the spilled chai without looking either officer in the eye. Her grandfather watched in silence, while Nani just stood there, wringing her wrinkled hands, looking lost, before she turned and went back to the kitchen. There was something so shameful about the whole thing.
But Neera would rather feel that shame a thousand times over if it meant her grandmother didn’t have to. She finished wiping up the last of the tea and straightened, forcing herself to meet Sheriff Buckley’s eyes. Willing her own gaze to burn into him, as if to say: I was once afraid of you, but not anymore.
The sheriff stared right back. His gaze felt wrong. “What about you, huh? You see anythin’ suspicious last night?”
The memory of Nanaji’s yelling match with the handyman flashed through her mind. Wiley’s threat was fresh, lingering on the tip of her tongue. If Langley County police were a just or honest group, Neera would’ve told the officers everything. But the Singh family intimately knew that they were neither. “No, sir. Nothing.”
Sheriff Buckley squinted at her. “All right, then. I suppose we’re done.” He reached into his pocket for a business card and tossed it onto the damp, sticky table. “If you feel so inclined to report anything else that may happen around here, you can just call us directly.” Both cops rose and made for the exit.
Officer Taylor tipped his thick head by way of goodbye.
“Y’all take care,” Sheriff Buckley said from the doorway, with a deliberate look first at Nanaji, then Neera. He wrapped his knuckles twice against the doorframe on his way out.
Nanaji picked up the business card, folding it twice, and placed it in his pocket. He didn’t look at Neera as he said, “You’ll work the front desk today.” Without giving her a chance to protest, he left the lobby.
* * *
WITH THE COPS gone, Neera stood in the small kitchen connected to the lobby, nursing her third cup of coffee, and went through the day’s roster book. There were no check-outs or check-ins scheduled. They were at half occupancy, which was strange for the beginning of summer, especially with the Cicada Festival coming up.
Every summer, thousands of tourists came to Lake Clearwater to enjoy idyllic paddleboarding and lakeside golf. But the Cicada Festival was special—those years, the tourists swarmed the manicured lawns in numbers rivaled only by the insects themselves. Cicada summers on Lake Clearwater came to a dramatic end with the last day of the festival, held on the Fourth of July. There was no better place in all the Deep South to celebrate being American.
If only the motel’s occupancy could reflect the upcoming influx of tourists. Maybe then her grandfather’s debt could be paid.
Neera took another sip of her coffee, gazing out the small kitchen windows with dry, heavy eyes. It was barely past eleven, but the cracked parking lot already shimmered with midday heat, as the land hadn’t been blessed that day with a breeze. Beyond the lot, the longleaf pines stood still, their sparse canopies towering high above. From the branch of the nearest pine, a lone crow took flight into the cloudless blue sky.
As the bird flew, it seemed to mutate and multiply, transforming from one bird into dozens—then hundreds. Thousands. The crows moved through the sky like starlings, twisting and dipping in the air, drawing circles around themselves until Neera could no longer see the individual birds. There were only black wings dancing, morphing, rapidly shifting into shapes she couldn’t make sense of, but she was unable to look away.
The bell above the lobby door dinged sharply. It was like breaking a soundproof seal—the shrieking of the cicadas startling Neera back to reality. She rubbed her eyes, then looked again to the sky, finding a singular crow flying off into the late June day.
Neera shook off the moment before setting her coffee down and hurrying to the front desk.
A tall teenage boy stood in the lobby, his arms full with a heavy crate of leafy greens and vegetables. He wore shining sunglasses that covered his eyes, while a bushel of mustard greens covered half his face. His outfit, a pair of fitted dress pants and a striped polo, had the neat, crisp look of someone who had spent a fair amount of time choosing exactly what to wear.
“Where can I set this?” he asked as he kicked the door closed with his polished leather shoe.
“Oh, there’s fine.” Neera motioned to the sticky table where the cops had sat earlier.
“Thank you,” the boy said as he laid the crate on the table. He dusted invisible dirt off his clothes, then turned to Neera and smiled, removing his sunglasses. It was a smile she once knew well—an infectious sort of joy she envied since she was little. “Hey, Neera.”
“Isaiah?” Neera was frozen in shock for all of a second, then she stepped forward and offered him an awkward one-armed hug. They pulled apart, eyeing each other, unsure of what to say. “Why’re you here?”
Isaiah smiled sheepishly. “Just dropping this off. My family wanted to send it over after what happened last night.” His sharp eyes took in the small lobby, as observant as he had been when they were kids. His gaze lingered on the burnt remains of the Cadillac in the parking lot. “My uncle Ced was one of the firefighters on the scene. Grandma Bee wanted to help in some way. You know how she is.”