“Any leads on who did it?” she asked, a smile in her voice.
“Eh, it’s teenagers. It’s always teenagers. Firecrackers in mailboxes, stealing wine coolers from the grocery store, nature peeing—”
“Nature peeing…” she deadpanned.
“Yup.” I pried open a paint can. “It is exactly what it sounds like. The businesses are either closed for the season or they don’t want kids in their stores using their bathrooms, so they just go where they can. The alley outside of the pharmacy was starting to smell like a urinal.”
“And you have to deal with this? This isn’t a police issue?”
“I suppose it is if Jake can catch them,” I said. “Which he can’t. Evading the police is a time-honored Wakan tradition,” I said, stirring the stain. “That’s half the fun.”
“Ah. So what are you going to do about this crime spree, Mayor?”
“I’m working on a volunteer program for the off-season, actually. Stuff to keep them busy. Doug’s going to teach them beekeeping, I’ll do a woodworking workshop. If they do community service, they get credits to use at the rental place for bikes or kayaks. We’re having a fund-raiser for it in a few weeks.”
“Nice. I thought you said the mayor thing was honorary.”
I shrugged. “It is. I mean, I was elected. But the town’s too small for it to be a paying gig, so I always feel like it doesn’t really count. It’s just sort of something the Grants have always done.”
“Well, you sound like a very good mayor,” she said. “Even if you don’t feel like it’s a real thing—which it sounds like it is. You could have punished the kids instead.”
I shook my head. “Nah. Grace costs you nothing,” I said, brushing stain on a headboard.
“Huh?”
“Grace costs you nothing. My grandma used to say it. She especially liked to say it to herself when I was being a little shit.”
“I somehow doubt you were ever a little shit.”
“It’s hard being a teenager here,” I said. “It can be very boring. Actually, it’s hard being an adult here too. You know, if the population is less than a thousand, it isn’t even a town. It’s a village.”
“So you’re a villager,” she said, sounding amused.
“Yup. Any chance I can get you to raid my village tonight? Because I’d like to see you.”
“I can’t.” I pictured her putting out a bottom lip. “I have a girls’ weekend thing. I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
My smile fell a fraction of an inch. It had already been over a week. I wanted to see her.
“You’ll just have to settle for talking to me instead,” she said, a smile in her voice.
I grinned “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about we play a game?” I asked.
“A game? What kind of game?”
“A get-to-know-you game.”
I pictured a shrug. “Okay. Sure.”
If history was any indication, she’d deflect the questions I really wanted to know the answers to. So I decided to keep it light.
“If you could go back in time, when would you visit?”
“Hmmmmm,” she said. “That’s a good question. Am I a ghost? Or do I actually have to live back then?”
I shook my head. “Why would you want to be a ghost?”
“Too many diseases. Diphtheria, smallpox, bubonic plague. People back then lived to the ripe old age of childbirth.”
“You could be anyone,” I said. “Any gender. You could be a king.”
“You think kings had it any better? What about Charles II of Spain? He was so inbred he could barely eat. His jaw was horribly disfigured, he had rickets, hallucinations, an oversized head, he was impotent and infertile. Henry VIII had an ulcerated leg from a jousting match that was so putrid you could smell him coming from three rooms over. And some think he went mad from syphilis.”
I smiled. “So a little syph and you’re out, huh?”
“Are we still talking about the king thing, or is this a dating question? Syphilis is highly treatable and nothing to be ashamed of. A single intramuscular injection of long-acting benzathine penicillin will take care of it.”
“Okay, we get it, you know how to cure syphilis.”
She laughed again.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, dipping my brush in the can and tapping it. “I read a lot of historic nonfiction. I guess it was pretty brutal back then.”