I unbuttoned the top of my black cotton dress, letting the cool night air touch my skin before I pulled off my shoes, a pair of black slingback heels Gran had probably had in her closet since 1960. The same was likely true for the pearl earrings I’d fished from her jewelry box that morning.
The crickets woke with the darkness that fell over the thin strip of town that lined the road, not a car in sight. Small communities like this one usually went to sleep with the sun, and Jasper was mostly farms, which meant its residents would be up when the roosters crowed.
The main street had some other name no one ever remembered, a combination of four or five numbers that only showed up on maps. In Jasper, it was known as just the river road, the only way to town from the remote stretches that were tucked into the surrounding mountains. South took you to Asheville. North took you to Tennessee.
A banner for the upcoming Midsummer Faire was stretched out across the only intersection, catching the wind like a sail. The redbrick-faced buildings were more than 150 years old. They snaked along the Adeline River, which, that time of night, with the moon waning, just looked like a wall of black. The only reminders that it was there were the hiss of it running over the rocks in the shallows and the distinct smell that the churn of mountain water put into the air.
The lights of the cafe, the feed store, the grocery, and the bank were dark, and the poorly marked side streets were quiet. One after the other, the tilting signs reflected the moonlight as we passed. Bard Street, Cornflower Street, Market Street . . . I let my eyes drift to the shadows that striped this last narrow alley. It was there that Clarence Taylor had heard those cries in the darkness and found me.
Then there was Rutherford Street, named after one of the Jasper’s more sinister tales, the only one I knew of that overshadowed my mother’s strange disappearance. Decades ago, the town’s minister had been brutally murdered at the river, though I wasn’t sure what truth there was to the grisly details I’d heard murmured over the years. There were people who still left flowers on his grave and his picture hung in the cafe like the patron saint of Jasper, still watching over his flock. My missing mother, on the other hand, had barely warranted a search party.
“Did Mason lock up?” Birdie asked, eyes finding the dark windows of the flower shop across the street.
I nodded, watching our reflections on the glass as we walked side by side. Birdie had taken over running the shop when Gran got so sick she couldn’t work, and now Mason had pretty much taken over things at the farm. My days for the last year and a half had been spent looking after Gran, and now that she was gone, I wasn’t sure where I fit anymore. I wasn’t sure it would matter much longer, either.
The porch light of the little house I’d grown up in was the only one lit when we turned onto Bishop Street. Even from the outside, it looked different without my grandmother in it. Older, somehow. Birdie, on the other hand, looked younger in the moonlight. She opened the gate to the once-white picket fence, holding it open for me before she followed.
She’d sold her house and moved in three years ago, taking the spare room downstairs when Gran’s decline worsened, and the two of us became the three of us. But in a way, that had always been true. Even before Birdie’s husband died, she’d been a fixture, a rare constant in my life. That was one thing that wouldn’t change now that Gran was gone.
I climbed the steps to the porch and opened the screen door. For no other reason than it was habit, I reached into the open letter box, tucking the little stack of envelopes under my arm. With a pang of guilt, I realized it was one of those mundane things that went on, even when your world stopped spinning. Edison’s Cafe still closed at 8 P.M., the morning glories still bloomed at dawn, and the mail was still delivered every day but Sunday.
Birdie pushed through the door, and that smell—old wood and decades’ worth of brewed coffee that had baked itself into the walls—made my throat constrict. She hung her sweater on one of the hooks, where Gran’s hand-knit scarf was still buried beneath an umbrella and a rain jacket. I suspected that the ache of missing her would mostly come from those little things. The holes that were left behind, empty places I’d stumble upon now that she was gone.
A narrow hallway stretched past the sitting room to the bottom of the stairs. The floorboards groaned, the old house creaking around us as a wind wove through the trees again. Birdie stopped in front of the long, enamel-framed mirror that hung over a little table beneath it. I set the letters down on top of the others that had accumulated there. At one corner, an oval picture frame held a photograph I’d taken of Gran sitting on the porch steps. Beside it was another that held a picture of my mother.
“Sure you don’t want me to make you a cup of tea?” Birdie wrung her hands, trying her best not to appear as if she was taking care of me. I’d never liked that.
“I’m sure. I’m just going to go to bed.”
“All right.”
Her eyes searched the ground, and she reached out, hooking one hand on the banister as if she was steadying herself.
My brow pulled. “You okay?”
That flat line of her mouth twitched just slightly, and she hesitated before she reached into the pocket of her dress. When she pulled out what was inside, I had to squint to make it out in the dark. The glow of the kitchen light glimmered on what lay at the center of her palm.
“She wanted me to be sure you got this,” she said.
An ache rose in the back of my throat. It was the locket. The one Gran had worn every day since the sheriff had knocked on her door with me in his arms. The one that had been tucked into that blanket with me when Susanna left.
The long, faceted chain glittered as I lifted it from Birdie’s hand and the pendant swung into the air, cold and heavy. Its round face was etched in a complex pattern, worn from the years of my grandmother’s fingers, and her grandmother’s before her.
I opened the clasp and the mother-of-pearl watch face stared back up at me. It was set with not two hands, but four, and each of them varied in length. It was a strange piece of jewelry, made to look like a watch. But the numbers were off-kilter, some of them missing. Ten and eleven were gone, and a zero stood in place of the twelve. The hands never moved, two of them perpetually stuck on the one, the other two pointing to nine and five. The numbers that were scratched from the mother-of-pearl surface could still be seen if I tilted it toward the light, a defect that Gran didn’t know the origin of.
Birdie looked sad, brushing a thumb over my cheek before she kissed it. Her eyes searched mine for another moment before she let me go.
“Good night, honey.”
I waited for her bedroom door to close before I turned back toward the mirror. My fair hair was darker in the weak light, and it was already escaping from the bun I’d tamed my waves into. The chain of the locket slipped through my fingers as I dropped it over my head, letting the gleaming pendant come to rest between my ribs. I closed my hand over it, rubbing my thumb over the smooth surface.
I glanced at the picture of my mother nestled at the corner of the table before studying my own face in the reflection. My light brown eyes were the only thing I’d ever gotten from Susanna, and every time I thought of it, it made me feel like I was looking at a ghost. I traced the dark red birthmark tucked beneath my ear with the tip of my finger. It stretched down around my jaw, coming to a point along my throat.