For all the doom and gloom of Signa’s arrival, Fiore was truly lovely. Not even the unsettled sea was enough to dissuade those who hurried down the street to the pier, eager to soak up their trip for every ounce of its worth. Signa had spent a solid ten minutes standing on the pier herself, staring at the ocean but not daring to venture onto the sand for fear that a wave might whisk her away. Perhaps she’d visit the water in the summer calm; for now, though, she wasn’t foolish enough to venture close.
Fishermen were coming in from the docks, their heads bowed as they spoke softly to one another. Signa caught snippets of their conversation.
“She’s out there on the beach again…”
“… doesn’t understand he’s not coming back.”
“Poor thing. My son knew him. I couldn’t imagine…”
Signa pulled her attention away from the conversation as curiosity began to fester. She didn’t need to muddy her mind with anything more than what was already going on. And so she focused her thoughts on how beautiful this beach would be come wintertime, so cold that the buildings themselves would quiver. A pleasant buzz warmed her skin as she pictured nights spent lounging by the hearth with a book and a mulled cider.
Her parents had been wise to put down roots in such a place—twenty years later the town was magnificent. She’d never been seaside before, and there was an indescribable charm to having one’s hair tousled by the wind and every sound dampened by the rush of waves and the wind in her ears. Every moment she spent here, it felt more like home. So far that day, she’d managed to go an entire hour without thinking of Thorn Grove and wondering how Blythe was faring.
From the pier Signa had only to cross the street to arrive at her destination—a tiny printing press in a building of dark green, where a man was hard at work behind a window. Smoke from a cigar the man had tipped precariously in his mouth plumed the air, and she tried not to cough as she stepped inside.
The man’s eyes barely lifted. “We’re out of papers for the day, come back tomorrow.” His voice was brisk as he rolled fresh ink over blocks of letters. Signa couldn’t help but stare as he worked.
“I don’t need a paper,” she began, holding out her ad. “I live in the manor at the top of the hill. I’d like to place an advertisement to staff it.”
The man arched a brow and took the sheet from Signa, skimming over it once. “Foxglove?” Surrounded by words as he was, the man didn’t seem interested in speaking many of his own.
“I’m Signa Farrow,” she said by way of answer, trying not to be put off by the way he huffed under his breath.
“Three pennies and it’ll be in next week’s paper.”
Signa stilled. That was far too long to go without adding more living souls into Foxglove. “How much for tomorrow?”
The man paused to look her over, searching her left hand for a ring. He grunted when he didn’t see one. “A half crown.”
He turned back to his work then, and Signa tried not to bristle at his obvious dismissal. A half crown was a right and proper fraud, and yet Signa reached into her coin purse all the same and lay the coin flat on the table.
The man didn’t reach for it right away, puffing on his cigar as he pulled a metal lever down, lifted it back up, rolled letters with ink, and repeated the process. “What happened up there changed this town forever. We lost parents. Grandparents. Daughters and sons. It’s a damn miracle that someone hasn’t burned that place to the ground. It’s not meant to be lived in, girl. They say only ghosts live there, now.”
Signa didn’t expect to be hit by such a wave of resentment, or a fierce protectiveness over a place she was only now learning to call home. Still, it swelled within her, making her blood hot and her glare livid. As well as she’d been containing herself, she had half a mind to show this man what spirits were truly like. Fortunately, she had the wits to throw her attention elsewhere until she could de-escalate.
Across the street, two bickering children fisted sweets in their tiny hands as they followed a beautiful woman in an ivory gown and a wide-brimmed hat adorned with a blue ribbon. All three of them seemed entirely unaware of the young boy lingering behind them, to whom Signa’s attention was drawn toward at once. He couldn’t have been older than eleven and was drenched to the bone. His hair was plastered to his round cheeks, too bloated. His skin was gray, and his lips purple and quivering as he followed the family.
Signa’s spine went rigid as the boy stopped. As if he felt her staring, he whipped to face her. His body faded from her view the second after their eyes met, and he flickered in and out of her vision until he was suddenly standing on the opposite side of the shop’s window. Hollow eyes never straying from hers, the boy waved.