Arthur had caught me once clearing a mantel into a garbage bag, swearing. He told me to leave it and I told him that lucky charms were, in my experience, total bullshit. I picked up a battered copper coin, a penny with a harp printed on one side. Like, do you really think this will save you? He’d answered, unusually earnest: No, but it might buy you time.
Then he’d stalked away, deploying his only known tactic for ending a conversation. I’d waited until I heard the clank of pots in the kitchen before slipping the coin into my back pocket.
Now I take pictures of the other objects I left on the mantel: a small mirror with eight sides, a silver heart pierced by a sword, a bundle of dried lavender. The digital shutter sounds much louder than it should.
Good work, Baine writes. We’re sending you a higher-quality phone tomorrow.
I pick up the package in the motel office, and run into Charlotte. She’s leaning over Bev’s desk, her face intent.
“Oh hey, did my holds come in?”
Charlotte straightens very quickly. “No. I was just—”
She gestures at Bev, who says, shortly, “She was dropping off my books.” She spins her office chair to face the television. “Not everything is about you, Opal.”
“Oh my God, you can read?”
“Bite me.”
Charlotte sighs a little harder than is necessary for what is essentially a civil Garden of Eden conversation. “I was just leaving.” Those two little lines are framing her mouth again, and her glasses are slightly askew.
I sidestep in front of her. “Wait, I was wondering about that Gravely stuff. Do you think you could drop off one of those crates? I could help you catalog it all.” I don’t care about the Historical Society even a little bit, but I would like to know why a Gravely had my mom’s phone number. It’s probably nothing—she probably owed him money or flirted with him in the Liquor Barn parking lot or tried to sell his wife off-brand makeup—but I keep the receipt folded in my pocket anyway.
“What Gravely stuff?” Bev has spun away from a Wheel of Fortune rerun just to glare at me.
“Oh, did you think this was your business?” I make a sympathetic face. “Not everything is about you, babe.”
This kind of overt obnoxiousness usually redirects her attention, but not this time. She shakes her head. “There’s nothing you need to know about those people. Whatever it is, best leave it alone.”
I’m opening my mouth to reply but Charlotte lets out a caustic little laugh. It barely sounds like it belongs to her. “Just leave it alone, huh? Just sweep it under some rug and hope nobody sees.” She’s looking at Bev with a degree of anger that strikes me as wildly disproportionate. She whips back toward me, braid arcing, eyes flashing. “I’ll bring the first box down as soon as I get a chance.”
She stalks out. The buzzer sings two flat notes as the door slams.
“Uh.” I point to a crisp white box behind the desk. “That package is mine, I think.”
Bev kicks it at me without looking away from the TV. I follow Charlotte out the door.
It’s an overcast day, chilling toward evening, and the parking lot is full of birds. Grackles so black they look like bird-shaped holes cut in the pavement, a few crows, the speckled gleam of starlings. Charlotte cuts through them like a boat through dark water.
“Hey!” Charlotte stops but doesn’t turn around, one hand fishing for her keys.
I catch up to her, shooing birds off the hood of her car. “I was just wondering. Do you believe Miss Calliope’s story? Like, do you think there’s really something awful under Starling House? Because I was talking to Ashley Caldwell the other night and she—”
“I don’t know, Opal. Maybe. Not really.” Her Volvo beeps once as she unlocks it. She slides into the front seat and pauses, looking hard at the closed blinds of Bev’s office. “The only awful thing about this town is the people who live here, if you ask me.”
She must mean Bev, and I experience a brief, unnatural urge to defend her. The slam of Charlotte’s door saves me.
I open my new fancy phone and shove the packaging in the dumpster. If I thought about it much—the sleek, expensive shape of it, the weight of it in my palm—I might feel guilty, but I slide it into my pocket without thinking anything at all. The screen scrapes softly against the stolen penny.
THIRTEEN
April in Eden is one long drizzle. Moss sprouts in the sidewalk cracks. The river gets fat and lazy, rising until it licks the belly of the bridge and laps at the mouth of the old mine shaft. The seasonal plant nursery opens in the flea market parking lot and the ants make their annual assault on Bev’s continental breakfast bar.