Forever

by Maggie Stiefvater

Page 12

 

  The back room was a mess of papers and boxes waiting to be put out for the trash. I had no taste for tidiness, and Karyn, the owner, had an arcane system of filing that made sense to no one but her. The first time Grace had seen the disorder, she’d been visibly horrified. Cole, on the other hand, just thoughtfully examined a box cutter and a stack of rubber-banded bookmarks while I turned the lights on.

  “Put those back where you found them,” I said.

  As I did the business of opening up the store, Cole stalked around after me, his hands folded behind his back like a boy who’d been told not to break anything. He looked profoundly out of place here, a polished, aggressive predator moving amongst sunlit shelves that seemed folksy in comparison. I wondered if it was a conscious decision, his projected attitude, or if it was a by-product of the person within. And I wondered how someone like him, a furious sun, was going to survive in someplace like Mercy Falls.

  With Cole’s intent eyes on me, I felt self-conscious as I unlocked the front door, set up the register, turned on the music overhead. I doubted that he really appreciated the aesthetics of the store, but I felt a small, fierce bit of pride as he looked around. There was so much of me here.

  Cole’s attention was on the carpeted stairs near the back of the store. He asked, “What’s upstairs?”

  “Poetry and some special editions. ” Also, memories of me and Grace that were too piercing to relive at the moment.

  Cole pulled a chick lit novel from an endcap, studied it vaguely, and put it back. He’d been here five minutes and he was already restless. I glanced at my watch, looking to see how long I had until Karyn arrived to relieve me. Four hours suddenly seemed like a very long time. I tried to remember the philanthropic impulse that had driven me to bring Cole.

  Just then, as I turned toward the checkout counter, I caught an image out of the corner of my eye. It was one of those brief glances where you’re amazed, afterward, at how much you’ve managed to see during the brief second of eye contact. One of those glances that should’ve been just a forgotten blur but was instead a snapshot. And the snapshot was this: Amy Brisbane, Grace’s mother, walking past the big glass picture window of the bookstore toward her art studio. She held one arm across her chest, gripping the strap of her purse as if each jerky stride might pull it free from her shoulder. She wore a gauzy, pale scarf and that blank expression people put on when they want to become invisible. And I knew, right then, from that face, that she had heard about the dead girl in the woods, and she was wondering if it was Grace.

  I should tell her it wasn’t.

  Oh, but there were a multitude of small crimes the Brisbanes had committed. I could easily bring back the memory of Lewis Brisbane’s fist connecting with my face in a hospital room. Of being thrown out of their house in the middle of the night. Of going precious days without seeing Grace because they’d suddenly discovered parenting principles. I’d had so little, and they’d taken it from me.

  But that face Amy Brisbane wore — I could still see it in my mind, even though her marionette strides had taken her past the storefront.

  They had told Grace I was just a fling.

  I bumped a fist into my palm again and again, torn. I was aware that Cole was watching me.

  That blank face — I knew it was the same one I was wearing these days.

  They’d made her last days as a human, as Grace, miserable. Because of me.

  I hated this. I hated knowing what I wanted and knowing what was right and knowing that they weren’t the same thing.

  “Cole,” I said, “watch the store. ”

  Cole turned, an eyebrow raised.

  God, I didn’t want to do this. Part of me wanted Cole to refuse and thus make my decision for me. “No one will come in. I’ll only be a second. I promise. ”

  Cole shrugged. “Knock yourself out. ”

  I hesitated one more second, wishing that I could just pretend it was someone else I’d seen walking on the sidewalk. After all, it had only been a face, half-hidden by a scarf, glimpsed for a second. But I knew what I’d seen.

  “Don’t burn anything down!” I pushed out the front door onto the sidewalk. I had to look away from the sudden brightness; the sun had only been able to peek in the front windows of the store, but outside, it came long and brilliant down the street. Squinting, I saw that Grace’s mother had already made it most of the way down the block.

  I hurried over the uneven sidewalk after her, pulled up short by two middle-aged ladies cackling over steaming coffee cups and then by a leathery old woman smoking in front of the thrift store and finally by a woman pushing a sidewalk-eating double stroller.

  I had to run then, overly aware of Cole minding the store during my absence. Grace’s mother hadn’t even paused before crossing the street. I paused, breathless, on the corner, to let a pickup truck go by, before catching up with her in the shady alcove in front of her purple studio. Up close, she was a molting parrot; her hair was frizzily escaping from a band, one side of her blouse was tucked unevenly into her skirt, and the scarf I’d seen earlier had pulled free so that it was far longer on one side than the other.

  “Mrs. Brisbane,” I said, my voice catching as my lungs sucked in a breath. “Wait. ”

  I wasn’t sure what expression I was expecting her to wear when she saw that it was me. I’d braced myself for disgust or anger. But she just looked at me like I was — nothing. An annoyance, maybe.

  “Sam?” she said after a pause, like she had to think to recall my name. “I’m busy. ” She was fumbling with the key in the lock, and not managing it. After a moment, she abandoned the key she’d been using and began digging in her purse for another. The bag was a massive, gaudy patchwork creation, full of clutter; if I needed any evidence that Grace was not her mother, that bag would have sufficed. Mrs. Brisbane didn’t look at me as she dug through it. Her total dismissal — like I was not even worth fury or suspicion now — made me sorry that I’d come out of the store.

  I took a step back. “I just thought you might not know. It’s not Grace. ”

  She jerked up to look at me so sharply that her scarf slid the rest of the way from her neck.

  “I heard from Isabel,” I said. “Culpeper. It’s not Grace, the girl they found. ”

  My little mercy felt less like a good idea as I realized that a suspicious mind could pull apart my story in a moment.

  “Sam,” Mrs. Brisbane said, in a very level voice, like she was addressing a young boy given to fibbing. Her hand hovered over her bag, fingers spread and motionless, like a mannequin. “Are you sure that’s true?”

  “Isabel will tell you the same thing,” I said.

  She closed her eyes. I felt a stab of satisfaction at the obvious pain she’d been feeling at Grace’s absence, and then felt terrible for it. Grace’s parents always managed that — making me feel like a worse version of myself. I ducked swiftly to pick up her scarf, awkward.

  I handed the scarf to her. “I have to get back to the store. ”

  “Wait,” she said. “Come inside for a few moments. You have a few minutes, don’t you?”

  I hesitated.

  She answered for me, “Oh, you’re working. Of course you are. You — came out after me?”

  I looked at my feet. “You looked like you didn’t know. ”

  “I didn’t,” she said. She paused; when I looked at her, her eyes were closed and she was rubbing the edge of the scarf on her chin. “The terrible thing, Sam, is that some other mother’s daughter is dead out there and I can only be glad. ”

  “Me, too,” I said, very quietly. “If you’re terrible, I am too, because I’m very, very glad. ”

  Mrs. Brisbane looked at me then — really looked at me, lowering her hands and staring right at my face. “I guess you think I’m a bad mother. ”

  I didn’t say anything, because she was right. I softened it with a shrug. It was as close to lying as I could manage.

&nbs
p; She watched a car go by. “Of course you know that we had a big fight with Grace before she — before she got sick. About you. ” She glanced up at me to see if this was true. When I didn’t reply, she took it as a yes. “I had a lot of stupid boyfriends before I got married. I liked being with boys. I didn’t like being alone. I guess I thought Grace was like me, but she’s not really like me at all, is she? Because you two are serious, aren’t you?”

  I was still. “Very, Mrs. Brisbane. ”

  “Are you sure you won’t come in? It’s hard to have a pity party out here where everyone can see me. ”

  I thought, uneasily, about Cole in the store. I thought about the people I’d passed on the sidewalk. Two ladies with coffee. One smoking merchant. One lady with babies. The odds of Cole being able to get into trouble seemed fairly minimal.

  “Just for a moment,” I said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  COLE

  A bookstore was not the most entertaining place to be marooned. I wandered around for a few minutes, looking for books that might mention me, scuffing the carpet on the stairs backward so that it said my name in lighter colored tracks, and searching for something less offensively inoffensive to play on the radio overhead. The place smelled like Sam — or, I guess, he smelled like the store. Like ink and old building and something more leafy than coffee but less interesting than weed. It was all very … erudite. I felt surrounded by conversations I had no interest in participating in.

  I finally found a book on how to survive worst-case scenarios and settled on the stool behind the counter, resting my feet next to the cash register while I paged through. Being a werewolf was not listed. Neither was Recovering from addiction or Living with yourself.

  The door dinged and I didn’t lift my gaze, thinking it was just Sam returning.

  “Oh, what are you doing here?”

  I could identify her by the disdain in her voice and the rosiness of her perfume even before I looked up. God, she was hot. Her lips looked like they’d taste like Twizzlers. Her mascara was thick as paint and her hair was longer than before — I could have wrapped its icy blondeness twice around my finger, not that I was imagining such things. As she let the door close slowly behind her, her edible lips parted.

  “Welcome to the Crooked Shelf,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Can I help you find something? Our self-help section is extensive. ”

  “Oh, you should know,” Isabel said. She was holding two paper cups and she forcefully put them down on the counter, away from my feet. She regarded my face with something like contempt. Or maybe fear. Did Isabel Culpeper possess this emotion? “What the hell was Sam thinking? You know anyone can walk by on the street and see your face through those windows, right?”

  “Nice view for them,” I said.

  “Must be nice to be so carefree. ”

  “Must be nice to be so worried about other people’s problems. ” Something slow and unfamiliar was moving through my veins. I was both surprised and impressed when I realized it was anger. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been angry — I was sure it had been something between me and my father — and I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do about it.