Along the Indigo

by Elsie Chapman

  Nina moved to stand next to her at the counter, boxing her in as she reached across to lift the lid of the dessert keeper. Inside was the remaining half of a raspberry crumble Marsden had baked. “Suddenly, I feel like something indulgent. Would you like some?” She reached for a plate from the cupboard and transferred a piece onto it.

  “No, thanks.” Marsden added enough water to cover the eggs and slowly placed the pot on the stove. As she watched Nina pick up a fork and take a single bite, the lump in her stomach came back, and her shoulders nearly hurt as they tensed again. Her mother’s boss and keeper—her boss and keeper—did not believe in momentary lapses like eating unnecessary sugar, let alone asking to serve her own kitchen help. She was lingering for a reason, and it wasn’t for raspberry crumble.

  She had not forgotten about wanting to talk to her after all.

  Nina leaned in close, trapping her against the counter again. And when she spoke next, Marsden’s world splintered apart.

  “I know what you do out there in the covert. I know you’re a skimmer.”

  The air went thin, Marsden’s throat, dry. “No.”

  “Well, yes.” Nina pulled away an inch, slipped another bite of raspberry crumble past her glossy lips. “I’ve been watching you for months, wondering how I could finally convince you to work for me. Then I saw you changing bills at the front desk, hours after you found a body in the covert. Not too difficult to see a pattern once I had all the pieces.”

  Marsden thought wildly of the times she’d heard noises in the covert, each time concluding it was animals. Each time thinking she’d gotten away with it, had pulled another one over Hadley and other skimmers. And yesterday, so worried about the town witch.

  When all along it’d been Nina she should have been worried about.

  “Why are you only telling me now?” She forced the words out, knowing she sounded guilty and unable to help it. “If you’ve known for months?”

  “Because now Brom’s in the picture, and Shine’s getting older. And because I found the money you’ve been hiding in your room.” Nina took another bite. “In those old boots of yours.”

  Marsden backed up almost reflexively, trying to get away from Nina. Her money. Wynn’s. Their future. “That’s not yours to take,” she strangled out. Her lungs hurt with trying to breathe.

  “You owe me,” Nina said. “What’s yours is mine.”

  Another bite of crumble.

  Marsden hoped desperately Nina would choke on it.

  “And if I refuse to work for you, you’re going to tell Hadley about my skimming,” she whispered.

  Nina’s mouth formed a moue of displeasure at the head cop’s name, the same one she used to make over Lucy’s glasses. “I think the man is thoroughly incompetent, but yes, I’ll have to. Please don’t get me wrong, Marsden. You’re Shine’s daughter, and I’ve watched you grow up—the last thing I want to do is threaten you with the police, to see you punished. But I had no choice except to take your money. I need you here, working for me. You can even keep skimming if you like, and I won’t say a word.”

  Marsden’s pulse boomed in her ears, a destructive rush of despair. Glory turned endless, time winked out, Wynn grew older. “How did you know where to find my money?”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t think you had any at all, considering your wages here. But then Shine came and told me you wanted to leave instead of working for me. She said you had money saved up to go. And for me to catch you skimming on top of that? I knew then that you had to be hiding a good amount of cash somewhere.”

  Marsden’s eyes burned. Her mother had told Nina. She might as well have given Nina the money herself.

  Nina patted the corner of her mouth for crumbs with a slim finger before placing her empty plate in the sink. “I’ll give you a few days before you have to start. Come find me when you’re finally ready. And thank you for the dessert—it was exactly what I needed.”

  thirty.

  She should have known, though, deep down.

  Not that Nina had had her figured out long ago, or that her mother would fail her, but that she was never meant to escape Glory. She’d long been bound to town through circumstance, through the family blood Duncan Kirby had tragically and madly shed in the covert.

  Her life was closing in around her. She felt its teeth. Felt its glee. Felt whatever had been keeping her together as well as it had—delusion, blind hope, the very last bit of her childishness—starting to fall apart.

  An image of the john who had asked about her at fourteen flashed across her mind, and she felt sick. Where would his hands leave her once he’d paid and gone? Who would she be? How much could she give and still be herself?

  She was about to run to her bedroom to check for the boots in her closet, her desperation a sharp ache in her throat even as she knew how hopeless it was to think the money was still there—Nina was only warning you, she lied to herself, she would never take away all you’d worked for over the years, she’s cold but not cruel, she helped raise you!—when there was a knock at the door.

  She looked up to see Jude standing on the back porch. Through the screen door, his face was blurred, softened, completely safe. He held a take-out bag from the deli downtown in one hand. “Hey,” he said, smiling.

  “Jude.” Marsden blinked, trying to adjust from the fresh destruction Nina had just unleashed to pretending that nothing had changed at all.

  “Look, I cooked for you this time,” he said through the screen, holding up the bag. “It was a lot of work.”

  Some of the dark lifted from her chest at seeing him there. This boy who drew her to stay close, even while she dreamed of escape. Who she would have left.

  She walked over and opened the door. “You beat me to it. I was actually going to make us lunch today.”

  His eyes glinted, layers of dark browns, glints of gold. “What were you going to make?”

  “Um, egg-salad sandwiches, spinach and strawberry salad, and double-chocolate brownies.”

  His expression turned stricken. “Please don’t make me beg for lunch tomorrow. I promise I’ll never think ahead again.”

  Marsden smiled. It surprised her that it felt real. How was he able to do that so easily? “You really messed up today, trying to be thoughtful.” Suddenly, she felt the deep need to be away from the kitchen, from the boardinghouse altogether, her dismal future breathing down her neck.

  And Jude with his careful arc of a grin was there to see her.

  She stepped out onto the porch and instantly the sun began to sear her skin. She was very conscious of his gaze on her as she took the bag from him.

  Ever see a forest fire when it’s just on the cusp of really catching? Right before it takes on a life of its own, and it’s beautiful to watch but also frightening?

  Marsden kept her eyes on the food as she inspected what he’d brought. “Bottled lemonade, pizza wraps, and chocolate-banana waffle sandwiches.”

  “I wanted to bring you plain chocolate-chip waffles, but they didn’t sell those.”

  “No,” she had to laugh, “they wouldn’t. I think it’s a Wynn thing. Thanks for all this, really. It’s perfect—especially the chocolate-banana waffle sandwiches.” She dared a glance upward at his face, and below the smug shyness, she saw a twinge of irrational regret at not being able to bring her the one thing he’d wanted to. Her pulse beat heavily at her wrists.

  That was when she saw the wide strap of fabric looped over one of his shoulders. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

  Jude cleared his throat. The skin along his cheekbones turned a slight pink as he spoke. “A picnic blanket. It’s hot out, but I was thinking we could eat outside, if we can find some shade somewhere. And I promise the idea seemed much more innocent when I left the house than what it feels like now.”

  The pink had spread to his ears by the time he was done, making Marsden laugh again, her nerves rewired to an edginess that felt good. “And what does it feel like now?”

  He grinned. It wa
s slightly lewd, and she knew he knew it. “I feel the question is a trap, and so I take the fifth.”

  He really did need to stop being so appealing. “Pretty forward, considering we haven’t even gone out yet,” she said, smiling in return. “Not even a matinee.”

  His grin softened even as his gaze turned hot, full of cryptic things that made her skin feel just as hot, but from the inside. “So if I ask you again, I might not get shot down this time?”

  “Unfair.” She kept her voice light, even as her skin kept tingling. “The town witch was waiting, remember?”

  “I remember wishing we could have gone anyway. How disappearing with you for a bit in the middle of the day would have been pretty perfect.”

  Marsden’s heart did a slow, tortuous flip, and she narrowed her eyes at him. Why couldn’t he have flaws that made him unbearable? Like hating small animals. Rudeness. Zero sense of humor.

  “I wish you were an asshole,” she muttered. “It’d be a lot easier to not like you.”

  Jude laughed, low and quiet. “I like you, too. Even that whole ‘gross candy instead of popcorn’ thing. I can work with that.”

  “Commendable.” She took a deep breath and stepped back, deciding to keep it—them, whatever they might even be—from going any further. If there was a time limit on their being together, she didn’t want it close to being over yet. “So, lunch, to be eaten on a highly suggestive blanket—do you care where?”

  He laughed again, and his cheeks went pink again, and Marsden could almost feel his heat beneath her fingertips. “Nope. Wherever you want.”

  “Even if there’s no shade?” She knew where she wanted to go, but they would likely burn. Still, she’d already decided it was worth it, and she wanted him to think so, too.

  “We’ll handle it.”

  She led him to where the front drive met the highway. They waited for a gap between vehicles before crossing the road, and then they stepped off the shoulder into the embankment that dipped down toward the river.

  At this end of the Indigo, dry land between the road and the river was at its widest, a good couple dozen meters. Weeds and crabgrass the color of pale hay brushed their ankles, and mud dried to a powdery dust crumbled even more beneath their shoes as they walked. The river gurgled and chattered in the distance, a low, constant non-quiet that reminded Marsden of how the covert sounded, how the wind blew through the trees like voices. The sun pounded down, baking their shadows into the ground.

  “Here,” she declared, coming to a stop.

  They were standing on a particularly thick patch of grass, dense enough to cover up the mud beneath. From what she could see, they were equally distant from both the water and the highway, stranded between the two parallel arcs that cut into the earth. They could have been anywhere in the world, somewhere where neither of them was trying to bring the dead back to life, where they weren’t who Glory said they were. Over a lunch, they could pretend.

  Jude spread out the picnic blanket and sat down on it. “Finally. I was wondering if you were going to lead us straight into the river.”

  “Would you have kept going with me?” Marsden sat down next to him and began to take out the food.

  “Depends on how deep it is.” He lifted his gaze to the snaking current. “I wouldn’t want us to drown.”

  Theola’s words. “What if we could walk all the way across?”

  “Still depends,” he said with a quick grin. He glanced down at the waffle sandwiches spread out in front of them. “‘I’ll have to really think about it.’ That answer sound familiar at all?”

  She laughed, liking how he so easily remembered what she’d said about ever making him waffles again. She wasn’t supposed to be able to laugh, given Nina’s trap had just closed around her. And yet . . .

  Jude pointed down the river, squinting in the sun. “If we followed that, we’d eventually end up in Idaho. Ever wonder what’s in Idaho?”

  “I don’t know.” The truth was, Marsden had always wondered past it, farther away. “Mountains and lakes. Camping. Lots of potatoes. Why?”

  “I used to think we moved from there, because I only heard ‘back East’ growing up. Eventually figured out they meant the East Coast. Boston.”

  Boston. It made her think of baseball stadiums, clam chowder, mazes of concrete freeways—the very opposite of Glory. And now it would make her think of Jude. “Maybe you could go visit one day. You have family there, your mom’s.”

  “Yeah. And they have good schools, for when I’m done here. I could always apply for student loans.”

  “What do you want to study?” The idea of Jude living elsewhere was strange, difficult to comprehend, lonely to think about. Glory was a place not many people seemed to leave, even though not many ever arrived, either. Townsfolk were layered deep here, most families going back generations.

  “Leaning toward sciences, just because I suck less at those.” He watched her. “You?”

  She wasn’t even going to bother to lie. “I can’t leave Wynn.”

  “All your family is here?”

  “Yes.” Marsden found herself glancing in the direction of the covert. “We got a taste for gold a hundred years ago and decided to stay.” Even this far away from it, she still sensed the presence of her family’s land, the smothering weight of all it meant. She thought of never finding out more, of never being able to hear the dead, her father and Rigby forever questions, and her chest grew heavy.

  “Too bad the gold didn’t,” Jude said. “Stay, I mean.”

  “I can’t imagine how different Glory would be.” She blamed the rush of cars hurtling down the highway—a swoosh of sound, what ran along with the wind, stirring up her blood—for suddenly feeling glib, nearly spontaneous. “What would you say to Rigby right now if he were here?”

  “This very second?” Jude smiled. “To stay. But if that answer’s too much like cheating, I’d ask him where exactly in the covert he’d buried that damn tin.”

  She had to smile back. “That would be one thought.”

  “No kidding.” He reached for one of the waffle sandwiches and tore it open.

  “Wait, that’s supposed to be dessert.”

  “Coming from the person who made me breakfast for dinner.”

  Marsden began to unwrap the other sandwich and hoped she could make herself eat some of it. The morning had left her stomach in knots, tied by Nina’s rose-tipped fingers, even as the wind kept her impulsive. “Jude?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember when we were in the covert and I told you I didn’t want to talk about my dad? Right after I kind of did?”

  He nodded.

  “It was because I never wanted to believe what he said, all this time. But now I know the believing part isn’t what’s important—because it doesn’t change what comes afterward.”

  He crumpled his wrapper. “And are you okay with that?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “How do you accept being the reason why something turns out terrible?”

  “Does it help if I tell you half the time I think I’m wrong to be looking for Rig’s tin?”

  Marsden remembered him coming to ask, all his hope. “So why do you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just hoping to fill in those parts of him I never understood but thought I did. If he kept secrets, did he keep them to protect me?”

  “You’re talking about guilt.” She knew it too well.

  He squinted at her in the sun. “So are you.”

  “I guess I am.”

  Jude slid closer and took her hand. His was hotter than the sun, larger than the world. “Then let’s not drown.”

  thirty-one.

  “Kismet.”

  “Say again?” Jude shut the shed door behind him, Rigby’s metal detector in hand.

  “Kismet,” Marsden said again as they rounded the back of the boardinghouse on their way to the covert. “It means fate, or destiny—things being preordained. Your brother being the one to start all that
wild ginger growing in the covert owned by my family, how that led to all of this.”

  “That kind of kismet means believing Rig was always going to kill himself, no matter what. I don’t know if I can ever believe that.”

  And she didn’t want to believe that she’d always been meant to drive her father away, that Shine was meant to be what she was, that her own path was never in doubt.

  “Kismet about Rigby coming here to help him deal with your mom’s dying, then,” she said. “Because I really, really love the idea of that—the covert not always meaning something is ending. Or how something ending means something else is maybe beginning.”

  Jude’s speckled eyes glimmered in the sun as he looked at her and then away again and Marsden thought of forest fires.

  She swore he blushed.

  As they walked along the fence, Marsden watched him examine all the carvings left on the splintery wood. Messages like Think of your family and We’ll miss you and God will save you. Carvings of dates and names and crosses.

  He touched one. The cross was particularly elaborate, his fingers tracing the carefully etched-out details. She wondered ruefully when the artist had managed to get it done, how fast he must have had to work to not be seen by anyone in the boardinghouse. Next, he touched a message about heaven. She knew he had Rigby on his mind, was so deep in thought that he seemed lost in himself, somewhere else. Marsden’s throat ached for him and for the grief that came off him in waves.

  “The part about heaven being easiest to reach from the covert, how you have to die there after touching its soil so you don’t go to hell—do you believe it?” Jude’s voice was jagged, as uneven as the Indigo.

  She didn’t know what to say. Yes, and it would settle him over Rigby’s choice, however much her opinion could mean. No, and she could ask herself forever what her father must have seen in the river to have called him there instead.