And her things—her clothes and shoes and makeup bag and whatever else she carried with her to places like this—were all her belongings still inside, barely unpacked, spilling from an open suitcase?
Did they know now who she was? Were they finally going to give us her name?
Detective Talbert nodded to a group of people all dressed in dark blue shirts and black trousers, huddled together under the awning a few steps from room 119.
Her room.
The group broke apart and set to work. Three of them, one with a camera around his neck, followed Detective Talbert back inside. The rest remained in the parking lot with a few of the sheriff’s deputies, fanning in a wide arc to search potholes and sidewalk cracks, gutters and storm drains, and all possible places in between for blood, hair, shoeprints, cigarette butts, gum wrappers, anything and everything that might hold some importance, a revealing piece of evidence to help reconstruct her final hours.
Someone bumped into me, jostling the satchel, and I panicked, thinking how stupid I was to bring the jacket here to the one place where every person might be a suspect and every unclaimed item a clue. I tried to step back from the tape and bumped into a thick wall of people pressing forward for a better look. I twisted, searching for a break in the crowd, some narrow opening to squeeze through, but we were packed in too close, our elbows and shoulders touching, our legs and breath tangling. I was stuck.
“Sam? Are you okay?” Travis touched my arm.
I flinched away from him and bumped into a woman standing beside me.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, gathering my arms close against my body.
“Hey,” Travis said. “You don’t look so great.”
I nodded and said something about the heat, about not drinking enough water, about feeling dizzy. He pulled me along with him, forcing a path through the crowd, away from the yellow tape and chaos, the deputies and the dead woman’s room.
We crossed the street and ducked into the shade of a maple tree growing in front of the First Baptist Church. I shrugged the satchel from my shoulders and let it slide to the ground.
“I’ll get you some water,” Travis said.
Before I could stop him, he was halfway to the church. The front doors were open, and he went inside.
I leaned against the maple tree and stared up into its twisting branches. The dark green leaves were still, even as the air vibrated with heat and light and shimmering, ocher dust.
Travis returned with a Dixie cup of cold water. I drank it in one gulp.
“You want more?” he asked.
I crushed the empty paper cup in my hand and shook my head. “Thanks.”
“You gotta be careful in this heat,” he said. “Gotta keep hydrated.”
He kept glancing at the Meadowlark. My gaze wandered there, too, but the crowd was too thick. Nothing to see but the backs of heads. I rubbed my eyes, wiping away sweat and dirt and the image of the dead woman’s battered face. Summer was supposed to be drowsy and carefree, measured by days and weeks of aimless roaming, doing whatever we wanted, lazy and young and unaware. Not this senseless violence and terrible death and so many questions unanswered, so many secrets and lies.
Travis was kneeling on the ground beside the satchel, tying his shoe. He straightened when he saw me looking down at him.
“Do you think they’ve told her family yet?” I asked.
“If she even has family.” He picked at the tree trunk, pulling off small strips of bark and tossing them into the air, watching them fall.
His mouth was turned down and his brow crumpled, his shoulders slumped. He wouldn’t look at me. This was the Travis I remembered, the boy from summers before who scowled at his feet if we passed on the sidewalk, who was always aloof and detached and so much cooler than me. Then he lifted his head and looked me straight in the eyes. He smiled, and I wondered if maybe I’d been wrong, if maybe he wasn’t cool at all. Maybe he was just shy. Like me.
He said, “I guess everyone has some kind of family somewhere, though, don’t they?”
“Shit,” I said, picking up the satchel from the grass and slinging it over my shoulder. “I have to go.”
I hurried away from Travis and the church.
How much time had passed since I’d left Ollie? Twenty minutes? Thirty? A whole hour? Long enough, I was certain, for her to worry and start thinking something bad had happened, that maybe I wasn’t coming back at all.
“Sam, wait,” Travis called after me. “Did I do something wrong? Did I say something?” He caught up with me quickly and grabbed my elbow, pulling me to a stop. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No, it’s not . . . ,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s just my little sister. I—”
“You have a sister?”
I nodded.
“Oh.”
“I left her at your mom’s store.”
He let go of my elbow. “By herself?”
“She’s reading books.” As if that explained everything and made my leaving her okay.
“I’ll walk back with you,” he said, lighting up another cigarette.
6
ollie
When the pale girl and the man who does not know he’s being followed come around the bookshelf, I hear tires screeching first, rubber burning pavement. Then glass shattering. They stop right in front of me. The shadows in this corner are dark enough that I can see the outline of her lowered head and her two yellow braids swinging loose, how she keeps her arms cinched around her waist and stands with her toes turned inward.
She’s young.
My age.
Younger.
I sag the way she sags. The weight of so many awful things presses down on my chest, making it hard to breathe.
The man stares. He jerks and flinches and rolls his head. His long, gray hair, pulled back with a rubber band, snaps the air. His fingers twist together as he says her name, “Delilah?” But he’s staring at me, not her.
I shake my head and back up to the purple chair where the one who follows me is coming apart. Gold bursts of light. Snapping like firecrackers. I press my hand to my chest because I, too, am coming apart. This is what happens; I feel what they feel.
I feel everything.
The man frowns, says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. It’s just you remind me so much of my daughter. My Delilah.”
The pale girl behind him lifts her head and blinks at me, like she’s coming out of sleep. I plead with her, Make him go away. But she drops her gaze again, too weak to do anything except sigh.
The gray cat on the back of the purple chair hisses and swipes the air. He senses the Shimmering, knows they are here and unsettled.
The one who follows me wants me to open my mouth and scream, but I’m afraid that once I start, I won’t be able to stop and I’ll go on screaming forever.
“She had hair like yours.” The man reaches for me.
The pale girl hugs herself tighter.
“Such long, beautiful hair.” A step closer.
I shake my head harder and hold my hands out like shields.
The one who follows me splits and comes together again in the empty space between him and me. But his hand goes straight through her, and his fingers come out the other side brushed in gold and silver and white and red and other colors that don’t have names. There is nowhere for me to go.
I bump into the purple chair. The gray cat screeches and leaps away, disappearing into some dark crack between the shelves, leaving me alone with them.
The man smiles and his fingers stroke my braid. “Spider silk. That’s what we used to call it. Spun gold.”
The woman from the back room calls, “Billy?” She’s somewhere close, but out of sight.
“Back here, Maggie.” The man replies, then drops his hand and smiles at me. “Remarkable.”
>
“Billy? What are you doing?” She comes around the corner, sees us standing too close.
She hurries. She takes his elbow and turns him away, leads him toward the front of the store. “I need your help moving some boxes.”
She glances quickly over her shoulder and we connect, but only for a second before she looks away again.
The pale girl shuffles after them. But even after she’s out of sight, I hear ripping metal and breaking glass, feel a heavy weight still pushing on my chest. Dizzy and too tired, I sit down in the purple chair, curl and tuck my legs.
The one following me crackles and sparks. I wish she would go away, too.
7
sam
Travis pushed open the Attic’s front door, and the bell jangled. Barely a second passed before the curtain separating the back and front rooms was shoved aside. Mrs. Roth marched around the counter, moving quickly toward us. Her raven-dark hair was pulled into a severe bun, her thin, pale lips made even thinner by the way she was pressing them against her teeth. Her nostrils flared, and there was a second where I could have sworn her brown eyes turned infinite black, but maybe it was just a trick of light, a shadow cast by something hanging from the ceiling, because when she reached us, her eyes were a normal color again, her pupils a usual size. She grabbed Travis’s elbow and pulled him behind the counter.
For someone so small—the top of her head barely reached Travis’s chest and her frame was feather light—Mrs. Roth was surprisingly strong. Or maybe it just seemed that way because Travis wasn’t putting up any kind of fight.
“Your shift at Patti’s ended twenty minutes ago,” she said. “Where have you been?”
I stood a few steps away from them, pretending interest in a stack of antique lunchboxes.
“We were over at the Meadowlark,” Travis said. “The deputies were searching a room. That woman was staying there, I guess.”
“What woman?” She inhaled sharply and then said, “I need you here today.”
“I’m here.” He shook off her hand.
Mrs. Roth arched up on tiptoe and sniffed the air around Travis’s neck. She pulled back sharply, her lip curling. “Have you been smoking?”
Travis folded his arms over his chest. They stared at each other for a few seconds. Mrs. Roth started to speak, but a loud noise, like something heavy being dropped on the floor, stopped her.
Travis glanced at the curtain. “Dad’s here?”
“Downstairs,” Mrs. Roth said.
Travis started to move around her toward the back room.
She grabbed his arm, with less force this time, and said, “Leave him be.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“He’s working.” And then, “You know how he gets.”
A moment passed where they just stared at each other, neither one saying a word. Somewhere in the mess behind me, a clock ticked off the seconds. Finally, Mrs. Roth let go of Travis’s arm. He turned away from her and disappeared through the curtain.
She snapped her attention to me. “And you. What were you thinking leaving that child here alone?”
I twisted my head, looking toward the bookshelves. “Is she okay? Did something happen?”
“She’s fine,” Mrs. Roth said, sitting down on a stool behind the counter. “But this isn’t a library, and I’m not a babysitter.”
I ducked my head and mumbled something I hoped would pass as an apology and promised it would never happen again.
“See that it doesn’t.” Mrs. Roth gave me a hard and narrow stare and then started sorting through a stack of receipts, dismissing me with her silence.
I found Ollie curled in the purple chair, head leaning against one side, her legs tucked under her bottom and her arms wrapped around her stomach. She stared off into a dark corner, didn’t even look up at me when I came closer. The gray tabby was gone.
I crouched in front of her. “Hey. You okay?”
She closed her eyes.
“Hey.” I touched her arm. “I’m right here.”
She uncurled her legs and threw her arms around me, burying her face in my shirt. I squeezed her as tight as I could.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I told you I was coming back, didn’t I? You’re okay. We’re okay.”
A few years ago, when Ollie was seven, Mom left her behind at the grocery store. We only got as far as the parking lot exit before I realized how unusually quiet it was inside the van.
I turned halfway around in my seat, saw the empty place where Ollie should have been sitting, and shouted, “Mom! You forgot Ollie!”
She cursed and slammed on the brakes so hard my seat belt locked, whipping my head forward and bruising my shoulder. She pulled a sharp U-turn, almost hitting another car, and drove too fast through the narrow aisles into a handicapped spot at the front of the store. She left the car running and we both raced inside the store.
“Manager!” Mom shouted at one of the checkout girls. “Where’s your manager?”
The girl was startled and looked about ready to cry. A man with a goatee and an angry scowl marched up to us and said, “Mrs. McAlister?”
“My daughter! Where is she?” Mom was looking over the man’s shoulder, but Ollie wasn’t there.
He said, “Calm down, ma’am. Olivia’s fine. She’s in my office.” He seemed on the verge of a lecture, but Mom shoved past him and pushed through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and into a small office with a metal desk and filing cabinets that took up more than half the room.
Ollie sat in a chair behind the desk. She was spinning and spinning, her head tipped back, her hair flying, a huge smile spread over her face.
“Ollie!” Mom knocked a stack of file folders off the corner of the desk trying to get to her.
Ollie stopped spinning and held out her arms. Mom lifted her up, held her so tight I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to breathe.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Mom whispered into her ear. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s all right, Mommy,” Ollie said. “You always come back for me.”
That night Mom made Ollie’s favorite dinner. Spaghetti and hot dogs. When we were all sitting down, with our plates still empty, Mom leaned her elbows on the table and folded her hands together under her chin. She looked at me and then at Ollie and said, “I love you girls both so much. You know that, right?”
Of course, Mom, we said. Of course we know. We thought we knew. At the time, we were both still so young, and death was something we’d only ever encountered in stories. I don’t think either of us understood what she meant. Not really. How terrified she’d been when she thought she’d lost Ollie. How she’d do anything, everything in her power, to keep us both safe. How one day we might lose her. One day she wouldn’t come back for us and when that happened, she wanted us to remember love.
I understood. Now, I understood.
I held Ollie for another few seconds, until her breathing slowed and became less ragged. Then I pulled her away from me so I could see her face. “What happened?”
She looked over my shoulder. I turned to see, but there was no one there. I brushed my hand over her forehead the way Mom used to do. She was warm, but not feverish.
“I shouldn’t have left you alone. I’m sorry. But you’re okay. You’re okay, right?” I rose to my feet but kept one hand clamped around hers. “Did you find anything good?”
The stack of books she’d been gathering before I left was gone, the floor cleared. I looked behind the chair, but there were no books there, either.
“Nothing?”
She shrugged and wiped the back of her hand across her cheek.
“Not even one?”
Ollie reached into her back pocket and pulled out a small, green hardcover. Her Alice book. She clutched it to her chest.
“Aren’t you bored with that one yet?”
She shook her head.
I sighed and led her toward the front of the store. “You’re still going to keep quiet though, right? About the . . . you know.” I patted the outside of my satchel.
She squeezed my hand.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
As we passed the front counter, Mrs. Roth cleared her throat. She eyed the Alice book Ollie was holding.
I put my arm around Ollie and said, “We brought it in with us. It’s ours.”
Mrs. Roth arched her thinly plucked eyebrows. A deep crease formed straight across the middle of her forehead. Before she could say anything, a loud crash came from the room behind her. The shelves and window glass rattled. The trinkets on the counter shook. Mrs. Roth jumped up so fast she kicked the stool over on its side. She glared at the curtain.
Voices, loud and sparring, forced their way closer to the front room.
“Would you just listen to me for one second?” I recognized Travis’s voice, despite it being high pitched and frantic.
“Go! Get the hell out!”
“Dad, please. I’m only trying to help.”
“If I wanted your help, I’d ask for it.”
The edges of the curtain trembled.
Ollie tried to wiggle out from under my arm, but I held her tight.
The voices got louder, moved closer, almost right on top of us. Someone threw something hard against a wall. We heard a violent crashing and splintering, and then Travis shouted, “Fuck!”
Mrs. Roth turned her head, blinked at me and Ollie like she was just seeing us there for the first time. “I think you girls had better leave.”
She didn’t wait for us to go. She just turned her back on us and disappeared through the curtain.
“What is going on?” Her voice reminded me of Grandma’s that time Ollie and I were visiting and tried to make milk shakes in her kitchen, but forgot the part about snapping the blender lid on tight.
Another something smashed and broke against the wall.
Travis shouted, “Shit!”
Mrs. Roth said, “Language.” And then, “I will not have you two fighting in my store. This is neither the time nor the place.”
Crooked River: A Novel Page 5
