“Mail day. Special day.” The young man’s smile was infectious, his mouth a jumble of teeth. Stubble covered his jaw and his hair was a tangled mass shaved close on the sides. He looked barely twenty, though John couldn’t be sure since the young man’s gaze darted around the room and didn’t stop long enough to focus on anyone.
The guy squeezed between the frame and where John held the door open. “Mail day.”
“I’m Sheriff John Mason.”
The young man shuffled to the rear of the room. “Aaron.”
“Aaron what?” John shut the door.
“Aaron.” He opened the closet and pulled out a rolling cart. “Mail day.”
Pat kept his distance but said, “Are you the mailman?”
Aaron puffed out his chest. “Mailman.”
“Awesome. Can I help?”
Aaron’s head whipped around and he narrowed his eyes. John’s body tensed, ready to get between them the minute Aaron made a move toward his son.
“Can’t touch.”
John moved closer and set his hand on Pat’s shoulder. “You’re in charge of the mail, Aaron?”
“Cataloguing, recording, delivering. Checks and balances. Ones and zeroes. All Aaron.”
John motioned to Pat with his head and his son sat in the waiting area chairs. “I have some mail needs to go out today. Can you help me get it ready?”
Aaron yanked the file cabinet drawer open and pulled out a form, which he set on the desk in front of John. “Fill out all appropriate boxes, including your name and address and the recipient’s. Contents must be printed, indicating which item is in which package. Envelopes must be clearly labeled. Prior authorization must be obtained for all mail containing matches, lighters aerosols or other hazardous materials, small arms ammunition battery-operated heat-producing equipment, wet spillable or non-spillable batteries, fuel cells, internal combustion or fuel cell engines, specimens in formaldehyde, liquid nitrogen or gas cylinders.” He took a breath, not even looking at the paper which he was quoting verbatim.
“The transportation of weapons alcohol or body parts is strictly prohibited. All mail will be screened by authorized personnel and restricted items will be incinerated.”
“Of course they will.” John grinned. “Sounds like something the government came up with.”
Aaron went on. “All mail must be catalogued with a registration number before it leaves Sanctuary and a record kept in the sheriff’s office.”
John took a look at the kid. “Tell me the record number of the last item Sheriff Chandler sent out.”
Aaron didn’t blink. “January fifth. Hand-written letter addressed to Elizabeth Chandler of Rhode Island. Registration number 0105-7552.”
Thought so. John smiled at him. “Sounds like you’re just the right man for the job.”
Aaron puffed out his chest again. “Cataloguing, recording, delivering. Checks and balances. Ones and zeroes. All Aaron.”
“All Aaron.”
John got a smile out of the guy. He pulled the evidence bags from the safe and Aaron took a step back. John glanced between the young man and the paper bags containing Betty’s bloody clothes and shoes. “Aaron, if I fill out the form will you make sure I did it right?”
Aaron pulled a spiral-bound notebook from the file cabinet and got a stubby pencil from his pocket. Two pieces of paper and a quarter fell to the floor. He bent and grasped them, shoving them back in. Aaron shuffled to the waiting area and sat right next to Pat, who was playing a game on his iPad. Aaron flipped the notebook open and started making notations while John filled out the form.
John understood the need for secrecy, but clearly someone in charge had decided putting every resident under permanent scrutiny was the way to achieve that. Other than the allowance each townsperson got for internet usage at the library, mail was their only form of contact with the outside world since their phones only dialed internally. John had heard several people—like Hal, who ran the radio station—sold their internet time to others since they didn’t use it.
The door opened to a young woman holding a taped-up box. “Good morning.”
Aaron scribbled on his paper.
“One package to go and I’ve got my form all filled out.” The woman was beautiful and all curves. But young—probably mid-twenties, not much older than Aaron. She set the box down and handed Aaron the paper. He took it but didn’t look at her.
John stood. “Sheriff John Mason.”
She strode over with her hand out, her smile wide. “Francine Peters. Nice to meet you.” Her blond hair was thick and fell past her shoulders, and her blue eyes eclipsed her face.
“I’m Pat.”
She shook hands with him, too. “Frannie. I run the bakery on the west end of Main Street, two doors past the spa and salon. It’s called Sweet Times. So if y’all need a cupcake later, you should come see me.”
“Awesome!” Pat was clearly sold on the idea.
John laughed. “We might have to take you up on that.”
She smiled. “You too, Aaron. I hope to see you later.”
“Cataloguing, recording, delivering. Checks and balances. Ones and zeroes. All Aaron.”
“Well, it can’t take you all day. Can it? When your work is done you should come by for a break, okay?”
“Break okay.” Aaron continued writing.
Francine shot John a smile. “Later, guys. Nice to meet you, Pat.”
Aaron stood. “Mail pick-up.”
Pat set his iPad aside. “There’s a mailbox?”
“Main Street west and Main Street east.”
Pat looked at John. “Can I go, Dad? Please.”
“Sure bud. I’ll see you in a bit. Hey, maybe Uncle Grant will send your bike today.”
“That would be awesome!”
John watched them go. The sun was up and he’d had a good night’s sleep where he wasn’t woken up by Pat’s shifting around every five seconds. So long as Andra continued to keep to herself while he found Betty’s murderer, things would be fine. The clock ticked past eight forty-five. Where was Deputy Palmer?
The bell clanged and the door opened to admit a matron with a perm who dressed like a Sunday school teacher. And smiled like one too. “Good morning, good morning.”
He’d seen her the day before at church but hadn’t gotten a chance to introduce himself. “I take it you’re Dotty.”
Her eyes gleamed. “No doubt my reputation for being notorious has preceded me.”
John laughed although she might not have been joking. He’d have to be careful with these people. Who knew what kind of person she’d been in her old life?
She grinned. “I’m Dotty Bennett…as in Elizabeth and Jane?”
“Uh, sure.” He had no clue.
“Pride and Prejudice, dear.” She settled at the tiny table in the corner and plugged headphones into the radio, keyed the mic and did a sound check. She came through loud and clear on John’s radio. Then she pulled the stack of papers from her inbox and within a minute had her computer on and was typing so fast the click of the keys broke the sound barrier.
Time to work, then.
**
Pat looked up and down the street as they walked, turning in circles. He’d lived in D.C. his whole life. This place looked more like Main Street at Disneyland since all the buildings were mushed together.
Aaron didn’t say much, but he was smiling. Pat thought it might be because he was there to help. They pushed the cart all the way to the mailbox at the end of the street where Aaron pulled a key from his pocket. The mail was mostly letters, but there were some big orangey-brown envelopes like he’d seen at his dad’s house. Maybe some people here had gotten divorced, too.
That had to be weird when they lived in the same town still. Like two Christmases wasn’t complicated enough.
Still, there wouldn’t be two Christmases now. Not if they stayed here. But Pat didn’t want to think about his mom if she wasn’t even thinking about him. Would she know why he could
n’t come and see her?
He missed his friends too, but he’d emailed Bobby. Too bad there were a bunch of rules about what he could and couldn’t say about Sanctuary. It was pretty cool here and Bobby would be really jealous. Except Bobby’s mom and dad were still married, so maybe he didn’t have much to be jealous about.
When the mailbox was empty, Aaron said, “Main Street west!”
They walked all the way back, so Pat got to wave at his dad through the window and they did the same thing with the mailbox at that end. If Aaron had to catalog and record all this mail it was going to take forever.
They passed Sweet Times on the way back.
“Are Fannie’s cupcakes good?”
“Double chocolate, fudge pieces. Sprinkles on top.”
Pat’s mouth watered. “Do you have a bike? I might get mine later, maybe we could bike ride.”
“Cataloguing, recording, delivering. Break okay. Bike ride.”
“How about cataloguing, recording, delivering. Lunch. Bike ride. Break okay.”
“Okay.” Aaron grinned.
He was an adult but he didn’t talk like it. He sounded like Bobby after he got hit in the head by the ball from T-ball. The throwing up had been pretty bad, but Bobby got two weeks off school and he didn’t have to do his homework.
Matthias’s nephews were cool and all, but they were little kids. Pat figured he could be friends with Aaron. Maybe they played softball here. But football would be okay too; he liked playing catch with his dad. Sometimes Pat even pretended he was Uncle Nate.
“Good morning, Aaron.” A nice lady smiled and then looked at Pat. “And who are you, young man?”
“Are you the teacher?”
She laughed. It was a nice sound. “As a matter of fact, I am. Mrs. Pepper.”
“I’m Patrick Garrett Mason. I’m eight and I’m in third grade.”
“Well, now. That’s practically all grown up.” She ruffled his hair. “My how tall you are.” She glanced at Aaron and then back at Pat. “Looks like you’re on important business. But it is Monday, Pat, so I’ll expect you in school at three-thirty. I need to see where you’re at. Your dad is busy with this…new case. So I doubt he needs you underfoot when he has work to do.”
“Yeah because someone got—”
Her eyes went all big and she shook her head. Aaron was making a sort of whining noise, but with his mouth closed. “Three-thirty okay, Pat?”
“Yes, Mrs. Pepper.”
“You and I are going to get along just fine.” She strode away.
Pat glanced up at Aaron, who didn’t look happy anymore. It was all Pat’s fault. What was he supposed to do? What was it Aaron had said? “Checks and balances.”
“Cataloguing, recording and delivering.” Aaron burst forward, shoving the cart in front of him. “All Aaron.”
Pat grinned and trotted after him.
Waiting while Aaron recorded all the mail in the notebook he called his “ledger” was pretty boring, but Pat went upstairs and made a stack of turkey and mayonnaise sandwiches. Dotty didn’t want one. She had a salad and a white plastic fork. But everyone else had two sandwiches, except his dad who ate three and said they were the best sandwiches ever. He was probably lying—they didn’t even have lettuce because Pat wasn’t allowed to use a big knife to cut it—but Pat didn’t care.
Then it was one o’clock and Pat heard the helicopter. The three of them loaded all the mail on the cart into the back of his dad’s sheriff car and Pat got to ride up front.
“That helicopter is huge! It’s even bigger than the one that brought us here.” Pat couldn’t stop staring at it. “My bike has got to be on there!”
Soldiers climbed out holding big guns, but Pat wasn’t scared. “Awesome!”
His dad grinned. “Stay here for a second okay?” He glanced at the backseat. “Aaron, you with me?”
“All Aaron.”
They climbed out and Pat watched them load the mail. What came off was one bulky bag probably full of more packages and letters…and Pat’s bike. Soon enough they’d get to go have one of Frannie’s cupcakes.
Aaron got back in the Jeep but his dad stayed by the helicopter. Pat saw Matthias driving the ranch truck with something in the back. He swallowed. It looked like one of those bags they put a dead person in on that TV show he wasn’t supposed to watch. Was that Mrs. Collins?
Back at the sheriff’s office Aaron had to enter all the incoming mail in his ledger. Pat got to read the numbers off each envelope, so they’d know they got every bit of it.
“This one’s for Andra.” Pat turned the white envelope over in his hands.
“Si, Senor.”
Pat didn’t get that, so he looked at his dad.
“Andra speaks Spanish.”
“Like Matthias?”
His dad nodded. “And their whole family. I guess their dad was from Puerto Rico but Olympia is actually Greek.”
Pat got to go with Aaron to deliver it all. They used a golf cart that said “Sanctuary Mail”, but someone had written it in marker. Aaron drove all around town while Pat put the letters in people’s mailboxes. Everyone waved and said hi to them. He’d even put his bike on the back, so everyone got to see that, too. His Grandma had given it to him for Christmas, even though she’d said it was from his dad. They didn’t know his mom said he couldn’t get a bike because his step-dad thought Pat was already outside too much and he should study more. But what did Stefan know about being a kid?
The golf cart jerked to the side, just past a huge house that didn’t look like it belonged there. Aaron stopped at the base of a path which wound up between trees into the mountains. The trees wrapped around the whole town like a ring donut, stretching up so far he couldn’t imagine going that high. Who lived up there?
Pat checked the bag. The last envelope was for Andra. “Ms. Andra lives up there?”
“Si, Senor.”
**
Andra stirred the lemonade, though she didn’t know for sure whether Aaron would have anything for her this week. It still felt nice to anticipate company, even if she wound up enjoying the drink on the rocker on her porch watching the sunset.
She set the pitcher in the ancient yellow refrigerator. The minute the door shut, the thing rumbled to life with the whirring sound it made when it was cooling. Eventually it was going to go caput, but for now she’d thank God every day it still worked. Heaven only knew how she’d get a new one all the way up here.
Andra crossed the wood planks of her kitchen and living room floor, both of which matched the color of the logs on the wall and the rafters bracing the roof up. From the front door to the rear wall of the bedroom and then the kitchen window to the fireplace, her home was precisely square and the size of a studio apartment.
Up here the only noise was the rustle of birds and the back and forth motion of tree branches when the wind blew. She’d lived in Barcelona for years, in London, Vienna and Moscow. Crowded, grimy places that liked to think they were great. But the constant press of people all trying to get whatever it was they wanted did not make her feel at home. Andra had left that life behind, getting out of the business she’d fallen into even after she was pressed into going legit. But all that was years ago.
This life was nothing like it; the analogy of being reborn wasn’t lost on her. New creation and all that. It was true, but in the early hours when she woke up sweating and couldn’t get back to sleep because of the crowd of faces in her head it was still hard to shake the past. She may have received all the mercy—for the price of her knowledge—that the government could grant, as well as the heights of mercy God chose to give her. But she still had to live with the memory of what she’d done.
Aaron stepped into the clearing along with Pat Mason. Andra opened the screen door she’d built out of wood scraps and tulle and installed herself, and smiled as they ambled over. “Hola.”
Pat looked confused, so she said, “Hi, Pat.”
His face lit up and he presented her with her l
etter. “We brought your mail!”
“I see that. You boys look thirsty. Lemonade?”
Aaron sat on the porch step, which she took as a yes. Andra poured two glasses and took them out to the boys. Well, Aaron was technically an adult, but there was nearly fifteen years between them so he seemed like a youth to her.
She waited for Aaron to take a sip, and then nod that he liked it before she said, “I’ll go get my box.”
More like a crate, it was full of things she grew behind her cabin. Corn, carrots and onions. Strawberries that were taking over the flowerbed and would have to be cut back soon. She got a lot of sun on her little hill, so she could plant three times a year and have as many harvests.
She’d coupled the cilantro from Olympia with tomatoes and made a batch of salsa. A jar was in the crate.
“It’s a little heavy.” She set it in front of Aaron. “I think you can manage. And Pat can help.”
The boy smiled. Andra looked away.
“Check, no balance.”
“That’s right.” She glanced at Pat then. “There’s a family in town that isn’t doing well. Their baby has been sick and the mom and dad are having a hard time.”
“That happened to my mom and dad. Not the sick part. They got divorced and now my mom is in Boston with Stefan.”
Okay, so that was more than Andra wanted to know about John’s love life. But it did answer a few lingering questions about the new sheriff and his “single dad” status. Not that she needed to know.
“The crate is for them, to help them out.”
“So we take it to them and they don’t know where it came from?”
Andra nodded.
“Cool, like secret agents!”
Was there anything that didn’t get this kid excited? There was so much life in him; too bad it cut her all the way through to the space where her heart was supposed to be. She didn’t know if it was still there or not.
“So this is your house?”
She nodded. “This is home.”
“It’s like a cabin. That’s cool. My dad took me camping once but it was freezing and it rained the whole time. We just played Uno and ate the marshmallows that we were going to use for s’mores.”
“Sounds like you had fun anyway.”
Sanctuary Lost WITSEC Town Series Book 1 Page 10
