“Yes. You should always be grateful for that.”
“Don’t get snippy!” Eileen waved her hand at the crumpled Vertigo. “That could’ve been you.”
“For all you know, I saved someone’s life today. And maybe I already feel bad about the car, Mom, so you don’t have to—” Sarah stumbled over not saying the F-word. If it were anyone else… “Rub it in!”
“Wow. Guilt. I didn’t know you were capable. I’m sure this will make your Prius ‘gently used’ all over again.”
“I’ll get it fixed. It’s not like this town doesn’t have a body shop.”
“And you’ll pay for it how?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Because that’s your strong suit,” Eileen finished for her. “Figuring things out.”
Sarah just bit her lip and looked away. Eileen never understood. She wasn’t in any mood to battle anymore. “I’ll start looking for a second job in the morning.”
As she walked to her mom’s car—no way in hell Eileen would be letting her drive home; she’d sooner eat the bill for a tow truck—she felt eyes on the back of her neck. Dark, hazel eyes.
Chapter 2
Eileen woke Sarah up the next morning by dropping a DVD on her pillow. Sarah was dozing lightly enough to try making sense of the slipcover instead of falling out of bed. “Defensive Driving? Mom, come on, it’s…eleven a.m.”
Eileen was merciless. “You said in the morning—”
“It’s still the morning.”
“If you were going to stay up half the night, you’d think you could’ve filled out some job applications…”
No, now Eileen was merciless. She’d had a little bit of mercy before; it was gone.
“I couldn’t sleep. It was the adrenaline.”
“And every other night? Do you go skydiving? Street racing? Well, now you’re up, so I expect at least one interview scheduled by the end of the day, and you can watch the first disc of that program. And it came with a booklet, so I will be testing you.”
Sarah opened the DVD case. “The Dangers of Drunk Driving? Mom, I wasn’t drunk.”
“At least a drunk person would’ve had an excuse. Now go and get the mail; you can have breakfast before you hit the pavement.”
Sarah had slept in the hoodie and sweatpants she’d thrown on after scrubbing the mud out of the clothes she’d been wearing last night. She pulled the hood up over her ears and got out of bed. “No one hits the pavement anymore, Mom. All the applications are online.”
Eileen was in hot pursuit as she trudged downstairs. “You’re in trouble and you expect me to put you on the computer all day?”
“You could install Windows 8 on it.” The joke was clearly lost on Eileen, who didn’t respond.
Sarah stepped into some flip-flops, taking far longer than necessary to put them on because she was determined to use only her toes—Goddamn her to hell if she had to use her hands for fucking flip-flops—and then walked out to get the mail. Thankfully, the lecture stayed indoors. Eileen was even less a fan of airing dirty laundry than she was of a full sleep cycle.
Sarah took the mail out of the box—giving the old post-and-flag configuration a kick for being so damn quaint—and automatically sorted through it. Netflix, bills, birthday cards (no money), coupons for Sizzler, and… Holy shit.
An envelope with her name in the middle and Nina Rose’s in the corner.
>~~~<
In her room, Sarah had all the lights off except for the neon Eat at Joe’s sign that’d been a gift from her friend Beck, who’d worked at a junkyard. Its green glow served as nightlight and possible Superman deterrent while Sarah used her laptop.
The usual gang was all on Skype, except for Tyrese, whose grandfather still practiced corporal punishment: turning off the internet router until he’d done a laundry list of chores. There was Jonesy, who’d been childhood friends with Sarah until she’d moved away. They’d rediscovered each other on Facebook a few years back. In the interval, Jonesy had discovered boys and put on weight. She seemed happy, and Sarah had gotten too many maternal comments about at least getting diet soda if she was drinking sugar water to want to police how many chins Jonesy had.
Beck she’d met in high school. She was a townie like Sarah, but way straightedge, though she didn’t look it: brush-cut head with what little hair was left dyed pink, nose ring, blue lipstick. Since none of them really drank, smoked, or shot up, things were civil with her, though she’d shown worrying signs of getting into veganism.
Then there was Sarah. She liked her looks. Her current ensemble was, well, “affordable,” but she loved her body almost as much as pop stars said she should: the breasts that had taken approximately forever to come in, the legs that had sprung up just before high school ended, the hair that she’d stopped wearing in a ponytail so it could messily wrap around her shoulders, long and latte-colored. It had all come together pretty well. Athletic enough, thin enough, busty enough—everything “enough.”
She supposed she should be more enthusiastic about it than that. It wasn’t like no one ever liked her selfies. She guessed it just wasn’t in her nature to proclaim herself beautiful, even mentally. Beck had her cool punkish side, Jonesy had her confidence…and Sarah just felt like…the sum of her parts.
“Hey, Sarah? We’re wondering why you called us all here today?” Beck asked.
Sarah almost apologized for spacing out. Instead, she held up the envelope. Nina Rose’s neat signature over the address: 101 Gothel Lane.
“Holy darn,” Beck said. “Nina Rose. So we know she has hands, then?”
“She could’ve had someone write it for her,” Sarah reasoned. “She’s supposed to be a millionaire, after all.”
“Who’s Nina Rose?” Jonesy asked.
“Right, that was after your time,” Sarah realized.
Beck took over. “She’s like this hermit millionaire who moved into the old Stauffer place.”
“What old Stauffer place?”
Beck huffed out an exasperated sigh. “Did you even live here, woman? It was the seventies or something and this whole family was living there, white picket fences and everything—”
Boop. Sarah got a chat message from Jonesy underneath the roulette wheel of video windows. So what’s the story with you and Ty, meow?
What story? Same story as ever, Sarah typed back.
Beck was still going strong. “So he starts wondering who all these letters are coming from, right, so the next Tuesday he stays up all night to watch the door—”
Siriusly biutch? You tell me you’re trying something new in the bedroom and then all quiet on the Sarah Kay front.
“Naturally, he gets an axe, goes to his wife’s bedroom—”
Sarah flicked an annoyed glance at Beck’s ranting; she’d always been one step away from one of those girls who wrote to serial killers in prison.
Then she started typing: It was fine. We bought some lube, tried out some different positions—
“Then, covered in blood, he takes the bodies and—”
Sarah muted the audio. What to say? What the fuck to say? She typed: It didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel bad. I wasn’t really expecting it to be great, not right away, but we’ve had plenty of practice, and I still don’t feel anything. It’s like my body responds, but I’m not invested in it. I don’t care. I keep thinking about the condom and the lube and shit like that. All the mechanics. Then it’s over and I don’t feel any different. No matter how many times we do it, it’s still like I don’t…
The words just flowed out of her, like her fingers were attacking the keyboard, punching and chopping and no end in sight. She deleted all of it without sending and unmuted the conversation.
“And that rookie cop who found them is still in a madhouse to this day,” Beck concluded triumphantly.
“Wasn’t that an episode of Hannibal?” Jonesy asked.
“They have to get their ideas somewhere. So what’s the letter actually say?”
/> “Pretty much nothing.” Sarah held it up to the webcam.
Ms. Sarah Kay,
You are cordially invited to the home of Nina Rose, Tuesday, 6:00 PM. Semi-formal wear acceptable. Refreshments will be served.
“Nice calligraphy,” Beck noted. “She definitely pays someone to write that for her.”
“Like a medieval monk or something.”
“Is she suing you?”
“Are you bringing a lawyer?”
“Do you have a lawyer?”
“Sounds more like a party.”
The screen began artifacting, her friends’ faces decomposing into a collection of misplaced pixels. Sarah fought the urge to give her laptop a smack. Why did the internet in America suck so bad? She’d heard that in the Netherlands, they had free broadband as a civil right.
Purr purr, Jonesy sent via chat. Still waiting on an answer.
Sarah forced her fingers to press down. It was great. I just don’t wanna talk about it and have my private life end up in one of your weird sex tweets.
Moments later, a reply popped up. Now she’s too good for my two million followers. *rubs paws all over your face*
Eh, most of those are bots.
“So are you going to go?” Jonesy asked, and Sarah realized it was directed at her.
“Yeah, I think so. At least it’ll get me out of the job hunt for a while. Why is it that the supermarket can’t give me more hours again?”
“Because then they’d have to give you health insurance,” Jonesy said.
“Oh, yeah, right.”
Tyrese came on then. Beck brightened instantly. “Hey, Ty.”
“Hey. Anyone on Twitch?” A chorus of nos. “You gotta check this out.” He sent them a link.
It was an ice rink, one big enough for the Stanley Cup finals, viewed from one of those high-up cameras you occasionally saw getting investigated by birds. The feed showed a number of people scuttling like beetles about the ice and the seating.
“What am I looking at?” Jonesy asked.
“It’s the World Domino League, or something like that,” Tyrese replied. He typed as he spoke, and it wasn’t long before Sarah got a message in the chat box: U OK? She typed back, explaining about the letter as he went on. “They’re building a domino knockdown with three hundred thousand dominos, going for the world record for knockdown with most tails… At least, that’s what their tweet says.”
“So…what am I looking at?” Jonesy asked again.
“No, it’s cool,” Beck said. “Something out of nothing. Thanks, Ty.”
Tyrese got Sarah’s message, read it rapid-fire, his lips moving a little as he parsed it. “Damn,” he muttered. “So, the old Stauffer place?”
“Old Stauffer place,” Sarah confirmed, feeling a little bit of pride for no real reason. Maybe just the result of being the center of attention instead of Beck’s latest crusade or whatever weirdness Jonesy had uncovered in her mom’s seventies romance novels.
“Wonder what it looks like on the inside. I hear Nina Rose never steps foot outside the place.”
“Well, her car does,” Sarah told him.
“You gotta wonder what she did on the inside, after the exterior renovations,” Beck said.
“What renovations?”
“You haven’t seen the renovations?” Beck asked. “I mean, sure, no one’s gone inside, but there’s nothing to stop you from looking at it.”
“I thought it was on an island,” Jonesy said.
“Islet,” Beck corrected. “In Dutch River.”
“Are you her real estate agent now?” Sarah asked.
“Hey, Jonesy moved away, fine, but I can’t believe you’ve lived here your entire live and never checked out the haunted house of Nina Rose.”
Sarah coughed. “Ditto. I can’t believe I’ve lived here my entire life either.”
“So what’s it look like, then?” Jonesy asked.
“Nobody tell her,” Tyrese ordered. “Sarah, go see it, take a selfie—”
“I’m not doing that.”
“How do you even know what it looks like,” Jonesy persisted, “if it’s on some kind of towhead?”
“Towhead, whoa, look who moved to Mississippi,” Beck sniped. “I have binoculars, Jonesy, clearly.”
“You think it makes them happy?” Sarah asked. She was looking at the window she still had open to Twitch, watching all those thousands of dominos being put into place.
“What?”
“All those dominos. It must feel pretty good, looking back and seeing all the ones you’ve placed. And having a big—” She gestured with her hand, symbolizing a domino tipping over. “To look forward to.”
“They’re probably just doing it for attention,” Tyrese said.
“Got a check from a deodorant company or something,” Beck agreed. “They just want it to go viral, or whatever buzzword their marketing guy used.”
“Yeah…” Sarah agreed hesitantly.
After they’d all signed off and she was way past a reasonable bedtime instead of just “up late,” Sarah left her laptop on as she lay down. She was playing an audiobook to narrate her to sleep, but she was also watching the dominos be lined up. It was soothing. Had to be for them too, all those people working on it. Having a passion for something. Must be nice.
>~~~<
Sarah was sure the note could’ve been inviting her to be executed by firing squad and Eileen would still insist she look her best. She still had her prom dress, a beaded, one-shouldered black gown from Laundry by Shelli Segal that she’d gotten for two-fifty. She and her mom brokered a bit of a peace, with Eileen fixing up her hair in a chignon.
When Sarah checked herself out in the mirror, she deemed the look professional, but cute professional. Sequins colorfully lined the left side of the dress, which also featured a ruched detail throughout and a mid-thigh slit to break up the oppressively floor-bound length. She loved the way it didn’t cling to her body like some needy, desperate Kardashian thing, but sort of got a firm grip on her physique and then gentled out into smooth, slight folds, modest and becoming. A few unambitious pieces of jewelry—she liked the simplicity of her Michelle Chang ear climbers, shaped like shooting stars—some trying-not-so-hard kitten heels, and a dark orange wool coat that she hoped went with the dress as well as it went with jeans and slacks.
Then her mom drove her to Dutch River. There was a little boathouse in a gully of the river, with a garage connected to it by a covered walkway. Sarah guessed that was where the Vertigo was stored when it wasn’t hugging a tree. After all, it wasn’t like Nina could drive it across the water.
“Just call when you need me to pick you up,” Eileen said, putting a definite end to any cool, confident, sexy vibes Sarah might’ve felt.
“Sure. When’s my car getting out of the shop again?”
“When you’ve paid for it.”
Sarah gritted her teeth and reminded herself to get one of those insurance packages that offered a rental when her car needed repairs. No way she should be this dependent on her mother one day into being twenty years of age.
Sarah stepped out of the car, pulling her coat tightly around herself. The sun was high in the sky, but it was going from nippy to outright cold. She waved for her mother to drive off, stepped toward the short, squat boathouse, then waved again for her mother to drive on instead of parking there with the engine idling like a creeper. Finally, she heard the big minivan rumble as it drove off, and she was left alone with the scenery.
Dutch River spread out in front of her, wide and low, a fat, lazy thing painting itself from north to south. The current was gentle, tugging along leaves and a few branches at a stately pace, the island in the middle clearly visible. It looked like quite a few acres, shrouded by vibrant trees in the same shades of orange, gold, and red as the rest of the fall foliage. They reflected into the clear water, spreading around the island like a wreath. It looked pleasant enough.
Something was beeping. Exaggeratedly electronic beeps, l
ike a misbehaving phone. Coming from inside the boathouse. She went to the door, with its beveled lights, and saw a phone lit up in the dim space. Abruptly, the door opened outward, and she stepped back to make way for an elderly man to come out into the light.
He was maybe sixty, full-cheeked and ruddy-nosed, wearing a pair of slacks, a comfortable-looking sweater over an amenable belly, and a flat cap atop his silvery hair. When he saw her, he put away his phone and drew up the glasses he wore on a chain around his neck, seating them on his bulbous nose.
“Oh, hello there. You must be the young lady.” His voice was reedy with age but warm and friendly. “I’m Bill Shannon, the groundskeeper about here. So you don’t have to worry about the cars or boats, anything this end of the river. That’s all me.”
Okay. Good to know. “Sarah Kay,” she introduced herself. “I was, uh…invited.”
“Yes. Right this way. Hope you don’t get seasick!” He stepped back into the boathouse, crooking his finger to lead her on, and flicked on the light.
Inside, the place was rustic, wooden, with tools lining the walls, some replacement parts on a few stock shelves, and a plain, unadorned motorboat moored inside the cement pool the wooden structure sheltered. There was a sort of combined railing and ladder, and even with his obvious lack of finesse, Mr. Shannon was able to nimbly help himself down into the boat.
“You can feel free to leave anything you want on the shelves. I’ll lock the door for you—only other way to get in here is to swim in, and brother, nobody’ll do that, not when they’ve got any sense!”
“Yeah.” Stepping carefully, Sarah lowered herself into the boat and quickly seated herself with fingers firmly wrapped around the bench underneath her. “Does this thing have seatbelts?”
“Nah!” Mr. Shannon didn’t look at her, instead concerning himself with unmooring the boat. He did it with practiced ease. “Now pay attention, because a lot of this is real simple, so I’m gonna think less’a you if I have to repeat it.” With a tired grunt of exertion, he cracked his back and then dropped himself into the driver’s seat. Pilot’s seat? The seat. While checking over the equipment, he said, “This river runs through the Partry Dam upstream; that powers your TV, your Xbox, what have you. So most of the time, these waters are nice and calm. Perfect for fishing, really… Ya mind pulling the zip start?”
The Woman at the Edge of Town Page 2
