Chapter 23
Nora had carved an effective pacing route between the two beds.
Up one side towards the back wall, pivot, back down to the door she’d locked and barricaded with a dresser.
Charlie’s and Jessica’s heads followed her back and forth like the spectators of a slow-motion Ping-Pong match.
Richard and Ruby were upstairs making lunch, just as Patty had predicted, but instead of helping, Nora had dragged her brother to their bedroom for the sake of general safety, a debrief, and to keep Charlie away from knives.
She chewed the inside of her cheek as she paced, stopping occasionally when an unexpectedly heavy step forced her jaw down too hard. This would usually be enough to stop the chewing altogether, but not today. Today the pain kept her alert.
“It’s Patty,” she said. “She’s working with Phil. He’s her stooge, the one doing the dirty work. That mower had Phil written all over it. Richard and Ruby are helping her too, or at least they aren’t working against her. And then there’s the old guy in the forest—”
“Forest house,” Jessica squawked.
“Sure,” said Nora. “He’s close with Phil and Patty. He must know what’s up, though he keeps to himself too much to be an active participant in anything.”
“Okay,” said Charlie.
Nora paused her pacing and plucked Charlie’s file off the floor by her bed.
His cause of death was still a blur, its shape altered yet again.
Also on the rug was Ruby’s file. Somehow, Ruby’s cause of death had completely vanished in the years since it had first appeared, but Nora didn’t think she’d have much luck getting an explanation out of Ruby herself after what Nora had overheard that morning.
Nora could think of only one person who knew everything that went on in Virgo Bay but wasn’t invested in any of it.
“I’m going back to see Oliver,” Nora said.
“Okay,” Charlie said again. “Why?”
“Because he has answers.”
“Answers he clearly has no interest in sharing,” said Charlie.
“Yeah, well, I had no interest in traveling to another country and getting stranded in a town full of sociopaths. We all have to make sacrifices from time to time.”
“All right,” said Charlie, standing up. “Let’s give it a shot, I guess.”
Nora shook her head. “I’m doing this alone, Charlie. You keep yourself locked down here, okay?”
“But—”
“Charlie…” Nora was instantly back in that forest, gunshots raining down around her, tree bark erupting into dust. The deafening blasts, the raw fear like a million thundering hearts racing in harmony in her ears.
She could still taste the damp earth that had sprayed into her mouth as she’d scrambled across the ground on her elbows.
It could all happen again. If whoever was after Charlie wanted it to, it could all happen again.
And this time there was no guarantee they’d both leave the woods in one piece.
She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to.
Charlie knew. One look at his sister’s face and he knew exactly where she was.
“Be careful,” was all he said.
“I always am,” said Nora, but the longer she spent protecting Charlie from death, the less true that felt. She couldn’t keep risking her life to save his. It wasn’t how she was built. She needed this to end.
* * *
The woods felt suffocating. Eyes landed warm on Nora’s back from behind every tree, from within every shrub.
Each rustle of leaves sent her jumping, the crack of a twig beneath her feet summoning the reflex to duck for cover.
Nora reminded herself she wasn’t the target.
Over and over again she repeated it like a mantra as she trudged deeper into the forest. But the more she said it, the less she believed it.
Would that remain the case if she got too close to the truth? She had her doubts.
She made it to the stone house without incident, or at least without any physical harm.
Her nerves were another matter. She was so worked up by the time she reached the front door that she could barely steady her hand long enough to turn the doorknob.
When she finally managed it, she found something almost as shocking as a shooter in the woods.
The door was locked. No door in Virgo Bay was ever locked.
She tried again, thinking the anxiety filling her limbs like helium had made her grip too weak, but the knob simply wouldn’t turn.
Nora took a step back and examined the dark wooden door with a scowl.
Interesting that Oliver would choose today, mere hours after his great-grandchildren visited him for the first time, to start locking his door.
And by “interesting,” she meant “infuriating.”
Nora banged on the door. “Oliver,” she called, but the house remained still and the door bolted. She knocked again. “Oliver, you open this door. I know you’re in there. You’re a hundred and twenty-seven. Don’t pretend you’ve got somewhere else to be.”
Still nothing.
Then, weakly, from somewhere inside: “Go away.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Nora shouted. “This is a matter of life and death.”
“We don’t do that around here,” Oliver called back.
Nora stopped knocking. This was beginning to feel as useless as it had that morning. The adrenaline in her veins eased. She lowered her forehead to the door, suddenly exhausted. “Please.”
A few moments passed. Nora could feel herself melting deeper into the wood of the door.
It was a good door, she decided. Sturdy and rugged without losing its elegance.
She’d once wanted to design houses with doors like this.
They kept the world out, kept you safe within.
It struck her as exactly right that this was the kind of door Oliver would have built for himself.
There was a part of Nora, a part she was somewhat reticent to acknowledge, that could see herself in Oliver, that could see a future much like this for herself.
Just a little house all on her own in a pocket of the world where nothing could ever hurt her.
And yet Oliver seemed deeply miserable. It was one of the many mysteries about this town and the people who called it home, but it wasn’t the one she was here to solve.
Nora was so lost in her thoughts she barely noticed the vibrations of the door’s lock clicking. Her forehead was still pressed against that sturdy wood when the door opened slowly, reluctantly.
“Oh,” said Nora, stepping back. Oliver stood on the threshold, his expression as resolutely annoyed as it had been that morning.
He gave Nora a grunt and shuffled back inside, leaving the door open behind him.
Nora trailed him in, watching as he dropped himself back into the wooden rocking chair by the fireplace.
She took her own prior spot in the other chair.
The house was dimly lit, whatever natural light the clouds outside let through mostly denied entry by a notable lack of windows.
Dust motes frolicked in the scant rays that had made it inside, and a single shelf of the bookcase and a few old picture frames were caught in the hazy spotlight.
“I need the truth about this place,” said Nora.
“Here I thought you knew it,” came Oliver’s reply.
Nora had to snort at this. Virgo Bay had more secret layers than Bubbie’s Super Bowl bean dip, and they made her just as gassy.
“Why do you choose to live out here all on your own?” she tried.
“To get away from annoying questions,” said Oliver.
“You used to be an active part of this town. You founded this town. What changed?”
Oliver crossed his arms and curled into himself by way of reply.
Then it struck her, all at once. The one thing that happened to this town where everything and everyone lived on pause.
“Dad died. That’s what changed, isn’t it?
” But it wasn’t a question, really. As the words formed and then left her mouth, she felt them with a conviction she only ever experienced when stating facts about all the different ways a person could die.
“You’re a kid,” said Oliver. “You barely know your head from your ass. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I lost him too,” Nora said, her mouth drying as Oliver’s scorn sucked the moisture from the room. “And Mom. But I didn’t hole myself up in the middle of nowhere about it.” No matter how much she’d wanted to. Though she didn’t say that part out loud.
“Do you know why I came to Virgo Bay?” Oliver spat. He shook his head with derision. “Forget it.”
“Your wife died,” said Nora, recounting what she’d learned from Richard and Ruby.
“Alice was taken from me,” said Oliver. “I wouldn’t let the same thing happen to our children. I wouldn’t.”
“You couldn’t,” Nora corrected. Her arms twitched. She knew that feeling. It had started nibbling at her the day her parents died, bit her hard after Bubbie passed, and since finding Charlie’s file, it had fully consumed her. She couldn’t let it happen again. It was simply not a possibility.
“I couldn’t,” Oliver relented.
“So you found a Blind Spot.”
“It found me,” said Oliver. “I could feel it, the moment we set foot here. It was different. It would all be different.”
Nora nodded. In a way, she’d felt it too. And she wanted it, the sanctuary this place promised. She craved it. Whatever ire she felt towards this infuriating old man eased slightly in that moment. She would have stayed here too. She still would.
“Then Dad left,” she offered gently.
“He was always a bold one. Could never be content with what was right in front of him.”
“And then he died.”
Oliver’s dark eyes flicked to her, a sudden renewed sharpness behind them.
“He shouldn’t have. It never should have happened.”
“You mean if he’d stayed here he’d still be alive,” said Nora.
Oliver evaded her gaze again. “There was no reason it had to end the way it did.”
“Do you know how it happened?” Nora asked, suddenly realizing he probably knew a lot more than she and Charlie did about the accident that took their parents from them.
The old man seemed to wither in his chair. His face was a wrinkly knot of unspoken words.
“You do,” said Nora. She was back on her feet, the revelation propelling her out of her chair.
Oliver said nothing.
“You do,” Nora said again. “And whatever you know is the reason you let the forest grow in around you, the reason you left the town behind, isn’t it?”
“Is that what you’ve come here to ask me?” Oliver said after a long, infuriating pause.
“Yes. Maybe. I have a million things I want to ask you,” said Nora. “So Dad left and then he died and, what? You resented him so much for walking away from you and leaving the safety of this place that you locked yourself away in the woods?”
“You think that’s it, do you? That I hated my grandson for leaving? And because I hated him I decided to live the rest of eternity alone out of spite? Is that what you think?”
“Well…”
“We all should’ve left this place,” said Oliver, catching Nora firmly off guard. “It shouldn’t exist to begin with. I regret coming here every day of my endless life. This town should be burned to the ground.”