7. Treasure
TREASURE
I’m dressed for my shift with time to spare, so I give the place the once-over I’ve been avoiding.
The walls are as bare as the day I moved in.
I quit filling the bookshelf halfway through unpacking, and I’ve stepped around that moving box so many times I nearly set a plant on it.
This is the apartment of a woman with one foot out the door, and I have news for her. She’s staying.
I count out last night’s tips on the kitchen table.
It comes to forty-seven dollars and change, which is not bad for a Tuesday night in a town this size.
All of it goes in a jelly jar under the kitchen sink, back behind the bleach where no one with sense would look.
A girl learns a few things living in the city.
That jar is my decorating fund. My life is starting over in this place, and it ought to look like someone lives here.
The clouds are sitting low on the ridge, and thunder keeps clearing its throat somewhere behind them.
I’m not due at the diner for a while, but I didn’t move to a new town to get acquainted with my own sofa.
If the flyers by Andy’s register are any clue, Shadow Wolf Creek will throw a festival over just about anything.
I can’t wait on one, so the shopping center will have to do.
Someone out here is bound to get nosy and talk to me.
I park my hatchback in front of Stanley’s and gather my apron and purse off the passenger seat. That sky is about to open up on someone. I look up and check the diner roof. It’s still nothing but shingles and gutter up there.
“I know I’m not going crazy,” I tell the roofline. “It was there.”
I groan at myself and head for the sidewalk, and I fish out my phone on the way, because idle hands and all. My old roommates are posted up in someone’s section with their drinks in the air, filming like rent is paid.
“Y’all sure are having a good time now that I’m not there,” I murmur.
My stomach sours watching them, and I hate that it does. I put the phone away before it makes me any dumber. You left that city on purpose, Treasure. Pouting over a club you never even liked is a sorry way to spend a Wednesday.
Across the street, a man props open the door at a place called Shadow Bar and starts flipping chairs down off the tables. Now that might be worth an off day.
I reach the sidewalk and stop walking.
What the hell is this?
The statue is back, and it skipped the roof this time. It’s sitting on the ground against the diner’s brick wall, right up by the front door like someone’s enormous guard dog. It’s my statue from the roof, down to the curl of its claws.
I walk up slow and give it a good long look.
I keep my voice quiet and friendly. “I know you were on the roof. Now you’re down here.”
A man strolls past with his coffee and pays no attention to me or the enormous stone monster I’m talking to. I still check the sidewalk both ways. If someone catches the new girl counseling a statue, that follows me in this town for good.
I’m mid-groan when the diner door swings open and Lamar comes out with it, dish rag over one shoulder and his apron testifying about the lunch rush. He smiles at me anyway.
“So do you always work doubles?” I ask him.
“Not really. Just till Andy hires someone.” He wipes his hands on the rag, watching me the whole while. I pretend I don’t clock it. “Plus I’m saving up to renovate my house. My mother passed it down to me.”
The question is out before I can dress it up nice. “And where’s your mother?”
His smile goes quiet. “She died a few months after my twentieth birthday.”
That knocks the play right out of me. “Oh, Lamar. I’m so sorry.”
“No need to apologize. She’s with me in spirit.” He says it easy, then leans a shoulder on the doorframe. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about settling down. Starting a family of my own.”
I stiffen up quick and hope my face doesn’t tell on me. Damn, this dude is too straightforward. He might as well pull out his house keys and hand them over while he’s at it.
I put on the smile I keep for customers halfway through a fantasy football story. “That’s awesome, Lamar.”
The statue pulls my eye again. Something about it sits wrong, and I can’t name what.
“Lamar, look at this.” I point at it.
He looks and he might as well be looking at a parking meter. “Yeah? What about it?”
“Wait, what?”
“That statue’s always been there,” he says.
“You’re not serious.” Lamar keeps a grin loaded at all times, and I can’t find it anywhere on him now. “It has not always been there. It was on the roof yesterday, and then it wasn’t.”
Lamar looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. The way this whole town has been acting, maybe I have.
He chuckles, but his eyes stay kind. “You good, Treasure?”
I press my hand to my forehead and keep my voice light so it passes for a joke. “I think I need to get my head checked or something.”
He nods at the apron in my hand. “Your shift’s not for another couple hours. What are you doing in town anyway?”
“What better way to get to know a town than to roam it?” I spread my arms at the empty sidewalk. “Someone’s bound to start up a conversation with me.”
Lamar smiles at that. “Well, I gotta get back to the kitchen. See you soon.”
The bell jingles behind him, and I watch the sidewalk traffic for a minute. A woman in scrubs brushes right past the statue’s folded wing and pays it no mind.
Okay, what the hell is happening in this town?
I step in close and drop my voice. “You’re real, aren’t you?” I ask it. “What do you want with Stanley’s Diner?”
I stare at it hard and wait it out. The stone gives me nothing.
I reach out anyway, and my hand shakes on the way up. That makes no kind of sense. The worst a statue can do to me is have pigeon business on it. My fingers brush over its face.
The stone is warm.
The day hasn’t seen the sun once, and this stone is warm as a July sidewalk.
Something runs up my arm and sets up camp, and I know for a fact rocks don’t do that.
Instead of snatching my hand back like a person with sense, I’m standing in the middle of a public sidewalk wanting to get closer to a statue.
It feels like this thing knows me from somewhere, and I’m the rude one for acting brand new.
I pull my hand back and scratch at my scalp under my braids.
“Maybe I am going crazy,” I tell it. I hate how reasonable I sound. “Maybe you were down here the whole time and I just??—”
I stop myself right there, and no ma’am.
I know what I saw. That thing was on the roof when I started my shift, it was gone when I clocked out, and now it’s sitting at the front door of my place of employment while this whole town swears it’s always been there.
Someone in this situation is wrong, and I’m getting tired of assuming it’s me.
Thunder cracks closer, and it snaps me right out of whatever that was. Rain means a slow night. Folks up these mountains aren’t driving down in a storm, not even for Lamar’s meatloaf.
Then I spot LENA CRAFTS painted in loopy letters across a window down the sidewalk. There’s a craft store sitting in walking distance of my job, and someone up there must still love me.
“The craft store is the last place I belong,” I tell the statue. Yes, I’m talking to it again. It should feel crazier than it does. “I will spend every dollar I just saved up. If it’s one thing I cannot say no to, it’s a craft project.”
I tip my chin at the gargoyle and let a smirk come up slow. “That, and probably you. Or some handsome shifter. If approached.”
I hear myself and shut my whole mouth. I just flirted with a statue. I press my palm to my forehead one more time. “Oh, I am out of my mind today.” I walk off so the rock can’t collect any more of my business.
I still sneak one look back. That face sits angled just off from me, same as it did on the roof. If I ever catch it blinking, I’m moving right back to the city.
This town has to keep a library somewhere.
If not, my laptop’s in one of those bedroom boxes, and tonight after close it’s coming out of retirement.
I’m reading up on gargoyle lore. If some dusty legend can explain a statue that wanders around a shopping center unnoticed, then I can quit feeling like the girl who loses her mind by day two of a new job.
The door at Lena Crafts opens with a soft chime, and that sweet paper-and-glue smell I’ve loved my whole life is waiting on the other side.
I hum my approval on the way in. The aisles are good and busy, and I can pick out the shifters without trying.
When a man built like a delivery truck glides past a display of tiny glass beads without rattling one, that’s all the telling I need.
I grab a basket and get to work. The picture frames come first. A woman who’s staying ought to have something on her walls.