Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Harriet
I bike home along the river walk. The water’s high from recent rains, brown and fast-moving, smacking against the stone embankment.
I pass the row of bright benches by the walking path, then cut up to Commerce Street, past the nice restaurants around Gazebo Park, and on to the less glamorous north side of Commerce Street—the part the tourists don’t usually wander into.
The brick buildings here are older and more lived-in, the signs hand-painted and sun-faded—Hardware Sam’s, Gable’s Grocery, Shelby’s Consignment.
The bell jingles overhead as I walk into the musty gloom of Mrs. Morgan’s Curio Shop. The only brightness is the dust motes swirling in shafts of afternoon light.
I flick on a rose-glass Art Deco lamp in the corner—the one I secretly rewired last year after I got tired of nagging my mom to do it.
“What are we, a brothel?” Mom says without looking up. She’s behind the register, surrounded by towers of books and boxes and papers.
“Shopping is aspirational,” I remind her. “Nobody wants to shop at a store that feels gloomy.” Deep down, I’m talking as much about her as I am about the store.
And I know it’s not fair.
When your child disappears into thin air, you get to be a glass-half-empty person for twenty years if that’s what it takes. Who am I to judge?
The envelope burns in my satchel like a radioactive potato.
I decide to hold off on telling her about it. She hates everything connected with my biological father, and who can blame her? Having a guy literally jump out of a train after having sex with you isn’t much of a confidence booster.
She was pretty mad when I tracked him down. She didn’t want to hear about it at all.
I stop at a set of Red Wing bowls. “Wow! Did you find these last weekend?” I ask even though I already know the answer. I keep near-perfect track of what comes in and out of the store.
Mom and Granabelle go garage sale picking every weekend, and Mom always comes back with a little glow when she scores a Red Wing piece. Now I feel like a total asshole for my gloomy store lecture.
“Not a complete set, sadly,” she says.
“Still, this is a real find! Remember when you told me you’d fall over if you ever found a pink spongeware refrigerator jar?”
She shrugs. It’s always like this—me trying to point out something good, her brushing it aside.
Granabelle appears in the doorway wearing a turquoise caftan and what I sincerely hope is a wig.
“Quick, get a picture of me by the milk glass!” she says. “Before that harpy LaVerne posts another #GlamTuesday in one of her stupid pillbox hats.”
“Didn’t you two call a truce last week?”
“She broke it when she declined to reply to or even so much as heart my kind comment on her most recent post.”
I take her phone, climb up on a chair, and get a few shots.
Whereas Mom’s coping mechanism is cynicism, Granabelle’s has been to recreate herself online as a grandmother-living-her-best-life influencer.
I finally escape, climbing the stairs past peeling floral wallpaper and a banister held together by screws that are already loosening. I would stab our inept handyperson with a grapefruit spoon, but sadly, that inept handyperson is me.
The second floor of the old brick building is living spaces, and the top floor is mostly storage and my bedroom, which is barely bigger than a generous walk-in closet.
But it’s mine. Two-monitor workstation. Dry-erase wall calendar.
Noise-canceling headphones. A giant monstera plant named Liz that is the envy of my subreddit. Everything laid out just so.
I shut the door, take a seat, and pull out the envelope. I run my finger over the weird wax seal with a feeling of dread.
I should just open it. I’m always telling people that more information is better than less information.
Why don’t I open it?
But I can’t bring myself to.
I put it aside and check my email. There’s a notification that people have replied to my post on the Northern Ohio True Crime Forum.
My heart does a happy dance.
A strange murder happened just last week here in Ashwood. It was right after a highbrow wedding at a grand old mansion. Town dignitaries were lined up on the majestic curving staircase when it collapsed.
The deputy mayor died. Others were injured.
A remote-control hydraulic device was found in the debris.
It seems that somebody used a wireless device to cause the thing to collapse, with the mayor and his team standing on it.
Everybody in town, including the police, believes it was an assassination attempt.
Everybody except me.
I’ve followed a string of increasingly dangerous wedding-related disasters that have been happening for almost a year. Poor Granabelle was injured at one of the early ones, where a cart loaded with dirty dishes careened down a hill and smashed into a group of wedding guests.
Nobody could explain how it happened.
I started hearing about other weird wedding accidents over cappuccinos at the coffee shop, in buried social media posts, and through Granabelle’s unstoppable gossip grapevine.
So I started a spreadsheet.
That’s when the pattern snapped into focus: the timing between accidents, the way each one grew more severe. It was too deliberate to ignore.
It is my belief we have a budding serial killer in town—one who stages accidents at weddings.
This is the first time that person has left evidence behind, however.
Officer Maverick Cooper refused to allow me to examine the device, refused to answer even my most basic questions, and listened to my theory with a pitying and slightly annoyed look on his face, which made me feel more pathetic than usual around him.
So I laid my theory out for my true crime forum peeps. I’d been waiting until I gathered more information, but if anybody would see what I see, it would be them!
I excitedly click onto the discussion.
HarCorman: LOLOLOL are you serious? I see a pattern in your wedding accident serial killer theory, and it spells CRY FOR HELP.
Glendale129: The stairway collapse was a message from the Snag Tooth Riders. Everyone knows it except you.
MartSamson: It was one of the bikers going after the mayor… Obvs!!!!! Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Rooster5.
Sherlocksmith: Nothing suspicious in your data, Rooster5. People fall. People choke. People die at weddings. Doesn’t make it a serial killer pattern. Dropping a link to a table “Falls and Accidental Deaths by Setting” for you to study.
TheTorvald: This might be your most pathetic theory yet. Kudos. Time to take off the serial-killer-colored glasses.
I start to type a defense. The pattern is so obvious, and yes, I have studied the “Falls and Accidental Deaths by Setting” data.
Instead, I delete it and shut my laptop. The last thing I want to do is get into an internet fight right now.
I know I’m right.
That’s enough.
The envelope from the lawyers still sits on my desk, silent and a little bit eerie.
I think about tossing it, but what if it’s a check? Summer’s coming, and the store’s air conditioner is barely functional. Serena pays me well, but most of it goes toward supporting my mom and grandmother and a failing store.
Even if it’s a hundred bucks, that would help.
I break the wax seal. It’s a letter.
Just a letter.
No check.
The letter is a lot of legalese. Like a mercenary, I scan for words like “account” or “funds.”
But all I get is this:
To receive the full details of your inheritance, you must be physically present at the castelul at the time of dispensation. No accommodations for remote attendance are permitted.
No accommodations for remote attendance? If I want to see if I got anything, I have to go to a castle in Karsovia? And I’m informed of this via a letter with a wax seal, circa 1650?
What is happening here? Do any other relatives just want to meet the biological daughter? And if so, why not say it? Though it’s hard to imagine my father having any close family. You’d think they would’ve intervened.
No, I don’t want anything from those people.
No way.
I toss it into my vintage Smurfs garbage can.