Chapter 5 Collins #2
Clarke tilted her head at the annoyance in my voice. “I know,” she said. “That should be your heaven. I thought you’d be jazzed. If Brady is boring, at least you’ll have other things to talk to.”
I swallowed hard. “Right, yeah. You’re right.”
Clarke narrowed her eyes at me—either trying to read my mind or getting ready to ask a question I really didn’t want to answer.
If there was anyone I could talk to about this, it was Clarke. She was the only other person who could understand, but she wouldn’t. She’d probably tell me to enjoy the quiet. But I was saved by my mom making her way into the entry.
“I thought I heard the two of you,” she said with a warm smile, and I immediately stepped toward her for a hug.
Joanie Cartwright was beautiful. About ten years ago, she decided to embrace her gray hair, and once it grew all the way out, she’d started using different temporary color conditioners on it every couple of weeks.
Right now, it looked like it was covered in an icy blue.
She always wore a duster of some sort, and today’s was floral that leaned into deep purple and green tones with black tassels on the trim.
“Hi, Mom.” I breathed her in. She always smelled like ambrette and coffee and whatever incense she was burning at home. I heard her bracelets clinking together as she rubbed her hands over my shoulders.
When my mom pulled back, she gently grabbed my chin in her hands.
Her rings were cool against my skin. “Let me look at you,” she said with a soft smile.
I fluttered my eyelashes a few times. She studied my face for a second, then said, “Stunning. How’s your heart?
” It was never “How are you?” or “How are you feeling?” It was always “How’s your heart? ”
“Half full,” I said. It was the most honest thing I’d said since I got here.
My mom looked at me thoughtfully. “Better than half empty,” she said, and kissed my forehead. “Clarke, stop working. It’s dinnertime.”
The kitchen at Toades, though it was packed to the brim with antique décor and appliances that were for sale, was fully functional.
My parents made a lot of baked goods in the oven to keep in the shop, and they cooked a lot of meals here, too.
If they kept the sign up after normal hours—they closed at four-thirty—that meant anyone could come in for dinner and eat.
Tonight, though, the sign was flipped to Closed, so it was just us.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked. My dad wasn’t here all the time.
He was a long-haul trucker, so he was gone for a couple of weeks at a time and then home for a week or so.
Sometimes when I came home, I missed him if I didn’t give any notice, but if I gave a warning, then he’d finagle his schedule to see me every time.
“Upstairs. Storm last night brought a leak in one of the rooms up there. He’s patching it up,” she said. “Dex!” she yelled to nowhere in particular—just hoping my dad would hear. “Collins is here!”
“Did you lose any merchandise?” I asked.
“Not too much,” Joanie responded.
“Twelve hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise,” Clarke said. “Mom and I have different definitions of ‘not too much.’?”
“It’ll be fine, baby,” my mom said with a pat on Clarke’s back as she walked over to the oven. “These things work out.”
I could almost hear Clarke’s eyes rolling. Each of us took a seat at a barstool while my mom pulled a sheet pan out of the oven. I couldn’t tell what it was yet, though.
The stairs creaked loudly as my dad made his way down.
A few seconds later, he appeared in the kitchen with a wide grin.
He was wiping his hands with an old T-shirt that he threw over his shoulder as he made his way to Clarke and me.
Nothing went to waste in our house—or Toades.
Clothes were patched and mended until they couldn’t be and then my mom would find another use for them—usually rags, but sometimes she’d sew them together to make pouches or grocery bags.
My dad was usually clean-shaven but kept his hair long enough that he could pull it back into a small bun at the back of his head. Today, he was wearing a plain blue T-shirt, jeans, and a well-worn pair of hiking boots.
“Hi, peanut,” he said. His voice was gravelly from half a lifetime of cigarettes.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and squeezed tight. “Hey, Pop.” My dad always cupped the back of our heads when he hugged us. It made me feel so safe and protected—like nothing could get to me.
“How was your first day?” he asked as he pulled back and gave Clarke a kiss on the back of her head before moving to the other side of the counter.
My mom put two plates of food in front of Clarke and me.
Chicken roll-ups. My favorite. It was a classic Cartwright comfort dish.
It was a mixture of chicken, cream cheese, and some sort of canned creamy soup—cream of chicken or cream of mushroom, usually—all wrapped up in the store-bought crescent dough that came in the tube and baked until golden brown.
I made them for someone I was seeing once, and they thought they sounded, looked, and tasted disgusting. And maybe they did, but I did not tolerate chicken roll-up slander.
The grocery store in Sweetwater Peak carried local, in-season produce from one of the only farms in town—Wilkes Farm—and a couple gardens, so in the winter, fresh produce was normally in shorter supply.
I grew up with a lot of meals that depended on cans—whether it was store-bought or canned by my mom.
My favorites were her canned peaches or cherry syrup.
My mom went to get a plate for herself and my dad, but he grabbed her hand, kissed the back of it, and motioned for her to sit down before he grabbed a plate for both of them. “Drink orders?” Dex asked.
“Root beer,” Clarke and I said at the same time.
“I’ll stick with water, D,” my mom chimed in. My dad grabbed two cans of root beer and a Coke out of the blue vintage refrigerator. We had the same one at home, but it was olive green and scratched to hell.
“How was your first full day back home?” Mom asked, and then laughed a little. “Hopefully less eventful than the first night.”
I whipped my head to look at Clarke. “Big mouth!”
“You didn’t invoke the twin code.” She shrugged.
“I feel like that was a given!”
“That’s not how the twin code works, and you know it.
” The twin code had a lot of rules that Clarke and I made up when we were tweens.
Invoking the twin code in any situation meant that the other was sworn to secrecy.
We made a contract and pricked our fingers and literally sealed it with blood (I think we were probably a little too into The Vampire Diaries and Practical Magic at the time).
“That situation had precedent that was covered by the twin code. It was legacied.”
“Not how it works,” Clarke said again.
“Well, I’d like to make an amendment.” I folded my arms.
“An amendment is pointless—they already kn—”
I raised my hand and cut her off. “I want an amendment to cover any future instances of pepper spray.”
“It’s under advisement,” she said, with another eye roll. She is so good at those. They’re always perfectly paced depending on the situation. Sometimes she did it slowly; other times, it was a quick flick. No matter what, though, it was always effective—either in shutting me up or pissing me off.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me—”
My dad clapped and said, “All right. Guns down, ladies. Dinnertime is no place for a shootout.”
I used my fork to cut off a piece of one of the roll-ups on my plate and chewed angrily. “Day was good,” I said after I swallowed. I felt better with my favorite food in my stomach.
“She thinks Brady is boring,” Clarke said, and I gave her another dirty look. I wanted to stab her in the hand with my fork.
“He’s a good kid,” my dad said. “Does good work.”
“None of that screams ‘not boring,’?” I said. “And I agree that he’s probably a good person and does good work from what I can tell so far.”
“He is a little…one note,” my mom agreed. “But not in a bad way. I think he’s just still finding his footing here. I don’t really see him around town much unless he’s here. Maybe you working there will be good for him. You can show him around a bit.”
“Roommate bonding time.” My dad nodded.
“I think you are all overestimating my ability to make friends and also my own motivation to leave my house,” I said.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be showing anyone around Sweetwater Peak.
If I could help it, I’d only ever have to leave my room to go to work or to go to Boone’s, and if I was going anywhere else, I’d skulk under the cover of darkness.
“Collins, my love.” My mom’s tone was sympathetic. “You’ve never once been able to sit still.”
I sighed. Joanie had a point. I’d go crazy if all I did was work and live in that building—even if I told myself that was all I wanted to do. I was good at lying to myself, but I wasn’t that good. Skulking in the darkness was still an option, though.
“But being there shouldn’t be too boring for you,” Mom said. “I always feel a lot of activity when I go in there. Did you see anything today?”
Joanie wasn’t like Clarke and me, but she was…
something. When we were growing up, she called it “sensitive.” It’s why she had a knack for antiques—she felt energies so clearly and never bought or collected anything for the shop or our house that she felt was tethered to anything negative.
When she started noticing her twins looking at things that weren’t there, she thought we might be like her, but our thing turned out to be a little more… intense, obviously.
“Olly already said that the place is crawling.” Clarke nodded after she took a glug of her root beer.
I felt my shoulders sag a little but hoped I caught it before they fell too much.
“Hear anything good?” Dad asked.
“Not yet,” I said with a shake of my head. “But all in due time, I’m sure.”