Chapter Twelve #3
Oliver sighed but followed Gwen as she crunched through fallen leaves back toward the heart of town.
He really didn’t want to meander around a strange place, and the looming grey clouds didn’t help.
He couldn’t help but worry about getting lost or acting strange and drawing unwanted attention.
Oliver centered himself; with her at his side and Felipe only a panicked tug away, he could manage.
For a town built on magic, he hadn’t seen anyone use theirs.
While the street of houses was nearly deserted, closer to the main road, there was a woman tugging two little children along from shop to shop, old men playing backgammon under a tree, and workers unloading dry goods from a wagon.
Aldorhaven was far less crowded than Manhattan, but the lack of anonymity made Oliver’s brain urge him to go back to his room and not venture out for fear of drawing their eye.
Even if it was possible to go back to the inn without straining the tether to its breaking point, it wasn’t fair to Gwen and Felipe.
Pushing his feelings down, Oliver let his mind wander to dull the familiar wash of anxiety.
As they walked, Gwen greeted each curious gawker they passed while Oliver tipped his hat automatically, but his mind kept looking for some hint of recognition or resemblance in the faces of every stranger they passed.
He knew he shouldn’t have been thinking about his father’s family when they were still working on the case; the dead took precedence over his whims, but he couldn’t help it.
Strolling past weathered houses built in the colonial style and newer ones with gingerbread moldings and Mansford roofs, Oliver wondered which one his parents had lived in and what it would have been like to grow up in Aldorhaven instead of Philadelphia.
It was strange to know that his mother had probably looked upon the same tavern with its flat, red brick face and the pharmacy with its brightly colored show globes in the window and hunter green sign above the door every day as she walked around Aldorhaven.
The people who created him had been dead and gone for decades, yet their world remained relatively untouched.
“Let’s go in,” Gwen said, nodding toward the pharmacy across the road. “I need to get the taste of that tea out of my mouth. Hopefully, they have a soda fountain.”
“Drinks are on me if they do.”
The bell jangled overhead as they stepped inside Hughes the ones who ran the shop clerks ragged and ruled their homes with an iron fist. Oliver could imagine that her husband was merely a mouthpiece as mayor.
Feeling her gaze stray toward him, Oliver turned back to his drink and the two framed photographs hanging on the wall near his elbow.
A smile crossed his lips as he studied the pictures.
The first was of Mr. Hughes and his father in front of the shop.
Hughes & Son stood stark and fresh against the green paint.
Mr. Hughes Sr. beamed proudly with his arm around his son, a stout and grey haired version of the younger man.
The photograph below it was of the shop again, though in this one, the sign above the shop read Jarngren & Hughes Pharmacy.
The glasses and supplies in the front window were different, and the whole building looked new.
Once again, two white-coated men stared proudly at the camera from the front door, but while one man was presumably Mr. Hughes Sr., though several decades younger, the white man beside him must have been Stephen Jarngren.
Oliver tilted his head as he studied the other man’s face from afar, wishing he could pluck the photograph off the wall for a better look.
Stephen Jarngren had a long, straight nose, and square shoulders.
A small, affectionate smile curled the corner of his lips as he stared at someone just off camera.
Oliver was about to ask Gwen if they should speak to the pharmacist’s father when he found her gaze narrowed as it trailed from the photograph to his face.
When two tugs came across the tether, Oliver let out a silent sigh of relief at the interruption and downed the last of his orange phosphate.
He didn’t want to think about what that look might mean.
“Felipe’s on his way back. We should head over to the cemetery now,” Oliver said, not meeting Gwen’s eyes as he laid more than enough money for their drinks on the counter and gave the tether a single long tug in return.
Passing Mrs. Stills and Mr. Hughes with his head down, Oliver tried to think only of the hand-drawn map of the graveyard in his pocket and not the implications of what Gwen saw in the dead man’s features.