Chapter 20
Small Town Mystery
Maisie
I wake slowly, the way I do now, completely different from how I used to. Two years of bolting upright, heart already hammering with the to-do list, and now my body wants to uncurl like something dormant finally getting sun.
His fault. All his fault.
Oz is warm beneath me, his surface rising and falling in that slow pulse he has when he’s been holding me all night. I stretch against him, catlike, smug, and that’s when I register it.
The color is wrong.
His usual iridescence, that shifting teal-to-violet that I’ve started to associate with home, has dulled. Muted, like someone turned down the saturation.
I prop myself up on one elbow. “Hey. What happened?”
He’s quiet for a moment. That particular stillness he does when he’s deciding how to say something.
“I sent a piece of myself to the ridge last night. While you slept.”
I blink. “You can do that?”
“Yes. It costs something, but I can separate off a small portion. Feel through it. Speak through it.”
The casual way he says this, like it’s obvious, like everyone can just split off a body part and go wandering…
I choose not to think too much about it. Just more slime biology I’ll have to get used to. “And?”
“I found the Ridge Walker.”
The name lands heavy. The green light in the cave. The presence that made Oz go still with something like recognition. The thing Mrs. Pritchett has been organizing orange vests about.
“He spoke to me,” Oz says. “He confessed to me about the cat, about the car, about decades of watching this town from the dark. He never meant any harm. He’s simply old and alone and doesn’t know if there’s a place for him here if he reveals himself.”
Something in my chest tightens. I know that kind of loneliness. The kind that makes you do strange things just to prove you exist.
“There was a message,” Oz continues. His colors flicker, trying to brighten, and the effort it takes is visible. “At the end. Something he needed to say. Something important. But my offshoot dissolved before I could hold onto it.”
“You lost it.”
“I remember just a little. But not who it’s for.”
“What did he say?”
“‘I’m still here. I never stopped waiting.’ I just… I wish I could remember who it was he wanted me to tell this to.”
His voice carries a weight I haven’t heard before. Like someone reached out across the dark and he couldn’t quite catch their hand.
I lie back against him. “So we figure out who it was for,” I say.
Oz’s surface warms beneath me. Gold threads, faint but there, threading through the dimness.
“You’re not upset.”
“About what? That you went investigating without me? Yes, obviously, we’re having a conversation about that later. But the rest of it?” I trace a slow circle on his chest. “Someone out there is lonely, just the way you were. That’s a problem we can solve.”
“A problem we can solve,” Oz repeats.
I push myself upright, already running through the mental roster of who might know something. “This town talks if you know who to ask.”
“I’ll stay here,” Oz says. “While you—”
“No.”
The word comes out faster and sharper than I intended. Oz’s colors stutter, surprised.
“Together,” I say. “You and me.”
His surface ripples. That particular ripple I’ve learned to read as discomfort, the kind that precedes a retreat. “Maisie. You don’t know how people will react.”
“No,” I agree. “I don’t. But I want them to see you. I want them to see you the way I see you. They might not. They probably won’t, not right away. But I’m not going to act like you’re something to hide in a closet anymore.”
Oz is quiet for a long moment. Then his hand curls around mine.
“I’m nervous,” he says.
“I know.”
“Will that be obvious?”
“Probably.” I squeeze his hand. “I’ll be nervous too. We’ll be nervous together. Very romantic.”
I stand, and he shapes himself upward to follow, that fluid unfolding that still catches my breath. Eight feet of iridescent slime standing in my living room, and the most remarkable thing about him is how much he wants to be brave.
“So it’s decided,” I tell him. “We’re going to town.”
Oz sits in the passenger seat with his form compressed to something approximating human height, which means he looks like a very tall man made of shifting light wearing one of Kyle’s old flannels I found in the back of the closet.
The effect is deeply strange. He looks like a special effect that wandered off a set.
“You’re staring,” he says.
“I’m adjusting.” I pull onto the dirt road. “You look like you’re cosplaying a lumberjack.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I think the clothes help a little. Keep the hat on.”
He adjusts the baseball cap, the one Gary left at my place last summer when he helped me fix the porch railing. It squats on Oz’s head at an angle that suggests he doesn’t quite understand how hats work, which he doesn’t, because I just put it on him thirty seconds ago.
The drive takes twelve minutes, and as we reach main street, Oz asks, “What do I do if someone asks what I am?”
“You just tell them. I mean, the Unveiling happened years ago now. This town’s going to have to accept it sooner or later.”
Rosario’s Diner sits on the road like a monument to foam containers and grease. The parking lot has six trucks in it, which means the morning crowd is still thick. I park and take a breath.
Oz looks at the building. “I can feel the people inside,” he says quietly. “Their heartbeats. Their heat signatures. There are eleven of them, and three have elevated stress responses already, and we haven’t even opened the door.”
“Great. So business as usual for a weekday.” I unbuckle my seatbelt. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Good enough.”
The bell on the door rings. Every fork in the place pauses. Rosario looks up from the griddle, spatula in hand, and her expression cycles through confusion, recognition, and something I can only describe as professional appraisal.
She’s seen weirder. She served a minotaur last month who ordered twelve sides of bacon and a gallon of milk.
“Sit anywhere,” she says, and goes back to flipping hash browns.
The fork-clatter resumes. A few stares linger, but most people return to their plates with the studied disinterest of folks who’ve agreed to mind their own business.
Oz follows me to a booth by the window, compressing himself into the seat with visible effort, his knees bumping the table.
“This is uncomfortable,” he says under his breath.
“Welcome to small town diners.”
Rosario arrives with two menus and a coffee pot. She pours without asking, gives Oz a long look, and tilts her head.
“You’re the slime from the jailhouse.”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Pritchett says you ate a hamburger, wrapper and all.”
Oz considers this. “It was very good.”
Rosario’s mouth twitches. She sets the pot down and pulls out her order pad. “Well then, what can I get you, honey?”
He orders water. She doesn’t blink. I order the special. She leaves, and Oz watches her go with the expression of someone who just experienced a minor miracle.
“She wasn’t afraid,” he says, and we share a smile.
In ten minutes, she returns with our order. We eat. Or I eat, and Oz absorbs a few ice cubes experimentally while the regulars gradually stop pretending not to stare.
By the time I’m scraping the last of my home fries, Old Man Crawford’s younger grandson Bobby has worked up the courage to approach.
“Are you really made of jelly?” He’s maybe twelve. Unsupervised.
“More like water,” Oz says. “With intention.”
Bobby considers this with the seriousness of a scholar. “Can you go under doors?”
“Yes.”
“Do you live in a cave?”
“I used to.”
“Man, that’s so cool!”
He runs off to report his findings to his friends.
Oz’s colors warm by a shade.
Rosario comes back with the coffee pot, topping off my mug. She lingers near the table, glancing at Oz with something closer to curiosity than suspicion now.
“Hey,” I say, before she can move away. “Quick question, if you don’t mind. Does the phrase ‘I’m still here. I never stopped waiting’ mean anything to you?”
Her hand stills on the pot. She frowns, searching through years of memory.
“No,” she says slowly. “Should it?”
“Just something I heard.”
She picks up the pot but doesn’t move on right away. Her eyes stay fixed on some middle distance, her thumb rubbing the handle. Whatever I poked at, she’s still turning it over.
“Yeah, no. Can’t say it does.”
“That’s okay. Thanks, Rosario.”
She nods, drifting toward the counter, still frowning at nothing.
At Crawford’s Supply, the clerk asks if Oz is with the government.
Oz says no. She asks if he’s a pet. I say no, firmly enough that she backs off.
While she rings up my lye and coconut oil, I watch her hands move, and I see if I have any better luck with her.
“Does the phrase ‘I’m still here. I never stopped waiting’ mean anything to you? ”
Her fingers pause on the register keys. She looks at me, and something shifts behind her eyes, a flicker that might be recognition or might just be confusion. “No,” she says slowly. “Why?”
“Just wondering. That’s all.”
Oz waits by the register with perfect patience, and when she hands me the receipt, she looks at him and gives a small, reluctant nod. The faintest spark of acceptance.
Gary’s porch is the last stop. He’s sitting in his lawn chair with Captain curled in his lap, the cat’s gray-and-white fur clean. Captain sees Oz before Gary does, and his ears prick forward with interest.
Gary watches this for a long moment. Then he stands, crosses the porch, and holds out his hand.
“Appreciate what you did,” he says. “Finding him.”
Oz takes the hand. “He was easy to find. He wanted to go home.”
Gary’s jaw tightens. He holds the handshake one beat longer than necessary, then lets go. “If you need anything. You let me know.”
“Actually,” I say. “There is something you can help us with. Does the phrase ‘I’m still here. I never stopped waiting’ mean anything to you?”
He turns the words over, searching for recognition the way he searches ridgelines for lost things. Then he shakes his head slowly. “No. Can’t say it does.”
I sigh. “Seems like nobody knows what that means.”
“You ask your grandmother yet?”
I slap my forehead.
Of course. Gram, who knows everything about this town and everyone in it. Gram, who looked at Oz and didn’t flinch, who said the world is stranger than most people allow themselves to believe. Gram, who has been deflecting my questions about the ridge since I first asked.
“Gram,” I say. “Good thinking, Gary.”
“Yeah, I’m known for that.”
I quickly thank him, then Oz and I head straight for the truck.
We drive in silence for a while. The desert scrolls past, all rust and gold, with that particular quiet that only open country makes.
My brain is running the calculation.
Gram has lived here on and off for decades. She knows the histories nobody writes down, the grudges that pass between generations, the things people don’t say at town meetings.
If anyone knows who the Ridge Walker might have been waiting for all those years, it’s her.
I turn onto the road to her place. The alpaca fence appears first, weathered wood posts and wire that hasn’t been truly alpaca-proof in years.
Then the little house, and the porch, and Gram herself, sitting in her rocking chair with wool in her hands, felting something too small to see from here.
She sees the truck. She sees Oz in the passenger seat. Her hands don’t stop moving.
Barnaby notices us first. He’s at the fence before I’ve cut the engine, his long neck stretched over the wire, making that humming sound alpacas make when they’re curious.
Bartholomew remains in the shade of the hay shelter, projecting dignified disinterest.
Basil is nowhere to be seen, which means he’s found a new gap in the fence and is probably eating someone’s rosebushes.
Oz steps out of the truck and goes very still.
Barnaby hums again, louder. He stretches his neck further, nostrils flaring, and takes a long, considering sniff of the air between them.
“What is he?” Oz asks, his voice hushed with wonder.
“An alpaca. They’re like small, opinionated llamas.”
Barnaby decides Oz is interesting. He walks right up to the fence and presses his nose against Oz’s outstretched hand. Oz’s colors flare, and he makes a sound that’s something between a hum and a sigh.
“Soft,” he breathes. “So soft. Like how I imagine a cloud would feel like.”
Barnaby approves of whatever he feels, because he pushes his whole head against Oz’s palm, demanding scratches. Oz obliges, his substance conforming gently around the alpaca’s ears, and Barnaby’s eyes half-close in bliss.
Bartholomew has emerged from the hay shelter. He approaches with the measured pace of a creature who wants you to know this is his idea, not yours. But he approaches. He presses his nose to Oz’s shoulder and inhales.
Gram watches from the porch, her hands still working the wool, her expression warm and amused and something else. Something knowing.
“You going to stand there all day spoiling my boys?” she calls out. “Or are you coming up for coffee?”
We sit on her porch. She brings out a tray with two mugs—coffee for me, ninety-percent cream for her—and a glass of water for Oz. The alpacas have settled in the yard, Barnaby still drifting close to the porch steps like he’s hoping for more attention.
I tell her everything. The ridge, the cave, the green light. Captain curled in the corner. The offshoot Oz sent in the dark. The Ridge Walker’s confession about the cat, the car, forty years of watching.
Gram listens the way she always does, which is to say completely. Her hands never stop working the wool, but her eyes don’t leave my face.
And then I tell her about the message. The words Oz caught before the connection frayed. I’m still here. I never stopped waiting.
“Oz lost the rest of it,” I say. “He doesn’t know who it was for.”
Gram’s hands still.
That’s how I know. Gram’s hands are never still. She felts while she talks, felts while she listens, felts while she watches television, and, concerningly, felts while she drives.
But now her fingers have stopped moving, and the wool sits loose in her lap, and something has shifted behind her eyes.
“Do you know who the message is for?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away. The porch creaks. The alpacas hum.
And then Gram looks at me with an expression I recognize from funerals, from hospital rooms, from moments when the cost of a secret finally comes due.
“I know,” she says. “It’s for me.”