Chapter Twenty
When we get back to town, the street between Darling Knits & Notions and Jack’s diner is packed. There’s nowhere to park.
There’s barely any room to breathe. It dawns on me that it’s another festival day again today—hence all the tables and tents
we passed on the way in—but I have no idea what kind it’s supposed to be.
I don’t ask.
Jack pulls up in front of the knitting shop while people stream around us, ignoring the waiting traffic. I need to get off
the bike, but it’s a hard-won thing to unwind my arms from around Jack. To slip away from that warmth and sense of comfort.
I make myself do it, then pull off the helmet and hand it to him. He gives me one long, enigmatic look, then he stows the
helmet away.
“Stay in the light. I’ll be back,” he tells me.
It’s all he tells me before he roars away and I am left on the sidewalk, too many people irritably moving around me like I’m a boulder
in a flowing river.
A big shadow engulfs the sidewalk between me and the store, but there’s a swath of light that offers an awkward path to the door.
I take it.
The knitting shop is bustling, so I have to maneuver my way around the press of people once I’m inside.
I texted Logan to meet me at the shop but I’m shocked to see he’s actually here. Inside the store. Not looming at the door,
waiting for me to arrive so I can create some kind of buffer for his weirdness with Nora. Then again, there are at least fifteen
customers shoved into the tiny store, so I suppose that’s buffer enough.
I look around for Nora, then stop abruptly when I notice the store is newly decorated. With a sea of . . . bizarre figurines.
I squint at them, but they don’t go away. It’s like an army of little giant-eyed people took over the whole shop.
“What is all this?” I ask Nora as she checks someone out, waving to take in the alarming array of figurines. Everywhere.
“It’s Fall Figurine Days,” she says, cheerfully. Like it’s a good thing.
“It’s a fucking nightmare,” Logan mutters, suddenly next to me, voicing my thoughts exactly.
“I thought you didn’t dream,” Nora says sweetly.
I snort out a laugh. Logan slides me a look. But another customer comes up with questions for Nora, so we move out of the
way.
“Where have you been?” he asks me.
His arms are crossed over his chest and he’s glaring.
The glaring isn’t aimed at Nora, but I feel that she’s the recipient all the same, because I know it can’t be me.
I haven’t been in his presence long enough to garner that level of brow wrinkles.
Nora, by contrast, is glimmering her way around the shop, beaming at customers, and seemingly knowing what everyone wants before they think to ask for it.
Outrageous behavior.
“I went to the airport,” I tell him, pretending I don’t notice the glaring. “Jack and I went to see Cleo.”
Now that frown turns on me. “Jack?”
“The tall, surly diner owner?” I reply flippantly. “Maybe you’ve met.”
He’s not amused. “Why are you going anywhere with that guy?”
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” But Logan Darling, Esquire, comes up with nothing.
I can’t help but smile.
“Didn’t Dad have a creepy wedding porcelain figurine like these?” he asks, changing the subject as he points at a row of figurines.
It feels like they’re encroaching, though the ones he’s pointing at on a nearby shelf packed with skeins of merino-based yarn are all portrayed as doing some
kind of craft—knitting, sewing, quilting, and so on. They are all vaguely childlike, but with big, black eyes.
They make me deeply uneasy.
But as I study them, I realize Logan is right. Dad did have a figurine of an entwined couple when we were kids. I loved playing
with it, in fact, though I find that memory disturbing now. I’d give the two painted people backstories. Or I’d pretend my
mother wasn’t dead and the two figures were my parents, happily in love and raising their children together.
It was never hard to believe I was a little out there. I can’t believe I forgot.
“Do you think they came from here?” I ask him.
Logan shrugs. “Kind of hard to believe Dad went out and bought himself some creepy figurine all on his own.”
We both take a few moments to work through that. Were they gifts from Amelia? Did he know about her and Midas back then? Did
losing his memory about this place take time?
“I know we’ve been pretty vague when we’ve talked to him,” I say, now frowning hard enough to match him, “but maybe it’s time
to start asking some more probing questions when we do.”
“Yeah, about that.” I raise my eyebrows at Logan. He looks faintly defiant. “Dad called this morning to check up on things,
and I started digging. He claims he and Amelia had a falling out after Mom died and he didn’t want to discuss it. I asked
him about the pictures on the mantel and he told me that the price for remaining no contact with his mother was that he sent
her a couple of pictures a year. And he still didn’t want to talk about it.” He shakes his head. “Whatever keeps him from
here keeps him from remembering. It runs deep.”
I didn’t expect it to run that deep. I guess I was thinking this whole time, despite all the commentary on lost memories, that surely they couldn’t be that lost. After all, Harrison said that Amelia told him that Dad remembered everything, at some point.
I’ve been assuming his memories were just a little misplaced and if we asked directly, Dad would give us the answers we want
about this place he came from.
It’s kind of depressing to think that there’s no get-out-of-jail-free card. Especially because if there’s not, that means
that we’re really just . . . in jail.
I don’t say any of that. I think my brother is grim enough today.
Meanwhile, Nora is cheerfully and diplomatically ushering customers in and out of the store.
I can tell she’s a little frazzled at the edges, so I jump in to help.
I handle a few questions about yarn that I can answer from my own experience, I talk a woman hemming and hawing about spending so much when her stash is already criminal into doing just that, and by the time the clock strikes six some hours later, we’ve somehow managed to empty the store at
last.
“You need to train me on the cash register so I can help out more,” I tell Nora as she locks the door behind the last customer,
fiddling a little with the dead bolt.
“Sure, if you want.” But I can tell she’s excited at the prospect. She smiles at me as she crosses back to the checkout desk.
She does not smile at Logan. “Cleo helps on occasion, but she’s got her own work and, you know, a lack of customer service
diplomacy.”
“Speaking of Cleo.” I go through what happened at the airport, down to Virginia on the house roof, what she said, and what
Jack wants to do. When they both react with varying degrees of dismay—fuck no, Logan barks—I also tell them why I think it makes sense.
When I’m done, even my brother looks resigned.
“Poor Cleo,” Nora says. She shakes her head as she carefully counts cash into a safe. “I knew she was stressed lately. I don’t
know why she won’t share. I’d be happy to help with Virginia in whatever ways I can.”
“Sometimes sharing is just as stressful as handling it yourself,” comes the real voice of doom from over by the mohair. I turn to look at my
brother. Nora does the same. He gazes right back at us like we’re both the surprising ones. “What? It’s like Psychology 101.”
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It sounds more personal than that. But now isn’t quite the time to go poking into what
my brother might not be sharing because it’s less stressful.
“Jack said we should stay put until he gets here. Then we’ll all head over to the store together. He said there are beds?” I look at Nora hopefully. I figure Jack is the type of guy who’d consider a blanket thrown on the floor good enough to be considered a bed.
Then I figure I shouldn’t let myself dwell too long on Jack’s thoughts about beds.
“Yes. There are even some actual rooms with doors upstairs. It’s probably the only place in Midas we’d all fit with our own
places to sleep. Jack is right about that. It won’t be so bad. Plus, we’ll have twenty-four-seven access to diner food.” She
smiles, but it’s lacking a lot of her usual warmth.
Then she starts moving around the store, locking things up, and turning off lights.
“Harrison spends the night there a lot. Though he’s been so tired lately we’ve been nagging him to get some real rest at his
house up on the bluff.” Nora waves this away. “I’ll go pack a bag. That way when Jack gets here we can walk over to Amelia’s
and get your stuff.”
“Isn’t that overkill?” Logan asks. He looks at Nora. “I thought you said our house is protected.”
Nora looks like she’s hitting her limit with him, or needs a moment, so I decide to handle him.
“We don’t know what’s happening, so we don’t know what’s protected or isn’t,” I say. “That’s the point.”
Then I have other things to think about because Jack’s stepping into the shop, hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket.
He looks surly and—
Well, we don’t need to get into how hot he looks again. That’s a given.
“Just give me a few minutes to throw some things in a bag, Jack,” Nora says, then disappears into the back as Jack crosses
to me and Logan.
When he says nothing, I point to the figurine in front of me.
“I think that one looks like you,” I tell him, indicating the nearest figurine, which features a child-clown in a supplicative pose, like he’s praying. With rainbow hair and a red nose.
His mouth actually approaches something that could, in some regions, be considered a smile. A small one, but it’s there.
“If that’s me, that one’s you, princess.” Jack points to a figurine that is dressed like a pilgrim and is churning butter.
We both laugh. Possibly it’s laughter tinged with hysteria, but it feels a lot like light.
“You guys are a riot,” Logan mutters, reminding me that he is, in fact, here with us.
Luckily, the actual lighting is too dim to reveal the fact that my cheeks have possibly—definitely—turned a little red again.