Ophelia
King’s End, Minnesota
Tuesday, July 11
They should hurry. Ophelia knows they should hurry—ticking clock and all. They need to sober up after this latest encounter, analyze data, examine those photos, contact Adele.
Instead, they’re acting punch-drunk. Like newly minted agents after their first face-off with Screamers in the field. Henry staggers and ends up taking a knee, planting a hand on the soggy grass. There, beneath his palm, is a sodden pink ribbon with white polka dots. He threads the ribbon through his fingers. Then, in a gesture that’s both deliberate and absent-minded, he slips the ribbon into his coat pocket.
Henry stands and stumbles again. This time, intentionally, Ophelia is certain. Because a moment later, Pansy clutches him around the waist to keep him from falling. As if Principal Field Agent Henry Darnelle didn’t walk out of the desert under his own power.
You’re so transparent, brother mine.
They stagger from the green and then home only to discover that the kind citizens of King’s End have delivered not only the groceries but also all of Henry’s produce in those reusable net bags.
Then there’s tonight’s dinner: Guy Gunderson’s famous quiche, salad from the farmers market, and strawberry shortcake from Emma’s Bakeshop. Not to mention the flowers, a large bouquet of stunning summer blooms to set the mood.
No wine, because they know Pansy doesn’t drink. But the last name Darnelle is familiar enough—as is the set of the jaw, the noble brow—that they’ve tucked in a bottle of Harry’s favorite scotch.
The citizens of King’s End may not understand, exactly, what it is Pansy does and what her mother before her did. But they know she is key to their prosperity, this little oasis of a town. They want her to be happy. And for the last several years, happiness has been well out of her reach.
In this loop—this endless, endless loop—Ophelia has gotten to know the denizens of King’s End. Those of Rose’s generation—the Gen-Xers, if you will—remember the bad old days. They don’t view the past with nostalgia or through glasses tinted any color.
They remember the slow and inexorable slide into misery: storefronts boarded up, the dwindling school attendance, lack of healthcare and jobs, the drinking, the meth, the flight of anyone who could leave King’s End. For those who couldn’t? See above: the drinking and the meth.
They remember the old farmhouse at the edge of town, the one rented to a parade of disgruntled, uncaring, and downright surly types. One would arrive in town only to speed away twelve to eighteen months later, their penance paid.
As Enclave lore went, you had to have done something truly scandalous (or, let’s be real: legendary) to land your ass in King’s End. It’s where the Enclave sent you to dry out, shape up, repent sins.
You did your time, and, if you’d cultivated enough contacts on the High Council, garnered your next field assignment. For the unlucky and unconnected, the other option was riding a desk at headquarters. What you didn’t do, at least not in King’s End, was care.
Rose Little cared. Rose Little cared so much that she bought that dilapidated farmhouse on the edge of town. She refurbished it and the yard and threw parties the likes of which weren’t seen outside of Minneapolis.
She tamed the Screamers, not that the residents of King’s End called them that. These were ethereal beings, after all. They went by other names: bad vibes, bad luck, bad air. All of which infected King’s End and, without constant vigilance, would overrun it.
But Rose was vigilant. So the boards came down along Main Street. Small businesses flourished. A community college sprang up, and with it, an influx of students and cash. The weekend tourists came next. King’s End attracted the quirky, the artistic, the outside the mainstream. Their small, diverse community blossomed like no other town in the state.
Then, five years ago, they nearly ruined all that. No one listened to Rose when she told them not to break ground for a new housing development: not her neighbors, not the town council, not the Kingston heirs who owned the land (and reaped a tidy profit).
When Rose fell ill, everyone in King’s End held their breath, afraid that this rose-tinted prosperity might vanish along with the woman who’d somehow granted it.
But then Pansy returned from her last summer at camp, pink and white umbrella in hand, an expression of utmost determination on her face.
Now, there’s an uneasy truce. Everyone knows something lurks down the road from that formerly dilapidated farmhouse. Everyone knows one small woman is all that stands between them and another downward spiral. Everyone knows the center can’t hold, but no one knows when it will break.
Except Ophelia.
Ophelia knows this as well: Rose unearthed the secrets of King’s End, those buried in strange places and deep within its ground, and she paid a terrible price for doing so. If Ophelia could name those secrets, she would. She would focus all her willpower into whispering them to Henry or Pansy, because those secrets matter.
But she can’t. And tonight, she can’t penetrate the bubble that surrounds the two of them, bathed in pink fairy lights. Pansy dozes on the sofa while Henry sits in a wingback chair, feet resting on a low stool, a glass of scotch, neat, at his side, ostensibly crunching data on his laptop.
Ophelia might even buy the act if it weren’t for the one-sock-on, one-sock-off situation. Besides, he’s spending more time glancing up, taking in Pansy’s form on the couch, and smiling to himself than doing any actual work.
Do you really think now is the time to play house?
Normally, he wouldn’t let himself dream of such a thing. A house. No, a home. With someone who can call him on his bullshit. And if ever a man needed someone to call him on his bullshit, it’s Henry.
Ophelia’s heart is sore from battering against her ribs. She can’t help but want this for Henry, too. He deserves this. But this right here, this gauzy, wistful tableau? Its seduction is just as dangerous as the Screamers that emerge from the housing development.
