“His underwear? Because honestly I’m good going commando.”
Nora just shook her head. “You need to see it.”
Charlie followed her back to the closet in the wood-paneled basement common room. Nora tossed another look over each shoulder and opened the door again. She handed Charlie the file that had sent her reeling. He looked it up and down, then handed it back to Nora, face scrunched.
“So…Grandma Ruby’s a zombie?”
“No,” said Nora as though she could confidently stateanythingat that point. “I think…” She patted her tongue against the roof of her mouth, trying to find any hint of moisture left. “I think she was a S.C.Y.T.H.E. agent.”
“Then why does that file say her name?”
“I don’t know,” said Nora. “But we need to find out.”
14
The afternoon snuck up quickly while Nora wasn’t looking. She’d been too busy trying to untangle the knots in her head, each new element of this mystery tied up tight and suffocating, that she’d barely noticed time slipping away. The mindless tasks Ruby had assigned her in preparation for lunch only served to send her further into her thoughts, the constant busywork preventing her from properly addressing her small but enigmatic grandmother about what she’d discovered.
Nora barely ate a thing. There was no room in her for anything other than questions right now. Phil had left in the late morning, leaving only Ruby, Richard, Charles, Patty, and the twins for lunch. After everyone had their fill, Nora tried to offer Ruby help with the dishes in the hopes of a moment alone, but it was Richard she found herself in the kitchen with instead.
By the time they’d finished tidying, Phil was back and looking for her.
“You good to go?” he asked Nora. He’d changed his pants. She eyed the mudless jeans suspiciously.
“Go?” she said, still catching up with the passage of time.
“Your car,” said Phil. “You still okay to show me where you crashed it? My tools are in the truck.”
“Right, no, I’m ready,” she said. But was she? She might not be Phil’s target, but if ithadbeen him in the woods that morning, she wasn’t convinced she was safe with him. And “safe” was always her first priority. But if she didn’t go, Charlie would have to, and she knew that outcome would likely be worse. She’d have to do this. And, if she made it out alive, she’d confront Ruby when she got back.
Phil’s pickup sat waiting for them on the grass just outside the little red house, its paint scuffed, mud caked onto the wheels, years of overuse written across its exterior. It looked ready to slough off its doors like a shedding snake and retreat into the wild. If Phil didn’t kill her, Nora figured a ride in the rust-mobile might do the trick. But at least it was running, which was more than she could say for her own car. She swung herself into the passenger seat, trying hard to ignore the torn leather on the seats or the unknowable stains inexplicably spattered across the roof.
Phil slid in behind the wheel. “You remember the way?”
“I think so,” said Nora.
Phil nodded and turned his focus to the road, driving them to the outskirts of Virgo Bay and making a left at Nora’s cue. They drove in silence for a while, Nora slipping back into the knots of her mind, when a sudden slam on the breaks jostled her forward and out of her thoughts. Her seat belt locked, digging into her collarbone.
“What is it? What’s going on?” She looked around, eyes wild. They were on the paved road she’d driven down on her way to town, nothing around but the mass of trees and rocks that made up the landscape. She turned to face Phil, suddenly hyperawareof their proximity, of their isolation, of just how vulnerable she was, alone in the middle of nowhere with a stranger.
“You need to tell me which way to turn,” Phil said.
Nora barely heard him over the pulse in her ears. “Oh. Down there,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
Phil gave another nod and drove on. Nora watched his hands on the wheel, suddenly attuned to every detail around her. His hands were cut and calloused, the profile of his face more weatherworn than it had seemed in the house. There was something almost robotic about him; something in his stillness, his quiet, the calm in his manner. All things that scared Nora, if only because she couldn’t manage any of them herself.
They slowed again, and Nora saw her poor wounded Civic come into view, a shiny black heap of abandoned metal on the grass. In an act of cosmic mockery, two perfectly unflattened rabbits sat nearby, nibbling at the greenery around one of the car’s sedentary tires, basking in their driving hazard-y life choices.
“Gonna go out on a limb and say this is it,” Phil said as he pulled up behind the car. Nora hopped out as soon as the truck stopped, relief flooding her the moment she felt fresh air on her cheeks. There was something about being caged with someone who could maybe be an attempted murderer that did unhappy things to Nora’s already-delicate bowels.
The driver’s side door slammed shut and Phil rounded the truck with a red tin toolbox in hand.
“You have a saw in there?” Nora asked stiffly.
Phil looked at her blankly before turning to the car. “This is going to be a big job,” he said. “Can’t guarantee anything. I’m not a mechanic. But I’ll do what I can.”
He gave the car a thorough once-over before hunkering down under the crumpled hood. Nora felt her anxiety simmer into uneasiness and then, as more time passed, turn into restlessness. If Phil was going to hurt her, he didn’t seem in much of a hurry about it, and she couldn’t get any closer to answering her questions about Ruby from way out here. But there was something else she’d wanted answers about, another knot in her mind that she’d double tied and left at the back.
“Do you get out into the woods around Virgo Bay much?” she asked, then immediately realized that if it had been Phil out there this morning, she had walked right into a confrontation with a killer without meaning to. Thankfully Phil just kept on poking around under the hood.
