The old man nodded back and walked to the rocking chair in the living room, lowering himself into it with a grunt. He faced away from the twins, his feet stretching out in search of the warmth from the healthy fire crackling in the belly of the fireplace. Nora had never seen anyone so unaffected by having their home invaded. Oliver picked a book up from the floor beside the rocking chair and opened it, flipping through weathered and dog-eared pages until he’d settled on a passage that intrigued him.
Nora gave Charlie a look that said, “He knows we’re still here, right?”
Charlie shrugged and took a step forward. “Uh, so, nice place you got here.”
The old man turned the page.
“Bit out of the way, but…nice.”
“It’s got good bones,” Nora added awkwardly. “You built this yourself?”
Oliver didn’t look up from his book, though his sigh was enough to tell Nora he could hear her.
“You kids staying long?”
“We didn’t mean to bother you,” Nora said.
“I mean in Virgo Bay.”
“Oh,” said Nora. “Maybe.”
He turned another page.
“That’s not why we’re here though,” Nora continued, still not quite sure how to speak to someone who so clearly didn’t want to be spoken to. “We wanted to talk to you. And to meet you, of course.”
“Of course,” said Oliver. He turned another page.
“May we sit?”
“Don’t see anyone stopping you.”
Nora sat herself on the only other chair in the room. Charlie opted to crisscross himself onto the living room rug. Nobody spoke. Nora could hear the old man’s breaths. The house settled around them, for real this time. Somewhere far away a clock ticked, or maybe that was in Nora’s imagination.
“You wanted to talk to me,” Oliver said at last.
“Yes,” Nora said tentatively. She’d wanted to know the real reason why Oliver had separated himself from the rest of the town, but the more she was in his unpleasant company, the more apparent the answer seemed. “We were just wondering…” She looked to Charlie for assistance, but he seemed as mystified by the interaction as she was. Whatever fear she’d had upon entering the house had been promptly replaced by puzzlement tinged with a steadily growing seed of annoyance. She’d spent days trying to keep her brother alive while on limited sleep and more adrenaline than a skydiver after ten cups of coffee, and now, after facing the terror of returning to this place in the woods, she was being childishly ignored by someone who should have been buried a good decade before she was born. It was frankly absurd.
“We just wanted to find out who in Virgo Bay might be capable of taking a life,” said Nora.
This forced both men’s attention in her direction.
“What did you just say?” Oliver wheezed, laying his book open on his lap.
“You’ve lived here, in this town, on this planet, longer than anyone. You must know everything about everyone around here. It’s a straightforward question. Who can we trust?”
“Why would you ask such a thing?”
“I just told you why,” said Nora.
“No, you told me why you’d ask me, not why you’d ask it at all.”
Nora chewed the inside of her cheek, contemplating the repercussions of telling Oliver the whole truth. If he was in league with Patty or Phil, who apparently were both frequent visitors, or with whoever else Charlie’s would-be murderer might be, it would only be a matter of time before they came back out here and Oliver tipped them off that the twins were onto them. But as the person most removed from town, there was also a chance that he was the least involved of anyone in this whole murdery mess.
“Well,” she said, carefully scanning each word before it left her mouth, “someone has been very unsubtly trying to cause us harm since we got here. If you have any idea who that might be, then I’d like to know too.”
Oliver stared through her for a moment, dark eyes like bottomless wells pulling her into their depths. “You expect me to know the answer to that?”
“You do share DNA with three-quarters of the town,” Nora tried.
