Wooden paddocks like patches in a quilt crisscrossed the rolling fields that pushed to the edges of Virgo Bay. Inside, livestock grazed and frolicked and occasionally pooped as Patty and the twins approached. A ramshackle barn and a compact farmhouse sat just back from the path, lined on either side by fences enclosing goats to the left and cows to the right. Nora kept herself firmly in the center.
Vic appeared from the barn at the sound of Patty’s call, trailed by Phil and his father, the inexplicably nicknamed Pickles. Unlike his rugged son, Pickles was a primly dressed man with jowls and a permanent Eeyore-like expression. He had dirt in exactly one place on his slacks and kept moving his hand to cover it.
“You’ve brought the city slickers,” Vic said in greeting, then fully took in the scene before him. “And a rifle.”
Patty’s eyes flicked to Phil, who brushed his nose with the back of his hand and looked away. Was he disappointed to see the twins standing there? Was Charlie the Snow White to Patty’s Huntsman? Which would make Phil the evil queen, which Norawasn’t quite sure about. But regardless of what the look between them actually meant, she knew it wasn’t anything good.
“It’s hunting season,” Patty replied to Vic, then quickly changed the subject. “We’re here to help out. What do you need done?”
“Stalls need mucking, the rest of the horses still need turning out, and the pigs need feeding. Phil’s working on repairing the riding lawn mower, and I’ve got Pickles pruning the hedges out back. Aside from those chores, you lot can take your pick.”
There wasn’t much picking to be taken, it turned out. Due to their inexperience with farm work, Patty suggested the twins take the stalls to start with. And, despite the smell, Nora was grateful for this. Pigs could break your toe just by stepping on it, and horses, well, they could break much more than that. At least a pile of feces mostly kept to itself. Nora soon found herself cleaning the stall of a horse called Wonderboy, Charlie half helping beside her.
“You still thinking it’s Patty?” Charlie asked. He was making concentric poop circles with his shovel, which Nora decided was as productive as she could expect Charlie to be.
“I think it’s a good possibility,” said Nora. “You saw her out there with that gun. There’s no reason she couldn’t have been the one shooting it at us. And she gave Phil that weird look when we got here.Andshe wanted to have you at her house alone. I don’t like any of it.”
“It’s not great,” Charlie agreed. “But then why hasn’t she killed me yet?”
Nora took a deep breath, then immediately regretted it as the odors of the stall flooded her nostrils. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. But we still don’t know why she’d want you dead in the first place. Maybe she wants to make you suffer first.”
“Damn, what the hell did I do to her?”
“If we knew that, we’d be halfway to getting this whole mess sorted,” said Nora, heaving a particularly heavy plop into her neat pile.
“You know, Nor,” said Charlie, swirling his shovel absently, “this has been kind of nice, huh?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We just haven’t hung out in a really long time. It’s been nice.”
“Charlie, you’ve nearly been killed like seven times now.”
“Yeah, but aside from that. It’s hard to find time to catch up, you know? Especially now that I have Jessica. I mean, being a dad is a lot of responsibility, but I’ve missed my baby sis.”
“You’re three minutes older than me,” Nora corrected. “And I still don’t understand where Jessica even came from.”
“I know, it’s wild, right? One second I’m living the carefree bachelor life, the next she’s on my doorstep with nothing but a cage and a note.”
“A note? You never mentioned a note.”
“It didn’t seem like something worth mentioning,” said Charlie. “I mean, Jessica’s kind of the star of the show here, right?”
Nora propped her shovel against the wall of the stall and crossed her arms. Spontaneous parrot deliveries struck her as at least a little out of the ordinary, though with the way Charlie lived his life, she supposed it may have seemed a standard part of his day. Still, something bothered her, something she couldn’t quite put a name to.
“What did the note say?”
Charlie shrugged. “Something about Jessica having a lot to say. Or, no, ‘she’ll tell you what you need to know,’ I think it was. Or ‘what you deserve to know,’ something like that. Which wastrue; she told me where my favorite pair of boxer briefs was hiding like half an hour after I brought her inside. I thought I’d lost those things for good, but they were in an empty Cheetos bag under my bed. Go figure.”
“Ew,” said Nora as a first of all. “But also, that’s kind of a weird note, don’t you think?”
Charlie shrugged again. “I’ve had weirder. What, you aren’t thinking she’s connected to all this somehow, are you?”
“I don’t know, Charlie, maybe. Isn’t it just a little too odd to be a coincidence?”
“You and I have very different thresholds for odd.”
“At least I have a threshold for odd,” said Nora.
