“Typical, I guess.” Then, pausing, he said, “No. That’s not true. Bellwick is idyllic, quaint. A pocket out of time. Most people would kill to grow up here.”
“And you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Its charms weren’t lost on me, but it could feel suffocating at times, like we’d been forgotten here. Like we weren’t connected to the rest of the world. I was pretty anxious to leave by the time I graduated.”
She expected a troubled past. An absentee father. A mother who drank too much. Maybe even an arrest or two. Something more traumatic behind the rock career and alternative exterior than a small-town upbringing, some kind of reason or excuse. Anexplanation.But Gordon wasn’t giving up his story easily, one more conundrum she couldn’t puzzle out.
“Still, must be nice,” she said under her breath, feeling the taint of envy creep over her. “Our mother—she struggled. Bad relationships. Health issues. She would get these terrible headaches. We moved around a lot.”
She’d never told John about her childhood, and he’d never asked. He’d just assumed she’d grown up with the same upper-middle-class privilege he had—well-to-do family, decent schools, suburban morals. She’d liked living in his fantasy of her. She’d kept the truth to herself.
“Sounds rough,” Gordon replied.
Cordelia stared out the window, watching the trees thin along the road as homes began to spring up—Colonials with white planking, black roofs, and colorful doors or little farmhouses dotted with shutters and long, lazy porches. “I had Eustace,” she said quietly. “At least.”
“Family is everything.”
“Is it?” Cordelia asked absently, thinking of all the relatives she’d never met. “I wouldn’t know.”
Rolling into Bellwick, she understood what Gordon was saying. Redbrick storefronts with wide, paned windows and old-fashioned streetlamps greeted her. Stone steps with iron railings. Painted hanging signs. American flags waving. She asked him to stop in front of a small coffee shop next to the grocery store—A Bean Come True.
“It looks like a movie set,” Cordelia said as they got out of the truck. Across the street, a pharmacy with green-striped awnings had been plucked from the 1950s. Her little-girl heart burned to think this could have been her childhood instead of the dirty motel rooms and bad boyfriends, the microwave dinners and string of new schools. “It doesn’t look real.”
Gordon laughed dully. “It’s plenty real. Bellwick has its issues like any other town, but overall there’s not too much to complain about. Except…”
“Except?” she asked as they started toward the coffee shop.
“Except the uncanny family living just outside of town,” Gordon told her, squinting in the sun. “The Bones never mixed much with everyone else. Over the years it’s bred…superstition.”
Her smile faltered. It was an interesting choice of word. Rumors were common enough. They were human. Butsuperstitionmade her nervous.Superstitionbelonged to the supernatural. To witches.
“I just want you to understand if people seem a little standoffish,” he said.
“Gordon?” she asked, stopping to face him. She placed a hand on his arm. “How standoffish are we talking?”
He looked away.
“Wow. That bad.”
She looked toward the coffee shop, painted a cute tan and black. It had felt good to believe that maybe there was someplace they belonged, somewhere they would be more than the weird girls with the funny name and the pretty mom who never seemed to age or settle down. But even here, in the place her family had chosen to stake its claim generations ago, being a Bone created trouble for her.
Cordelia lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. She started walking toward the red front door. “You might want to roll those windows up,” she called to him, glancing at the cellophane sky. “Feels like rain.”
Inside, she strode up to the counter. An older woman, with hair nearly as white as Augusta’s and cropped close to her head, was busying herself with one of the machines. “Can I help you?” she asked, turning, and Cordelia saw that her face was full and friendly. She sighed with relief.
“I’d like a latte, please,” Cordelia told her. “With hazelnut syrup if you have it.”
The woman set to work, setting a paper cup with plastic lid on the counter a minute later.
Behind them, Gordon entered, and the door jingled. “Morning, Gladys,” he said with a tight smile.
“Gordon! Lovely to see you! Hold on… I’ve got your favorite.” She turned and rifled through a warming cabinet, pulling out a golden, oversized muffin. “Blueberry butterscotch,” she told him. “I just put them out.”
“I would dream about these muffins when I was on the road,” he told Cordelia.
“And who’s this?” she asked him. “A new girlfriend? In from the city, dear?” She smiled at Cordelia.
“Oh, no. I’m Cordelia Bone,” she said, painting on her friendliest smile for the second time that morning and extending a hand.
