I nod. The women I’ve seen coming, the ones I hoped to save, flip like flash cards through my mind. These are not women Henry has killed. They are not even women he’s met yet. But somehow, I know they will be. Unless… My eyes flood with tears, hot and spiked with shame.
She gently grabs my chin, lifting my face up. “You look at me, Piers Corbin, when you talk about him. You understand? Don’t you ever hide your face in shame again. Did anything unusual ever happen during these episodes? Before or after? Any urges?”
“Urges?” I echo, sniffling. “Like what?”
“Never mind,” she says, looking a little disappointed. “You’d know them if they did.” She steps back, studies me. “Stay hereuntil you calm down. No use alerting anyone down there that you’re upset. The less they know about you, the better.”
I nod.
She starts for the door, adding, “Stay out of the cabinets. Those are my personal stores.” And then she’s gone.
The room is blissfully quiet. I pull a tissue from a box, blotting my face, then wiping my nose. When I’m ready, I turn to go back down, but a feeling of intense curiosity compels me toward that far cabinet on top. Aunt Myrtle said to leave it alone, but the feeling wins out. Inside sit several unmarked jars of varying shapes and sizes. Most look like they began their life as something else—spaghetti sauce containers or pickle relish. One in particular catches my eye. It’s filled with something dried and wrinkly, off-white in color, that I can’t take my eyes off. Slowly, I reach for it, the glass cool in my hand as I grip the lid and twist. Once it’s off, I take a deep inhale of the earthy, moldy scent. My lungs practically hum with desire. My mouth waters. Everything in me is tingling with need. I know this feeling. I’ve felt it as a little girl staring at the pokeweed berries. The memory floods me with mortification, all those heavy, dark feelings I carried as a child, unwanted, misunderstood. The thud of the man at my feet. The lump of Don on the ground.
I screw the lid on tight and replace the jar, closing the cabinet and stepping away. Whatever else Myrtle is keeping in there, I don’t want to know. Her secrets are her own. Mine are already enough to bear.
ISPEND THEnext day working hard to ignore the pull of that storeroom cabinet and its devilish jars. When I close my eyes at night, I see the dull gleam of its contents, the rich scent filling up my lungs. Myrtle notices my agitation, the way I can’t sit still, my need for movement, but she doesn’t say anything. The need is insatiable, a constant whine at my back, an itch I can’t reach. It clouds my mind when I try to read and distracts me in the café.Even Ed comments when I trip over his dog on my way to the washing machine, turning to apologize profusely to Bart, who is simply delighted to receive attention.
I’m embarrassed and annoyed that my condition—pica—has reared its ugly head. As a child, I couldn’t explain it. My mother always looked at me with such disappointment, as if she’d been given a freak for a daughter. Even the doctor seemed particularly vexed by my case, not sure what to make of this girl and her deadly obsession. But that was just it. It wasn’t deadly to me. Once they left me alone, eating pokeweed made a certain kind of sense. It felt so natural, an instinct I should follow, like drinking water. But as an adult, I understand how peculiar and unsettling it is, how it must look to those on the outside. And I can’t afford to stand out here. Nor can I risk appalling Aunt Myrtle, whose good graces are keeping me alive at the present moment. I suppress the urge.
But by the second night, I can no longer take it. I toss and turn and finally rise when I hear the front door open. Myrtle is going for one of her nightly walks. I pull on some shorts and scoot onto the porch, watching her disappear into the shadows, and then I bolt for the café. She keeps a spare key hidden in an old coffee can full of dryer sheets in the laundry room, which she leaves unlocked for guests to use at their discretion.
I make quick work of finding it and let myself in without turning on any lights. In the dark, the café is a muddle of shapes, silent like a heart that’s stopped beating. The spiral staircase rises like a spine at the back, and I clunk my way up it to the storeroom door. The door doesn’t budge, but luckily I have a sneaking suspicion that proves to be true—the front door key also unlocks this one. Grateful, I dart to the cabinet. The jar I’m looking for glows softly in its recesses, an invitation. I twist off its cap and reach inside, pulling up several fingers’ worth of the dried plant, shoving it into my mouth. The taste is buttery at first, only subtly bitter, and a bit like chewing on Styrofoam it’s so dry, but my eyes flutter with pleasure just the same. It’s some kind of mushroom, desiccated and chopped up. I should stop with one bite, but I can’t. I reach inagain and again, letting myself savor the strange texture, the pungent, wood-like flavors. By the time I put the lid back on, I’ve made a sizable dent. I tuck it behind several of the other jars, in the hope that she won’t notice, and leave the café, locking up behind me.
Slipping the key back into its hiding spot, I rush to the cabin, praying she’s not back yet, and breathe a sigh of relief when I see the front door is still open. I stop in the bathroom to quickly rinse my mouth out. My eyes pulse an unnatural green in the mirror. Climbing into bed, I sleep deeply for the first time since I found the jar. But my dreams are vivid and unnerving with an Alice in Wonderland twist. Giant mushrooms tower over me, their stalks a dazzling white. Tags hang from their caps, swaying gently. I reach up to turn one over and find an old Bible verse, a line from Genesis I heard during my mother’s brief foray into church—From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.
THE NEXT MORNING,my mouth feels extra dry and weirdly numb. I dress quickly and decide to leave the boot off for the first time, my foot still tender but far less swollen. Myrtle watches me enter her little kitchen and sits a cup of coffee before me along with a dish of sugar cubes.
“Where’d you go last night?” she asks, and I wonder how she knows.
My eyes meet hers, guilt pooling behind them. “There was a guest who stopped up the toilet in the public bathroom. I went to help plunge it.”
She sips from her cup. “That’s odd.”
“What is?” I drop two cubes into my coffee and stir.
“That they would come all this way in the middle of the night to tell you.” She looks down her nose at me. “Usually, they just let it overflow.”
It’s not a pleasant thought.
“Which cabin?” she asks.
“Hmm? Oh. Four, I think.”
She smiles. “I’ll have to thank them when I get the chance.”
I smile back. Cabin four is checking out this morning, but I don’t bother saying so. One look tells me she knows already. I could throw it back in her face, ask her where she goes creeping off to half the nights, but I don’t really want to rock this boat. I need Aunt Myrtle. Whatever was in that jar, I won’t be eating it again.
Fortunately, the day is a busy one and Myrtle doesn’t get another opportunity to rake me over the coals about my nightly whereabouts. I’m far more focused today than I have been, pulling sheets from beds and mopping up the laundry room floor and cleaning out the toilets of the empty cabins. Myrtle has one strict policy—cleanliness. Especially when it comes to bathrooms. Her cabins are small and understated inside, but they’re cute enough and more importantly, they’re sparkling clean. Toilets and sinks get cleaned every day in occupied cabins unless they hang aDO NOT DISTURBsign on the exterior knob. But even in the unoccupied cabins, toilets and sinks get cleaned every other day. I did try to point out that no one was using them, therefore it was an unnecessary waste of product, but Myrtle would hear none of it.
The café is unusually full. The continental offerings at breakfast get wiped out, and five people from town come in for waffles. Lunch is BLTs and it seems like just about everybody and their brother wants one. Dinner is a classic tuna casserole with garlic bread. I worry we’ll sell out of the two whole trays she’s made. I’m refilling waters when the unfamiliar couple comes in. It must be nearly seven by now. We don’t have a regular closing time. Myrtle typically just locks up after the last dinner guest has left or been run off. Tonight, we’re running later than usual.
He strides through the front door like he owns the place, seats himself at a table I only bussed minutes before. But she lags behind, refusing to make eye contact, her dress several sizes too big for her frame.
I take the pitcher of water back to Myrtle in the kitchen.
“Go see what the travelers want,” she tells me.Traveleris what she calls anybody coming in off the road.
I nod and make my way over. “You here for the tuna casserole?”
