Not notably different, not the kind of different that most people would clock. She’s still contained, still quiet, and not shyly so—more like purposefully so. In the stores we go into, she doesn’t touch anything; she keeps her hands close to her sides. When people casually welcome her in and ask how she’s doing, she still answers with a quick “Fine,” closing the door on further questions.
But I’m not most people.
I notice, for example, that when she drives, she taps one finger on the steering wheel in time with whatever music we play in the car. I notice that she’s less inclined to keep her gaze straight ahead—she looks around, not just at what we pass as we make our way through our mapped-out routes, but at the shelves of the shops we go in. I notice she doesn’t so quickly contain her expressions: when she sees a jokey bumper sticker about “Florida Man,” she offers up that quirking corner of her mouth. When a shop owner I’m talking to makes an unprompted, aggressive remark about his devotion to the Second Amendment, she rolls her eyes. When another shop owner—this one a kind-eyed older woman whose entire store’s aesthetic might be called flamingo-core—asks if we’re married, Jess coughs in what I can only assume is appalled surprise.
All of it is small, but also, I know none of it would have happened if we were with Salem and Tegan.
Obviously, a catalogue of Jess Greene’s microexpressions is not the intel I’m supposed to be gathering, but so far, everything else has been a dead end. I’ve had some nice conversations, have gotten some good tape of people who recognize the name Lynton Baltimore from Salem’s podcast, and who have opinions on what happened to him. That would make for nice filler on a new story, but only if we actually end up finding something. If we don’t, it’s just a record of me hitting a wall. Since we haven’t yet heard from Salem or Tegan, I’m guessing they’re not having much more luck.
“This is our last one?” Jess says, as she pulls into a parking spot outside of an unassuming but well-tended strip of shops.
This is different, too—she’s spoken to me more freely as the day has worn on. It doesn’t matter if nearly everything she’s said has been about logistics: a question about directions or background information on a store we’re heading into, a reminder when I almost leave the van without my phone, a brief ask about whether I’m more comfortable in the passenger seat.
The fact that she’s just used the wordourfeels monumental.
“Yeah.”
I unhook my seat belt and take a second to open the Notes app on my phone, where Salem and I are sharing a collation of the details we gathered about various shops. For the previous four visits, Jess hasn’t given any indication that she cares whether I tell her the basics before we go in, but I still tell her anyway.
This one is a long shot, seeing as how it’s never been inside Pensacola proper. And a decade ago, it was even further away, in a different location, with a different name: The Sea Spot. Now, if I’m judging by the slick website, it’s less gift shop and more gallery. It’s called Sandbar Studio & Design, and six years ago its ownership transferred from someone named M. Acosta to an LLC under the store’s new name.
“Okay,” Jess says after I finish, which is the same thing she’s said every time. So it’s a surprise when, instead of opening her door and getting out the way she usually does, she stays put and says, “Do you like doing this work?”
I turn to look at her. She pulled her hair up a couple of hours ago, high on the top of her head in a haphazard bun, and the fact is, I’ve avoided most eye contact since. Her neck is long and smooth and she has two slim, gold hoops in the cartilage of her right ear. I thought seeing her legs was bad, but this?
This is brutal.
I try for levity. “Do I like spending my day looking at shell souvenirs in the Florida Panhandle?”
There’s that quirk again.
“This just—” she begins, running her finger along the bottom edge of the steering wheel, staring out the windshield at the shop. “It’s frustrating. It’s hours of work, and we have nothing to show for it. I keep thinking about how many cuts and colors I’d have done by now.”
She pauses, then adds, “I do hair.”
“I know. Tegan told us.”
“Right.” Her tone is sharper than before, and I could kick myself for bringing it up. She offers up a piece of information about herself and I remind her of her sister’s betrayal? I use one of those collective pronouns she only just started using to refer to me and her, to instead refer to me and Salem?
I’m desperate to recover.
“I do like it. It’s a lot of false starts, when you’re first trying to track down information. But even the little pieces you find sometimes end up being worth something, once it’s time to put it all together. This kind of stuff”—I gesture out the windshield—“it’s hard to see it as part of the story. But even if there’s nothing here, it’ll matter. It’s one of the angles you tried. To get the final picture.”
As soon as I finish, I’m worried I’ve made another error. The final picture I’m out here trying to get, after all, has to do with her and her sister. And isn’t that the same thing that had me feeling annoyed at Salem this morning?
But Jess doesn’t say anything, not right away. She tilts her head to the side slightly, lengthening that line of her neck I’m definitely not looking at or thinking about setting my lips to. And when she speaks, she doesn’t say anything sharp.
“A shell souvenir,” she says quietly.
“What?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s like—collecting a bunch of little shells from the beach. Individually, they’re nice, sure. But if you want to remember your trip, you do something with them, the way these shops do. Put them in a jar, or glue them to a frame. Coat them in something that’s probably toxic and make a keychain. Stock them on your shelves for selling. A souvenir.”
Then she opens her door and gets out.
I blink at her vacated driver’s seat for a good three seconds before I can move again. Did she just compare investigative journalism to cheap shell keychains?
Worse, did it somehow make sense to me?
