It was the cashier from before, the one who had been so hostile to her in her bridesmaid dress.
“Welcome, hon. Are you from out of town?”
She doesn’t recognize me. Nadine was simultaneously insulted and relieved.
“Ah, yeah. I am.”
“Well, we sell maps.” There was a knowing gleam in her eye, as if errant tourists came in all the time panicking when their internet cut out. She hadn’t mentioned the maps last time, though. “The restroom’s in the back if you need it and we sell coffee to-go. You can leave your bags by the door while you shop. Aisles are narrow,” she added loosely, in explanation.
“Um, okay.” Nadine carefully set her suitcase and duffel to the side. “I’ll take a map.”
“Over there.” She pointed at a kiosk filled with an arrangement of atlases and pamphlets, including some for tours of the old silver mines and the Running of the Deer festival Cal had mentioned at the wedding. Curiously, Ravensgate was absent from all the pictures. There were postcards on a rotating rack but Nadine didn’t see the one Noelle had sent. “Do the pamphlets cost money, too?” she asked, dropping her hand from the rack.
“Not for you, hon.” She was watching Nadine with an intensity that made her painfully aware of her shaking hands. Averting her eyes, Nadine set down the map, as well as a pamphlet on the mine tours, along with a banana and a bottle of aspirin. While she read the ingredients on a bag of pretzels, the woman said, casually, “Where are you coming from?”
“Pineview.” The pretzels were corn-free. She was starving but too nervous to look at anything else, and the more filling options would have long lists of ingredients that would take longer to read, which she wasn’t sure she could do with this woman staring at her like that.
“I’m not sure I know where that is.”
“It’s about forty-five miles away from San Francisco when there’s no traffic.” Nadine made a wry face she hoped resembled a smile. “But since there’s always traffic, it’s more like two hours.”
“What brings you all the way up here, off-season?”
The question was casual enough, asked in a friendly tone, but Nadine still felt uneasy. “I wanted to see the silver mines,” she lied.
“You staying local?”
“Um, yes. In an AirBnB?”
The woman’s mouth made a brief moue of distaste. “That would be Jessica Mayhew. I told her she was a fool, putting up that ad in the middle of April. Now she’ll be gloating for months. It’s a fifteen-minute walk from here to there. All you have to do is cross the street at the civic center. You can’t miss her house.” She snorted. “It’s the one with all the flamingos.”
“The—I’m sorry?”
“Not real ones. Plastic. That’ll be fourteen ninety-five.” Nadine tried to hide her wince as she passed over another twenty. At this rate, she’d be out of cash in a week.
“Is there a bank around here?”
“Diner has an ATM. But there’s a charge.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“I’m Helena, by the way. Helena Peters. My uncle, George, is the mayor—not that that amounts to much around here.” She said it matter-of-factly, without an ounce of arrogance. It still had the faint ring of a warning, though. “If you’re staying with Jessica Mayhew, I guess I’ll be seeing you around, then.”
“Yeah. I mean, I guess you will. I’m Nadine.” She didn’t give her last name, which made the other woman frown. As she picked up her bags, she asked as casually as she could, “The taxi driver said there’s a big house in town. Victorian. Are there tours of that? I’d love to see it.”
Helena stiffened. “Yes. But you have to arrange it with the house.”
What a strange thing to say. She spoke as if the house were its own entity, with its own desires. It creeped Nadine the hell out. “Is it walkable, too? From here?”
“Just around that hill.” She jabbed her finger towards a sharp curve of rock that created a rather dangerous bend where the road had been dragged around it. “Although I wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t?”
“Go there.”
“Is the tour bad? I really just wanted to look at the house.”
“The house is fine. It’s the people who live there that are the problem.”
