“It was a defect in the turbine.” My lips feel stiff, strangely cold. “There was a whole report.”
Ashley rubs a palm across the gold cross, smoothing it. “Dan saw what he saw. He reported it to the constable, but by the time they went asking around, both those Starlings were dead.”
I’ve spent more time than is strictly rational studying the portraits in the yellow parlor of Starling House. Arthur’s mother: hard-faced, strong, her knuckles scarred and swollen just like her son’s. His father: long-lashed and over-tall, like a bashful greyhound standing on his hind legs. Neither of them struck me as ecoterrorists or mass murderers, but what do I really know about them? What do I really know about Arthur, with his cold silences and secrets?
Ashley is watching me with an awful compassion in her face. “I’m just trying to look out for you, Opal. I wouldn’t trust a one of them. That young man—Alexander?—is likely just as bad as his parents, and twice as ugly, if you ask—”
“I’ll wait in the truck.” I walk back down the drive, berating myself. Why should I give a single lukewarm damn what anyone says about Arthur Starling? So he gave me a coat. So I’m driving his father’s truck, which he cleaned up just for me, which he touched as if it were a poorly healed scar, still tender. He can’t even bring himself to saygood night.
Jasper slides into the passenger seat three minutes later, slamming the door hard enough to send paint chips skittering down the windshield. “Since when,” he says, with frankly dangerous calm, “do we have a truck.”
“Got it off the Rowe boys,” I lie, blandly.
He looks pointedly at the broken handle of the glove box, the sun-faded dashboard, the seams of the bench seat, which are splitting to reveal crustaceous layers of yellow foam, lightly fuzzed with mold. “You got ripped off.”
I turn the key in the ignition, already concerningly fond of the bronchial cough of the exhaust. “You don’t even know how much I paid.”
“Youpaidfor this? Like, legal tender?” He cuts me off before I can make a case in the truck’s defense. “Is there some kind of emergency? Did your appendix burst? Because I can’t think why else you would see fit to drag me away from the dinner table—”
“I wanted pizza.”
A small nuclear reaction occurs in my peripheral vision. “Mr. Caldwellmadechili—”
I slide a twenty out of my back pocket. “Realpizza.” Both of us are aware that this is a blatant and heartless bribe, that I am relying on his adolescent metabolism and the fact that Dan Caldwell uses bell peppers in his chili so it doesn’t get “too spicy.”
A moment of taut silence. Then, skeptically, “With wings?”
My phone buzzes halfway through the second box of pepperoni.
It’s that faraway number again.Please send interior photos of building to [email protected] by 8:00pm on Friday. We look forward to working with you.
Jasper is watching me when I look up. He’d thawed somewhat beneath the sheer weight of calories, but his face is closed and tense again. “Who was that?”
I do a masterfully casual shrug. “Lacey. That guy asked for her number again at work and I told her to give him Bev’s instead.”
Jasper doesn’t even pretend to smile. He nods at the grease spots on his paper plate. “Okay.” He shoves the plate in the trash and slouches into the bathroom. A minute later I hear the petulant white noise of the shower.
I steal his laptop and waste a few minutes conducting a series of ineffective searches (“elizabeth baine isc,” “isc group,” “innovative solutions consulting”). All I get is a series of stock photos and corporate pages so devoid of actual information it feels like an elaborate joke.The ISC Group is committed to finding solutions to every problem. Our consultants have a long history of bold strategies and innovative techniques.
I pick up my phone. Set it back down.
I try to picture Arthur Starling the way I once did, the way everybody else still does—a ghoulish, shadowy figure, surrounded on all sides by sins and secrets. Instead I see him in the soft light of evening, determinedly petting a cat that has already bitten him once and will certainly do so again.
The laptop makes a soft ding. A new message notification appears in the corner of the screen, slightly transparent. I’m not generally in the habit of spying on Jasper’s emails, but this one is from the Gravely Power HR department. I open it and read exactly two lines before my vision goes red and jagged.
Dear Mr. Jasper Jewell,
Thank you for your application to Gravely Power. We would love to schedule an interview at your earliest convenience.
I take two breaths, maybe three. I think about the seismic boom of the turbine exploding at the power plant. I think about the fly ash pond leaking slowly into the river, which is the reason why the health department says it’s only safe to eat catfish once a year. I think about the greasy black dust that falls sometimes on close, windless days, and about Jasper’s asthma attacks coming closer and closer together. The dark days and unlucky nights, the bad endings that wait for both of us, just over the horizon.
Then I think about Jasper, knowing all of that, filling out the application anyway.
Just yesterday Stonewood sent me a fat folder of forms and releases and bewildering orientation brochures. One of them showed a group of boys rowing a strange, flat boat, their uniforms perfectly ironed, their hair sandy and sideswept. There was a confidence to them, a vitality that I both hated and craved. I tried to picture Jasper sitting among them—brown and gangling, asthmatic—and felt the first breath of unease. For some reason I heard my own defensive voice in my ears:I was just trying to help.
But it wouldn’t be like that. I was doing the right thing.
I mailed the forms back as requested, the signatures beautifully forged, and slid the folder itself into a sparkly gift bag for Jasper’s seventeenth birthday, in June. I only have one payment left, which won’t be a problem—so long as Arthur doesn’t fire me and Baine doesn’t sabotage me.
