I drag the email from Gravely Power to the trash and empty the entire folder. It takes me a little googling to figure out how to block an incoming email address, but I do that, too.
Then I close all my tabs and text Baine two letters: ok.
Later—much later, after the steam from the bathroom has dissipated to a chill dampness throughout the room, and Jasper and I are both in bed, pretending to sleep—my phone buzzes again. I expect it to be Baine’s reply, but it’s not.
It says:Good night, Miss Opal.
Betrayal is just like shoplifting: the trick to getting away with it is not to think about it. You tuck the box of tampons under your left arm and keep walking, wearing an expression that suggests you’re thinking about dinner or homework, because you are. No one ever asks what you’re up to because you’re not up to anything.
So I spend April doing exactly what I did during March—sweeping and dusting, scrubbing and polishing, bothering Arthur and dragging bag after bag of garbage down the drive—except every now and then I pause to hold up my phone and take a picture. At the end of each week I send an email to the address I was given, and the next morning there are questions and demands in my inbox.The foyer pictures are too blurry, please resend ASAP. Is that door locked? What’s on the other side? Can you provide a rough sketch of the floor plan?
I write back at random, offering a careless bouquet of lies and half-truths and sullenI don’t knows,provoking increasingly annoyed replies. The floor plan I draw them is laughably incomplete, and includes several rooms that don’t exist. Or maybe they do—when I try to recall the precise order of halls and doors in Starling House the map twists and writhes in my head, snakelike, and leaves me dizzy.
But Elizabeth Baine and her consulting group must be getting something out of it, because they keep texting. In the middle of April I send a picture of the front door and get a flurry of emails in response:We need better pictures of those symbols. Are there other objects like this in the house?
There are. The place is full of the odd and uncanny: little crucifixes made of woven wood and tied with twine; silver hands with eyes in the middle; gold crosses with looped tops; sachets of dried leaves and salt, a dozen other charms and amulets strung above doorways and windows. At first I shoved them into dresser drawers and closets as I tidied, but the next day I’d find them right back where they’d been before.
Arthur had caught me once clearing a mantel into a garbage bag, swearing. He told me to leave it and I told him that lucky charms were, in my experience, total bullshit. I picked up a battered copper coin, a penny with a harp printed on one side.Like, do you really think this will save you?He’d answered, unusually earnest:No, but it might buy you time.
Then he’d stalked away, deploying his only known tactic for ending a conversation. I’d waited until I heard the clank of pots in the kitchen before slipping the coin into my back pocket.
Now I take pictures of the other objects I left on the mantel: a small mirror with eight sides, a silver heart pierced by a sword, a bundle of dried lavender. The digital shutter sounds much louder than it should.
Good work,Baine writes.We’re sending you a higher-quality phone tomorrow.
I pick up the package in the motel office, and run into Charlotte. She’s leaning over Bev’s desk, her face intent.
“Oh hey, did my holds come in?”
Charlotte straightens very quickly. “No. I was just—”
She gestures at Bev, who says, shortly, “She was dropping offmybooks.” She spins her office chair to face the television. “Not everything is about you, Opal.”
“Oh my God, you canread?”
“Bite me.”
Charlotte sighs a little harder than is necessary for what is essentially a civil Garden of Eden conversation. “I was just leaving.” Those two little lines are framing her mouth again, and her glasses are slightly askew.
I sidestep in front of her. “Wait, I was wondering about that Gravely stuff. Do you think you could drop off one of those crates? I could help you catalog it all.” I don’t care about the Historical Society even a little bit, but I would like to know why a Gravely had my mom’s phone number. It’s probably nothing—she probably owed him money or flirted with him in the Liquor Barn parking lot or tried to sell his wife off-brand makeup—but I keep the receipt folded in my pocket anyway.
“What Gravely stuff?” Bev has spun away from aWheel of Fortunererun just to glare at me.
“Oh, did you think this was your business?” I make a sympathetic face. “Not everything is about you, babe.”
This kind of overt obnoxiousness usually redirects her attention, but not this time. She shakes her head. “There’s nothing you need to know about those people. Whatever it is, best leave it alone.”
I’m opening my mouth to reply but Charlotte lets out a caustic little laugh. It barely sounds like it belongs to her. “Just leave it alone, huh? Just sweep it under some rug and hope nobody sees.” She’s looking at Bev with a degree of anger that strikes me as wildly disproportionate. She whips back toward me, braid arcing, eyes flashing. “I’ll bring the first box down as soon as I get a chance.”
She stalks out. The buzzer sings two flat notes as the door slams.
“Uh.” I point to a crisp white box behind the desk. “That package is mine, I think.”
Bev kicks it at me without looking away from the TV. I follow Charlotte out the door.
It’s an overcast day, chilling toward evening, and the parking lot is full of birds. Grackles so black they look like bird-shaped holes cut in the pavement, a few crows, the speckled gleam of starlings. Charlotte cuts through them like a boat through dark water.
“Hey!” Charlotte stops but doesn’t turn around, one hand fishing for her keys.
