Chapter 1
The Museum of Vintage Taxidermy and Other Curiosities
70 Days until Busy Season
Lainey Davis hadnever considered herself a particularly principled person, but one belief she’d always held firm to was that she was much too smart to pay for parking.
Parking fees made sense in theory, especially in crowded cities where space was limited, but in Timber Creek, Wisconsin, a town of just under one thousand people in the wintertime—leaving plenty of room to double in size for three months every summer—the coin meters lining the main drag were a bit of a town joke. The machines existed to scam tourists and penalize locals who lacked imagination. Since Lainey was neither of those things, she was, on this miserably rainy day, sitting crisscross-applesauce in her coupe, rigging a quarter to a coffee stirrer with nail glue.
Through her rideshare app, she sent a third message to her passenger.
Lainey (Mercedes—9YKE29): Hi, Isaac, I’m downstairs.
Lainey (Mercedes—9YKE29): Still downstairs.
Lainey (Mercedes—9YKE29): Isaac, I’m serious. I don’t want to have to pay for parking.
Lainey (Mercedes—9YKE29): ISAAC SEGARRA, I WILL LITERALLY END YOUR LIFE IF YOU DON’T COME DOWNSTAIRS NOW.
Isaac: sry omw
That was seventeen minutes ago. From experience, Lainey suspected he’d fired that last message off just as he was stepping into the shower.
“I swear to god, if Isaac is the reason I get my fourth parking ticket this year, I can’t be held responsible for what I do to him,” Lainey mumbled to her best friend, Bree, through her earbud. Her concentration was fixed on the end of the wooden stirrer. The quarter had to balance just so or all would be lost.
“Four? Lainey, it’s only March.” Bree’s tone landed somewhere between disappointed and reluctantly impressed. “Wait. He’s seriously been making you wait in the street for the last twenty-eight minutes?” she demanded, her frustration shifting from Lainey’s quiet rebellion against the tyrannical bureaucracy governing local parking enforcement to her delinquent passenger. Bree subscribed to the friendship philosophy that anyone who so much as slighted Lainey was an instant enemy—no questions asked. Bree looked sweet and harmless but was absolutely lethal. She was a high-voltage taser in the pocket of a Hill House Nap Dress: prim, breezy, but not to be messed with. Lainey was resourceful in a pinch, but Bree was capable of anything. She’d recently become pregnant, and despite her insistence that it was causing her to mellow, every old vendetta continued to simmer with renewed intensity.
Though Bree’s unfailing loyalty was always appreciated,something about the down-to-the-minute objection unsettled Lainey. “How do you know how long I’ve been here?” She whipped her head over her shoulder as though her friend might’ve materialized in her back seat. The sudden movement sent the coin bouncing off Lainey’s legs and onto the floor of the car.
She could practically hear Bree’s shrug. “I watch you on Find My Friends.”
“I don’t like when you do that.”
“I like watching your dot move around the screen. Don’t make it something ugly. Stalking each other on Find My Friends is girlhood. It’s beautiful.”
Lainey sucked in a breath between her teeth, grateful there were no witnesses to her scouring the muddy weather mats for a quarter like a rat hunting for scraps. Down the street, a parking attendant was making her way up the block of darkened shops and restaurants. The town wouldn’t come out of hibernation for another two and a half months. Her grandmother always loved the sleepy offseason, but Lainey disliked scuttling past shuttered storefronts like a cockroach.
“Why are you breathing like that? Are you stealing from the parking meter again?” Bree asked judgmentally. “If you want people to take you seriously, you have to start takingyourselfseriously.”
“Who am I trying to impress? Isaac? He works at a Lovesac outlet and smells like the inside of an Amazon package. Long division is impressive to him.”
Time was running out as she hopped from her car and shoved her MacGyver-ed quarter into the meter, only to give it a quick yank back out by the coffee stirrer. Rain slapped her head in large, aperiodic plops. The quarter went in and came out againwith another shove and another yank. She delighted in the analog dial’s incremental ticks with each pull of the stick—the world’s most anticlimactic slot machine.
Lainey ran back into the dry sanctuary of the ancient—nay,vintage—avocado-green Mercedes she’d bought from her grandmother, a woman who’d mastered the art of living the life of a much wealthier woman while never having any money to speak of. It was a quality she hadn’t passed down to her granddaughter—though she had cut Lainey a deal on the purchase price.
“Finally.” Through the window, she could make out a figure ambling down the stairs of the building. Between both the Brewers cap and the hoodie, she probably wouldn’t have recognized him if not for his identifiable gait. Isaac moved with the ease of water lapping against a shore.
“He’s coming. I’ll have to talk to you later.”
“Tell him he has to tip. Be assertive. You’re worth it!” her friend instructed.
“Talk later.” Lainey punched the end call button as Isaac knocked on the passenger window.
“Still broken,” she yelled, gesturing to the passenger door. She stepped out of the car and into the rain once again.
Scooting past her into the driver’s seat, he lumbered over the center console and plunked into the passenger side.
She eyed his hand. “Why are two of your fingers taped together?”
