“Absolutely. Won’t tell a soul. And I’ll make Nevin swear too, under penalty of getting his ass whooped.” Marvin’s dark eyes narrow as he visualizes punishing his younger brother.
We shake hands with Marvin as he once again apologizes for his role in this situation and on behalf of Nevin, then get back into Cal’s car, GPS set to Gustav’s address on the other side of the city.
Catoctin, Maryland— September 1908
That night, Ora’sthoughts were like a steam train, loud and barreling through her skull on an endless track. She didn’t understand how it was possible to feel so close to John Morse one moment, and then so distant the next. He complimented her, then told her he couldn’t spend time with her. That could simply be the truth of the matter, she reminded herself. He was running a newspaper with only the assistance of Mr. Prichett and Chester, the latter of whom surely wasn’t yet as helpful as he might be once he gained more experience and strength. But despite her attempts at self-assurance, Ora kept returning to the thought that her growing affection for John wasn’t mutual after all. A shame, since she’d thought she’d finally found someone with whom she could let her guard down.
She’d come to believe that John was able to see the softer version of her hidden behind the veneer of respectable professionalism she had to exude in order to have any hope of success as a scientist. And that perhaps he liked what he saw.
Around three in the morning, as her exhaustion finally began to become more powerful than her busy mind, a loud argument started up between the couple staying in the next room, which was followed by an even louder passionate reconciliation that lasted a remarkably long time. It was no wonder that sleep proved elusive until near sunrise.
This had a ripple effect on her entire day’s plans, and instead of hiking back to the woods to revisit the locations she had visited two days prior to see if she might have better luck, Ora instead chose the field John had marked on the map, which was a good bit closer to town. John assured her it was widely treated as public property among Catoctin’s residents and that the legal owner, Mr. Steuben, had no issue with it, using it only occasionally as a place to allow his goats to browse. Indeed, she found the grass, losing its verdancy as the weather transitioned from autumn to winter, only as high as her ankle.
It didn’t seem a particularly attractive place for a songbird. John’s find was so curious, and becoming more so the longer she thought about it. Was it possible he was right when he expressed doubts, that his imagination could have run away with him while spotting something much more common?
Ora’s neck soon grew tired from her craning toward the distant tree line, and her elbows ached from the position with which she had to hold her binoculars. She let out an exhausted, frustrated sigh and sank down to the cool earth, where she sat for a length of time as she argued with herself over whether she should simply give up and go back to the inn. Or, hell, go back to Washington and try to get her cataloging project back from Guy before he could lay claim to too much more of it.
Coming here was starting to seem less like a career-making move and more like a foolish mistake.
Her head began to throb, the sense of failure and disappointment overwhelming.
Rest. She needed rest, and then everything would be clear.
Ora lay back, using her canvas field pack as a makeshift pillow. Cottony white clouds drifted slowly in the bright blue sky above her, and she imagined herself floating upon them until she was no longer aware of her thoughts at all.
SIXTEEN
Callahan
The address Nevingave Marvin leads us to a 1920s bungalow-style house in East Baltimore, on the outskirts of Lauraville. As we park in front, the headlights glint off of something on the porch. The display case. Thank god. Relief floods me like a fire hose, almost too intense to handle.
“It’s here,” I say, unbuckling my seat belt with such haste that I get a bit tangled in it and Annie makes it outside before me.
She unlatches the gate on the chain-link fence, and we march up the cracked pathway toward the porch. We’re nearly there when I realize that something isn’t right.
“Ah, shit,” Annie breathes, apparently noticing the same thing.
The display case sits there atop Gustav’s welcome mat.
The goose is not inside.
I march up the steps onto the porch to double-check that our eyes aren’t deceiving us—stupid, obviously, considering there’s no way we would overlooka massive dead bird, even in the dark.
Annie reaches out toward the video doorbell, which glows as it registers our presence, and presses it.
“Not interested,” comes a gruff, groggy voice through its built-in speaker.
“We’re not selling anything,” Annie responds. “Are you Gustav?”
“Who is asking?”
“My name is Annie, and this is Cal. We’re here about a prank your friend Nevin played on you. He took something that didn’t belong to him, thinking it would be funny, and we’re hoping to get it back.”
“Are you police? FBI? CIA?”
“Um,” I say. “We’re antique dealers?”
The door swings open, revealing a white man in an undershirt and red basketball shorts. His long dishwater blond hair is secured into a low ponytail, frizz haloing one side of his head and making it clear that he just woke up.
