Page 64 of Nowhere Good

“Can you blame them?” Claire let out an exasperated breath. “Our town’s reputation is going to crap fast.”

“All this stuff about Mr. Giggles ain’t helping. You heard about the FBI being here, right?”

Claire nodded; she’d heard the rumors. Something about the FBI being in town, but not in connection to the murders. Norman Stanfield had done something else entirely. It’d all come out eventually, but for now, they were left in the dark.

She’d been tempted to text Detective Winslow—Seth—and ask about it, but it felt inappropriate, like he might think she was trying to take advantage of her connection to him to get privileged information. Besides, the last text he’d sent her asked a question about what she’d wanted to tell him about her mom. And she wasn’t ready to talk about that yet. Not till she had the necklace.

“The detective was at the farm yesterday, and he said nothing about it,” Clementine said.

“What? Why was he there?” Seth had already seen her at her worst, back when she was cleaning the chaos of Dillon’s party like the god damn maid. But the thought of him at her family’s farm, so close to her childhood, tied her stomach in knots.

He would’ve been right there. So close to where it had happened. The cage.

Like every outsider who’d ever stepped foot in that house, he’d have no idea.

“Dunno, talking to Daddy about something,” Clem said. “You know me, I don’t ask questions. But… he took a kitten.”

Claire frowned. “What?”

Clem wore a cherubic smile, half-laughing. “He found Daddy out back dealin’ with some kittens who’d been abandoned. You know, mercy killing. I guess Detective Winslow couldn’t stomach it, so he took a damn kitten. Put it in a cardboard box and drove off with it.”

“You’re kidding.” Claire wasn’t sure if she should laugh or what. Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a shock; Seth was good like that. She’d interacted with him enough now to know that. And now she knew, because of everything he’d told her the other night, that a lot of his good had been born from darkness.

Bad things happened to him, and he became better for it.

A strange sensation tugged inside her, a string pulling tight around her heart. If more people in her life were like him, then her world would be a much kinder place.

“That man does not fit in around here,” Clem mused. “I guess growin’ up in some big city, you’d never have to learn the kinda lessons we had to learn. You remember Patty Cake?”

“That big fat barn cat who turned out to be pregnant. Yeah, she had her litter in the stable, then took off.”

“Mm-hmm. Left her kittens to fend for themselves. Daddy was gonna show us what to do with them, and when we realized he was gonna kill them, we begged him not to. So he didn’t, told us we were gonna learn a lesson the hard way… you remember, right?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Claire shuddered. It wasn’t a good memory. They’d gone out to check on the kittens the next day and found nothing but blood and fur and evidence of, well, weasels. Claire had wailed, asking why they didn’t bring them inside, but her dad said it was the natural order.

“Daddy’s right, you know,” Clementine said. “If Patty Cake had stayed to protect her babies, maybe they would’ve made it. I guess people are like that too, huh? I feel safe knowin’ I have Marty next to me at night… maybe Eliza and Kelsey didn’t have someone protectin’ them. People are animals too, after all.”

Claire resisted a scoff. Those words came from Clementine’s mouth, but they felt like a script written by their dad.

“What’s the point of all this if we’re just animals? We have choices. Those weasels were trying to survive, but the man who did that to Eliza and Kelsey did it ’cause he wanted to. They did nothing wrong.”

“Don’t get all preachy, I was just talkin’ with you.”

Claire bit back her words. God, Clementine was rubbing her the wrong way today.

But she had to hold it together. Because if all went according to plan, then this evening, when the fair was in full swing, Claire would leave Clementine in charge and slip away.

Evening fell over Fairview in a shroud of grapefruit tones; they bled over the fair, pouring between the bars of the Ferris wheel like syrup. Seth stood outside the parking lot of the grocery store where it was being held. Despite the news around town—the murders, whispers of the FBI and what Norman Stanfield had done—the fair was lively.

He brought his attention to his phone, open with a composite sketch of their suspect. A gaunt man in a hood with a surgical mask covering half his face. He had wide, intense eyes with thick, furrowed eyebrows.

They’d finished it this afternoon. The process had taken hours—longer than it should have, but Isabella kept changing details. In the end, this was what the sketch artist came up with, and Isabella insisted this was the man she’d seen.

Unfortunately, the only defining features were his dark eyebrows and the fact that he was likely Caucasian, but most people were around here. He seemed young enough, late twenties to early thirties. Isabella couldn’t recall any distinct lines or wrinkles around the eyes.

The photo had been released this afternoon, plastered all over the news and social media, but with the fair going on, who knew how many people had bothered to look.

It’d be dark in an hour. Through the rows of booths, concession tents, and food trucks, set up like a makeshift village, some officers patrolled on foot. Seth made his way into the fair, taking in the various booths. Homemade jewelry shops, popcorn stands, a vendor selling handmade fuzzy dice. He lingered on men within the profile—dark-haired men that appeared ordinary with their friends and families. One of them could be him, blending into Fairview with an easy smile.