Corinthia shook her head, distractedly, as if to clear it.“I’m missing something,” she repeated.Something was calling to her, and she didn’t want to satisfy it but she also wanted it to stop.Then she could close the whole matter, like a book, and put it back on the shelf.
Stevie looked at her for a long moment.“I’ll come with you.”
Corinthia looked up.“You will?”
“What are friends for?Besides, I know more about the Refuge than you do.”
Corinthia preferred to know the most about almost everything, but even she could admit that Stevie’s expertise in this area was unquestioned.“Right after work,” she said, unwilling—for reasons unknown even to herself—to delay by any but the smallest and most necessary amount.
“Right after work,” Stevie agreed.
Back in the library, Corinthia refreshed the free book cart and collected the books from the bin beneath the return slot.Alien Space Lesbianswas not there.
Wherewasthat book, anyway?
The computer said it hadn’t been checked out; that it was still on the shelf in the Shadow Ridge Library.Corinthia checked the new book display.She checked the regular fiction shelves.She scanned the carts of books pulled for repair.She even walked a circuit of all the tables to make doubly sure it hadn’t been casually left out.
Nothing.
No one had checked it out.And no one could have simply walked out with it, either, because the radio frequency ID tag would have made the security system squawk.The simplest answer was that someone had left it somewhere, and she, Corinthia, couldn’t possibly have covered every possible square inch where it might have been misplaced.
Yes, that was almost certainly correct.
With correctness usually came peace, but Corinthia spent the rest of the workday in a fog of unease, all thumbs, and when she fumbled a book she was carrying, it fell and struck the lowest metal shelf like a gong.
What had seemed like a good idea in the morning became less so in the afternoon.Corinthia faced the trailhead with Stevie, who was fairly bouncing with excitement.
“I never thought you’d want to come out here with me,” Stevie enthused.“I thought you’d always want to stay inside, comfy old Corinthia, with your books and your dog and your blankets—”
“Thank you for making me sound one hundred years old.”
“And here you are!”
“Here I am,” Corinthia said, eyeing the trail ahead and wondering, not for the first time, what had possessed her.She could have turned back just then, forgotten the whole thing; except she couldn’t have forgotten.Something about the place clung to her, wouldn’t let her go, wouldn’t let her stop thinking about white sand and tangled green trees and blue-and-silver-winged birds.
“Shall we go?”Stevie prompted.
Corinthia patted her wallet through the outside of her pocket, and then nodded to Stevie to lead the way.On this, the windiest day she had ever been in the Refuge, the breeze sounded not like wind but like the roar of the ocean that, long ago, had surrounded this place.
Stevie kept up a steady patter of facts, identifying many of the plants by sight: “That’s horsemint—blooms during spring and summer, mostly,” or “That’s a staggerbush,” or “Watch out for prickly pear spines!”Corinthia learned that there were four kinds of oak in the Refuge (Chapman’s, turkey, myrtle, and sand live oak), and that the puffy gray-green snowballs were deer lichen, often incorrectly referred to as deer moss.
Normally Stevie’s chatter would have soothed Corinthia.As someone who spoke less, Corinthia found it easy to relax into the stream of someone else’s words, provided that they were interesting enough.But in the Refuge she found herself secretly wishing to hoard the place to herself, to hear only the whispers of her own footsteps in the sand.
Florida was prettier without houses.Corinthia felt the presence of her own, to the south, and felt slightly ashamed.There was nothing right about this at all and yet there it was.
Corinthia spoke even less than usual, only indicating the outbound path she’d taken so that Stevie retraced those steps.Stevie happily filled in the gaps: here was a shiny blueberry bush; there was aFloridarosemary bush, and that one over there was afalserosemary bush, neither of which were true culinary rosemary.The birds swooping overhead were a flock of swallows, visitors to the Refuge—unlike the scrub jays, who never left their small scrubland territory.
They came upon the spot where, in Corinthia’s recollection, the snake had crossed her path.There were no snakes to be seen, but Stevie pointed out how the burrowing creatures had pushed up the lower layer of sand, leaving small heaps of golden yellow sand atop the white.
Corinthia paced the spot.She jumped up and down in an attempt to dislodge her wallet.She even jogged back and forth a few times, to Stevie’s obvious amusement.By the end of it she had to admit it could have fallen out, especially since she’d run much farther in her flight from the snake, and that because there were so many criss-crossing trails, Rosemary could have found the wallet, disappeared into any of a dozen trails, and exited the Refuge without ever being seen.
Stevie had crossed her arms while waiting.“Satisfied?”
Corinthia said nothing but took the lead.
They passed the Ephemeral Wetland and the Woodland Theater.They hiked up the highest hill, which was topped with pine trees, and descended again into the maze of oaks.All the while the birds talked in their own chirpy language, sounding—to Corinthia’s burning ears—like a flock of shameless gossips.
There was a scruffy scrub jay in the bush to the side of the trail, watching her.If it had been a human, it would have had a wrinkled face and a worried expression.Instead of jaunty chirps, this one murmured softly, as if nervously asking a question.
