Around here, the nameThornis as prickly as it sounds.
I pull up the handle on my suitcase and meander toward the sliding doors, since that seems to be where everyone else is going after they’re sprung from baggage claim. Outside it’s hot for mid-September. I scan the faces around me.
Then I hear my name, from the direction of a battered pickup idling at the curb. In front of it stands a short woman with curly brown hair and white cropped pants that are almost the same shade as her calves.
“Ryan?” Her voice rises an octave.
Looking at her big blue eyes and pale skin dotted with freckles, I have the strangest sense of déjà vu. It evaporates as quickly as it hits me, but I’ve got a scrapbook full of photographs of my mom. This woman is a softer, shorter, older version of her.
“Aunt Maggie?” I ask when I reach her.
“That’s right!” she says, as if I’ve won Final Jeopardy. I recognize her voice from the phone call I had with her shortly after Gran died. That was when I learned I’d be coming to live with the Shipleys. Permanently.
She leans in to give me a stiff hug. “Aw, honey. You look tired. How was your trip?”
“It was fine.”
Maggie waits for me to elaborate. When I don’t, she awkwardly claps her hands together. “All right. Bag in the back.”
I struggle to lift it up and throw it in the bed of the pickup. Then I climb into the two-seater next to the total stranger who is my last living relative. Well, at least one who isn’t on death row for murder.
Maggie takes off, both windows down, the wind blowing past my ears while some country song I’ve never heard of blasts through the speakers. It’s too loud to talk comfortably. And that’s fine with me. After we navigate out of the city and onto the interstate, I spend the time watching trees, trees, and more trees pass by in a blur.
When we get off the highway, the wind dies down and Maggie lowers the volume on the radio. I can feel her gaze boring into the side of my face.
“What?” I glance over so she knows I know she’s staring.
“Ah. Nothing.” Her eyes shift to the road. Then flit back to me. “You don’t look like her. Or him, for that matter. Although”—she squints a little—“I suppose you have her eyes, only a bit darker. And your fath—um, Gabriel’s hair. It was a lighter shade of auburn. But…” She shakes her head. “You don’t bear a strong resemblance to either of them.”
“Gran used to say the same thing. That I looked like both of them equally and therefore like neither of them.” My heart clenches a little. I miss Gran. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to move past this crushing sense of grief.
The conversation dies again, the soft hiss of the wind and quiet strains of the radio filling the truck. But my aunt is clearly the kind of person who isn’t comfortable with prolonged silences, because she clears her throat and interrupts my thoughts once again.
“Ryan, honey,” she says gently. “You know what we talked about on the phone?”
I nod.
“And you’ll remember? Your name is Ryan Shipley?”
“Sure.”I’m not an idiot, lady. I get it.
She must see something hostile in my expression because she lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m being pushy. I just don’t know if I did a good enough job on the phone stressing the importance of keeping silent about this. It’s for your own good, really. You’ll see.”
Another nod. “Okay.”
“When we moved back to Starling seven years ago, we had no idea the kind of vitriol we would face. Our last name isn’t even Thorn,” she marvels. “And we aren’t related to your fath—um, to Gabriel. And yet there were some folks in town who blamed us. Or at least, associated us with that monst—”
She stops abruptly. Poor lady’s looking more and more flustered. I almost feel sorry for her.
“It’s all right,” I assure her, my tone dry. “You can say the wordmonster. I know what he is.”
“The twins were only nine when we came back here,” she continues. “Up till that point, they’d spent their entire lives in Chicago, but Dan’s momma remarried and moved to Florida and left us that beautiful property—we couldn’t pass up the opportunity, you know? Raise our kids in a cramped town house or on hundreds of acres of wide-open space? It was a no-brainer, really. Starling is a better place to raise kids.”
“Why did you move away in the first place, then?” I ask.
I told myself I wasn’t going to get close to these people—I’ll be leaving town the second I graduate—but I can’t fight my curiosity. Gran rarely spoke about Aunt Maggie.
“Dan was offered a job in Chicago not long after we got married, and we decided it would be best for him to accept it.” She pauses. “I don’t know how much your grandma told you about what happened between us—”
