Page 58 of Some Kind of Haunted

Scotcheroos must be very important.

“Because they are not taking it off the menu,” the white-haired one says. Forcefully.

Marleen says nothing.

It goes on like that, though the topics ebb and flow around small-town things I don’t understand. Sometimes Nora leans over my shoulder and tries to explain who people are or why some drama is important, but she’s mostly busy making sure everyone’s glasses are full, and helping with this project or that snag. Sometimes she knits her own project, a very complicated top that she barely seems to pay attention to—yet her stitchwork is sublime.

I let my hands lead me. I sit back and listen to the conversation as it swirls around me. I don’t have to pay much attention to my project—it’s an easy knit in the round—so all I have to do is knit and breathe and take a sip, too, every now and again. Or nibble on a cookie that Nora tells me are from the bakery down the street.

And for the first time since we drove in here that night, I’m part of something in Midas that has nothing to do with demons. I get to knit and admire finished mittens and listen to the stories that these old women tell, like they’re just another form of spinning and stitching.

Marleen is the first person to make noises about leaving. It still takes her another thirty minutes to get out the door, and a lot more talk of Jack’s menu choices, but once she’s gone, the older women start to pack up, too.

Then I watch them all shuffle out into the dark, cold night. Like they have no fear. Like it’s just an inky October night in a pretty little small town and the only demons are costumes for the kids and the Trunk or Treats. This settles in me all wrong.

“Do they not know there are demons?” I ask once the door closes behind the last of them and Cleo flips the lock. “They don’t see it? Feel it? Because they’re not foundlings or part of founding families?”

“I don’t think Paula would believe in demons if they came up to her and introduced themselves,” Cleo says, speaking of my solitary friend with a thing against scotcheroos, whatever they are.

Also, she was not the least bit friendly.

“No, probably not,” Nora agrees. “Ruth and Sylvia married brothers from a founding family, but as far as we know, they all stopped believing somewhere at least a generation or two back,” Nora says, neatening up the table.

I move to help, while Cleo stands by the store’s display windows, staring moodily into the dark.

“What about Marleen?” I ask, unable to tamp down my curiosity about this woman who refuses to acknowledge my existence unless it’s the most desperate of situations—like not knowing whether I’m allowed to sit down or not having tried a Midwest delicacy.

“Marleen lands somewhere in the middle,” Cleo says from her spot at the window. “In all things.”

I stop rearranging the line of notions and knitting tools that make the usual centerpiece and look at her. Her gaze is still on the dark street. “How do you land in the middle on demons?”

Cleo shrugs. “Marleen’s never going to dismiss anyone who talks about it or believes in it, but personally? She doesn’t buy in to that shit. That’s a direct quote.”

“Her parents moved away when she was a baby,” Nora explains, following after me and moving the little pots and boxes onto long trays that she places just so on the table. “She grew up over the border in Wisconsin. Met her wife there. When they decided to move back, anything she might have believed was muddled in the going and returning.”

That makes me think about how I still need to call my father. To see what he knows. What he doesn’t. What might be muddled.

And figure out how our grandmother has photos of us when he might have no memory of her.

But every time I speak to him, I don’t know how to bring it up. I don’t want to worry him any more than he’s already worried about Logan and me hanging out in Iowa. Voluntarily.

“Earth to Lexi.”

I blink and find Cleo and Nora both studying me—each now with a glass of wine in their hands. Nora extends a glass to me and I take it with a sheepish smile, careful not to let the red wine slosh onto the yarn all around me.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was thinking about my dad. I still haven’t explained any of this to him, and I don’t know how. You know, without the inevitable slide into talk of experimental therapies and medications for my psychotic disorder.”

They’re both looking at me like I’ve just announced the man is a serial killer. I think about it and guess that I’ve made my dad sound that way, which isn’t fair at all.

“He’s just looking out for me,” I assure them. “I mean, you could probably chalk up a lot of my perceived inappropriate behavior and supposed lack of impulse control to being young and stupid, and he did, but the older you get the more concerned and diagnostic everyone becomes. My dad and stepmother mean really well, but they worry about me. Especially compared to Logan.”

Cleo’s expression darkens. Nora looks even more horrified.

And now I realize how I’ve made Logan sound.

“No, Logan is . . . I mean, I know the way he can come off.” Except I don’t really, because the way he comes off to everyone everywhere is great and perfect and golden. Except around these people, for some reason. “Logan is . . .” I find myself trying to find words for the enormity of everything my twin has been to me, but there aren’t any big enough. “You don’t know how many times he’s saved me. I mean that literally. At one point, when the sleepwalking was really bad, Dad felt like he was going to be forced to put me somewhere safe, as they called it. Meaning the psych ward. They had the paperwork all drawn up, but Logan was the one who convinced them to back off.”

The silence is deafening. I feel that familiar sinking sensation in my core that usually means I’ve shared too much. Gone too far. They might be able to accept demons, but the way they’re looking at me—