Page 121 of Her Wicker Guardian

Locke watches everything.

Not with the stunned silence he had the first time he saw television or the concentrated attention he gives a new tool. This is more deliberate. He studies mailboxes, side roads, a gas station, and two people mowing lawns, turning his head as he matches names he knows to actual places.

We pass a house with at least a dozen plastic pink flamingos scattered across the front lawn.

“Oh, good. The flamingos are multiplying,” I say dryly.

Locke twists in his seat to keep looking at them. “Those aren’t real.”

“Not even a little.”

He keeps watching them through the back window.

When the first cluster of houses thickens into town, Locke leans slightly toward the window. “That is Hollis Springs?”

“Welcome.”

He studies the houses, the little strip of businesses farther ahead, and the cars parked along the street. “It is smaller than the pictures.”

“Most things are.”

“You said thousands of people live here.”

“They’re not all required to stand outside when you arrive.”

“That would be inconvenient.”

“Extremely.”

The Blue Plate Diner appears on our right before I’m ready for it. Cars fill about half the lot, but there are no news vans, reporters, or strangers loitering by the entrance. Just the familiar blue awning and the broad front windows I’ve looked through thousands of times, usually while carrying three plates and wondering whether table seven is ever going to stop asking for ranch dressing.

Locke follows my attention. “Your work.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you miss it?”

I’ve spent the last several days thinking about the lost money more than the job itself. I have to think about the answer. “Parts of it. I miss knowing what I’m doing every minute I’m there. Somebody wants coffee, I bring coffee. Somebody needs a check, I bring the check. Nobody asks whether the man in my yard proves magic exists.”

“That happens less often in restaurants?”

“Usually.”

It takes me half a beat to hear the joke in it. “Smartass.”

“I know that word.”

Calhoun’s Home & Hardware sits two blocks off the square in an old brick building with a green awning and three wide front windows crowded with bird feeders, garden tools, paint sprayers, and enough seasonal merchandise to suggest Mrs. Calhoun hasn’t met a holiday she couldn’t monetize. I find a spot near the side lot.

Locke is already looking through the windshield. “Many tools.”

“You haven’t even gone inside.”

“I can see them.”

I turn off the engine and reach automatically for the litany of warnings I’ve already reviewed with him. “Just remember, if people stare, we don’t have to stay. If anybody gets aggressive, we leave. And if somebody starts filming…”

“Rachel.”