Page 9 of Other Birds

“All right. Don’t throw anything out until you’ve gone through it. Every box.” Frasier looked back into the condo with a deep sigh. He had a sinewy vigor to him, but seemed somehow more fragile this morning. It occurred to her that maybe the shock of Lizbeth Lime’s death had rattled him to his bones, and he was grieving. She felt embarrassed for not acknowledging it sooner.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About Lizbeth, I mean. Did you know her well?”

“I knew her a long time. That’s not quite the same thing.” He handed her Lizbeth’s key, then walked back to his office. The dellawisps followed him until he closed the door.

They looked lost for a moment, then seized on their next distraction.

Charlotte had just emerged from next door, bringing her bluescooter with her. She walked into the garden toward the gate, ostensibly because the narrow pathway around it was too small for the scooter. The birds, predictably, dive-bombed her. A fat one landed on the seat and chirped like a crabby backseat driver as she pushed.

Pigeon cooed in a dignified way at their behavior, from somewhere on the low stone wall separating Lizbeth Lime’s patio from Charlotte’s.

“Charlotte! Hey, Charlotte!” Zoey called. Charlotte turned her head and Zoey could see the split second she considered ignoring her. Unhappiness was undulating off her in waves. Zoey beckoned her back. “Come look at this.”

Charlotte gathered herself together and pushed down the kickstand, leaving the birds to descend upon the scooter.

Zoey led her to Lizbeth’s doors.

“My God,” Charlotte said. Her words disappeared inside as if they were another thing for Lizbeth to collect.

“You said you could hear her moving things around. Did you know about this?”

“I had no idea,” Charlotte said as Zoey studied her. She was wearing a short, flowered sundress and black bicycle shorts. Her hair was twisted up and she had on a pair of silver aviator-style sunglasses. She turned and Zoey could see herself reflected in them. Zoey’s short, dark hair was falling on her forehead, which looked like the bangs her mother used to wear. She liked that glimpse of her. Aside from her coloring, there was very little about her that Zoey thought resembled her beautiful mother. “Why are the doors open?” Charlotte asked.

“When Frasier went to unlock them just now, they were already open,” Zoey said. “He thinks he forgot to lock them yesterday, but I saw someone sneaking around here last night. He gave me a jobclearing all this out. Lizbeth worked forRoscoe Avanger,did you know that? Apparently, he wants some story idea Lizbeth was going to give him. Isn’t that amazing? Roscoe Avanger might finally be writing something new!”

Out of that deluge of information, Charlotte focused on what was, to Zoey, the least interesting thing by far. “Wait. Frasier gave you a job?”

“Yes.”

“That’s great,” Charlotte said, walking away. “Just wonderful.”

Surprised, Zoey followed her. “What’s wrong?”

Charlotte reached her scooter and lifted the kickstand. The dellawisps flew up into a cloud. She pushed the scooter toward the alley without another word, and eventually Zoey stopped following.

Chapter Four

This was the last thing Charlotte wanted to do, so of course the one day she would have welcomed traffic, there was none. It took only ten minutes on the coastal highway around the island for her to get to the Sugar Warehouse, the name of a colossal warehouse left over from the heyday of the candy trade when ships would bring in loads of sugar for the candymakers.

There was no practical use for the warehouse after the trade dried up on the island during the Great Depression, so the building fell into disrepair. Eventually it became so far gone that everyone seemed to be waiting for it to simply fall into the ocean. Enter wealthy Margot Tulip from Charleston. She bought the warehouse and, to everyone’s surprise, instead of tearing it down and building a hotel she turned it over to her son Asher—a lackadaisical man with failed ambitions of becoming an artist. Asher renovated it and rented out booth space dirt cheap to an eclectic group of local artists that he liked to consider his tribe, even though he had more money than any of them would ever see in their lifetimes. Restaurants andcoffee shops soon moved into the spaces facing the piers, and presto change-o. Instant tourist attraction.

Charlotte had phoned several fellow artists from the Sugar Warehouse yesterday after discovering Benny had left with her money, but none of them had returned her calls. She’d finally resorted to calling Asher at his office. Unlike with the others, she wasn’t surprised when he hadn’t responded. They hadn’t spoken in months. Now she had no choice. There was the little matter of the missing seventeen hundred dollars she’d had in her backpack. She had a square reader on her phone for credit cards, but many customers still paid in cash. And if she had cash, she always, always carried it with her. She wanted to be able to touch it, to know it was still there. It was an old habit since running away.

Once she reached the seaside parking lot, she took off her helmet. The day was hot and hazy, with long white clouds stretched across the blue sky like pulled taffy. She stared out at the water, letting the wind blow across her damp face and hair. She’d spent the first part of her life not even knowing how to swim. Now she couldn’t imagine not being near an ocean. It was wide open for all to see, not forested and hidden like the camp in Vermont where she’d grown up.

She finally screwed up her courage and walked into the cavernous Sugar Warehouse, with its concrete floor and a roof so high the steel ceiling beams faded into darkness, where gulls nested. Large hanging fluorescent lights brightened the building, which was divided into row upon row of booths occupied by artists selling, chatting, and creating—woodworkers, potters, painters, photographers, doll makers, even handmade-clothing designers.

The information desk was directly to the left of the entrance inside, and she went there and told the receptionist that she wantedto see Asher. She needed him to know that there was a very good reason for her call yesterday. And it wasn’t because she wanted her booth back, or wantedhimback.

When Asher finally appeared from his office, her hand involuntarily gripped the helmet she was carrying.

“Charlotte,” he said, all business as he walked over to her, “what can I do for you?”

She’d been working here for nearly a year and a half before he’d ever spoken to her. Her henna booth had been close enough to the information desk that she could watch him come and go. Something sparkled around him, an irresistible sheen of confidence, with his dark curly hair and those garishly bright polos he favored. He would sometimes wink at her when he noticed her attention, but that had been it. He winked at everyone. But then, for a reason that only became clear later, one day last winter he’d walked over to her to watch her work. He’d talked to her clients as she drew, charming them so much they left her large tips. Between clients, he would touch the designs on Charlotte’s arms while asking about each of them, holding her eyes just a little too long.

And that was all it had taken.

It always happened this way. She would be alone for years, because protecting herself from anyone who could hurt her was what teenaged Charlotte had always wanted and she owed that to her; then along would come someone like Asher who showed her where all her cracks were.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com