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I put Mrs. Miller’s books in the canvas store bags I’m giving away for the holidays. My hands are shaking.
“I hoped we were done with this kind of thing,” she says. And when I look at her, she’s watching me.
It’s a small town. What happened here is not forgotten. Ten years in a place like this is a heartbeat. Some people still look at me with the suspicion. Evan Handy’s survivor. Why me? The least pretty of us all, I’m sure some would say. Surely Steph, with her bombshell body and startling green eyes, would take that crown. Ainsley and Sam were star athletes, all-American, good girls. Me, I was just the nerd. Why are they all gone? And I’m still here. Even I have to wonder.
“Yes,” I say. “Wouldn’t it be nice if no young women went missing ever again. If we weren’t murdered, brutalized, raped, or abducted—daily, globally.”
Mrs. Miller gives a sad nod. “Life’s not easy for girls,” she says again.
My heart is hammering, but I have become good at keeping a placid exterior.
“Plans for the holidays?” I ask, changing the subject. I’m trying to remember who worked at Billy’s.
“My son is coming with his wife and kids,” she says, brightening. “I’ve been cooking for days.”
“What ages are your grandkids? I have some great new books in.”
“They’re not readers,” she says, shaking her head. “Always on those devices.”
“Well, maybe you can turn them on to books,” I offer, nodding toward my newly curated Children and Young Adult section. There’s a big rug where we sit for story time on Wednesday mornings. And a lighted nook where teens can hide and read. I have a few kid regulars who use the store as a kind of haven. There’s a big table in the back for homework. I like that I can offer them that.
She gives me an assenting nod and wanders over.
“Funny,” she says.
“What’s that?”
“That troublemaker shows up and all of a sudden something bad happens.” She holds a YA dystopian classic in her hands, looks at the cover, flips it over.
“Who?” I ask
“Harley Granger.”
My body tingles with dread, stomach roiling, back of my neck itchy and hot, thinking about his visit, the lights on at the Wallace house.
“You heard?”
She gives me a frown. “You posted on Instagram.”
“Oh,” I say. “Right.”What was I thinking?
“It’s better not to go digging around into the past,” she says, tucking the novel under her arm and picking up a picture book about crayons. “It stirs up bad memories. Bad energy.”
For some of us the bad things never became just memories. And the bad energy lingers, like the Wallace’s rotting old house at the top of the hill. And there are questions, lots of them. Not the least of which is: What happened to Ainsley and Sam? They’ve been missing, case unsolved, for ten years.
The past is alive.
She carries the books over to the counter. “I’ll give you twenty-five percent off,” I tell her. “And if the kids don’t like what you chose, bring them in and they can pick out something else.”
“You always were a good egg, Madeline.”
I ring her up. “Want me to wrap?”
“Why not?”
I take special care to make each package look festive and appealing—brightly colored reindeer wrapping paper with extra ribbons. Books are special—a real thing in the real world. Maybe her device-addicted grandkids will see that because of my extra awesome wrapping job. They’ll look away from their hypnotizing screens, seduced by my ribbon curlicues, and become lifelong readers. I lose myself for a few minutes in my task, in my fantasy about saving young minds.
Finally, I drop the books in her reusable sack.
