Chapter Fifty-Two

IN THE DARKNESS INSIDE THE ARMOIRE, we come home to each other. Things are quiet tonight, but it is not calm. It is disquiet. The house feels ill at ease with itself, the walls more shadowed than usual. The winter wind is blowing hard outside, and we can hear the bones of the house creaking from the force.

My job tonight is to reassure—to distract. Our lantern burns, and we play all our games. Anywhere But Here and Shadows. Juniper asks for a story, and I tell her about a girl made of flowers. She had big bluebells for eyes, and instead of hair, she grew sunflowers, heavy and swollen with seeds, and their faces would follow the sun as the girl walked. Her fingers were the fuzzy leaves of a violet.

The girl made of flowers was beloved. She was somehow both soft and strong, and girls like that always find admirers. Her honeysuckle scent drew them in like worker bees, and she never minded. She’d share her blooms, plucking a rose from her wrist and a dahlia from her slender neck.

One day, the flower girl fell in love with a man who was like an oak tree. Solid and strong. He offered her shade, protection from the harsher elements. Most important, he let her be still. She sunk her roots deep into the earth by his side. She flourished, blooming even larger and more beautiful petals. But then the oak tree started to lose its leaves, and the girl gave him her flowers in their place. She gave and she gave, and he took them all, not seeing the way she wilted without them. She loved the oak tree too much to leave him, but she could grow her flowers just fast enough for him to pluck them from her. She could no longer share her beauty with the world, so consumed was she with keeping him happy.

After the girls are asleep, I swing open the armoire door and lift them to my bed. Campbell is almost too big for this, but I manage it, barely. I push Campbell’s books aside at the foot of my bed—collections of haunted house stories, her new obsession.

I reach for my backpack and pull out the latest Auburn Gazette. The football team has claimed another win, and another front page. On to semi-finals. First time in nineteen years. I turn the pages to the Help Wanted section and scan the listings. The library needs help. And they need a receptionist at the law firm on the corner. The diner is almost always hiring waitresses, but that’s it. I circle the most promising ones, and then I turn to the housing page. There’s one apartment building in all of Auburn, but some people rent out the spaces over their garages, or an extra room. There are a few options with rent that isn’t too bad. I circle those, too. The next page is township news, and there’s a box at the bottom advertising the essay contest. Right now, college feels impossible. Leaving them to this feels cruel.

I set aside the pages I marked and reach for Campbell’s books. She always wants my copy of the Gazette when I’m done. But my movement disturbs Juniper, nestled in the middle of the bed, and she kicks Campbell’s stack of books off the bed. It’s muffled by the carpet, and they don’t wake up.

I pick them up and find one of Campbell’s notebooks splayed open. There are sections of newspaper cutouts pasted onto the pages, the words familiar.

It’s my column.

I turn the pages of her notebook and find more of them. All of them. Each of my crow columns, carefully saved; her quiet support makes me smile.

But then I turn one more page, and stop. It isn’t a column. It’s a police blotter from the Gazette.

Every week, local police highlights get printed in our paper.

And Campbell has been cutting them out, saving them here. There are dozens of them.

“APD responded to a check-in request on an elderly woman on Pine Street. The woman was well, and said she isn’t returning her son’s calls because she is mad at him.”

“APD responded with animal control when several callers reported a donkey walking down Main Street. Officers were able to harness the animal and locate the owner.”

“APD officers responded to a reported break-in at 58 West Elm. No evidence of a break-in was found. A kitchen window was left open and several stray cats had wandered into the home.”

I put the notebook back and turn to lie down.

Campbell’s eyes are open.

“Hey,” I say, and rest my head on the pillow. We can see each other over Juniper’s head. “I’m sorry. It fell open; I shouldn’t have read it.”

“It’s fine,” she says.

I reach over her and turn off the light.

“Campbell?” I ask the darkness. “Why do you keep them? The police reports.”

I know she’s just a few inches away from me, but it’s pitch-black in my room and she’s silent for a moment, and we aren’t touching. I reach out until the tips of my fingers graze her arm, to reassure myself that she’s right there and not a million miles away from me like it feels.

“One day we’ll be in there,” she says, and all of the little hairs on my arms stand up. “And it will either mean something really good happened, like his arrest, and we’re finally safe, or it’ll mean something really, really bad happened.”

There’s a flash of the crawl space in my mind. It feels like a premonition, and it makes me sick. I imagine the little block newspaper letters that I love so much betraying me, writing my obituary.

“It’ll be good, Campbell,” I say.

Too late.

She’s asleep.