MOST OF THE RESTAURANTS IN Ingot had already shut down in their sudden panic. Every one of them was haunted now, and few knew how to handle that. But Nell’s favorite burger place, the Tiny Diner, employed a chef from out of town. He remembered how to properly appease unhappy ovens, and the waitress knew to set an extra plate at every booth and table. The diner stayed open.
Rosa kind of liked this place. Every booth had its own personal jukebox bolted to the wall. Theirs sported a handwritten OUT OF ORDER sign, but it still hummed off-key to itself.
The food turned out to be decent. Not as good as the restaurants on Eat Street, two blocks south of Rosa’s old library in the city, but still decent. Both Rosa and Jasper neglected to chew and practically inhaled face-size burgers whole. Then they slurped milkshakes through thick straws.
Rosa elbowed her mother in the ribs.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“Nothing,” Rosa mumbled around the straw. Then she did it again, just to hear Mom protest again, just to make sure that she still could.
Nell insisted on paying the tab, and on walking Jasper home afterward. “I need to see how your folks are holding up,” she said. “I also need make certain that you don’t get stepped on by trees between here and there.”
Jasper was concerned about his parents, but not at all worried about walking trees. He waved at Rosa. “See you.”
“See you,” she said. “If your household spirits don’t let you sleep, try stacking a pile of pebbles under the bed. They like piles of pebbles. And I can come talk to them tomorrow.”
Jasper nodded. “Pebbles. Got it.”
He could have said more. He wanted to say more. We did it. We saved this place. Or maybe we didn’t save it, because everything is different now. I’m still glad. The town is dead. Long live the town. But he didn’t say any of it. He felt too stuffed full of burger and milkshake. Besides, he knew that Rosa understood.
The squire and the blacksmith walked away in the evening wisp light.
The two appeasement specialists went home to their library. They heard screaming along the way.
“Should we check in on that?” Rosa asked.
“Nope,” her mother said. “Bedtime. And those sounded like screams of annoyance to me. No danger. No distress. They can wait. We’ll have plenty of work to do in the morning.”
She sounded tired. But she did not sound weary, defeated, or in any way haunted, and her voice belonged to her own purposeful self.
Rosa took her mother’s hand and said nothing loudly.
Once home they moved the couch so as not to climb over it. Contagious yawns passed back and forth between them. Mom sprinkled a little sage into the kitchen sink to keep the garbage disposal from grumbling, and then she smiled and said good night as though the day had been ordinary.
Rosa closed her bedroom door.
She opened the curtains over her window mural and watched as a wind swayed the painted trees.
She listened to her bedspread, a quilt patched together from other, older blankets, as it murmured in mismatched fragments of lullabies and bedtime stories.
Her familiar belongings stirred inside cardboard boxes, remembering themselves.
“I’ll unpack tomorrow,” Rosa told them. “I promise.”