Lucinda pulled out the metallic tongue of the tape measure and walked it back from Ed to the wire rack of postcards that customers looked at but never bought. “Fifteen feet two, two and a half, inches,” she said and yawned.
She’d lain awake in bed all night thinking about the missing girl and her encounter with Jonah.
“Back up to the chicken wire rolls,” Ed said.
Lucinda let the tape go. It whipsawed and crackled, snapped into its case like a tin tongue into the serpent’s mouth.
“Ouch.” Ed sucked at his thumb where the tape caught him. “When’s the wrecking ball, anyway?”
Lucinda felt a tug of regret for her duplicity, for not coming clean with Ed about her possible absence for ten months and what that meant for the future of the place, if the place had a future at all for her, or anyone.
“We going to stay open while they renovate?” Ed said.
“If I even do it. I don’t know. If I even stay open at all.”
“That’s a bolt from the blue. I thought you were excited about the renovations. What is all this? What else are you going to do if not run this place?”
“I’m capable of more than this.”
“I meant, do you have something in mind or—”
“I got accepted, to a thing. A dig. In Newfoundland. But it’s a ten-month commitment. I’d need someone to manage the store, take over my role, while I’m away. You’ve been here a dozen years, I know that you’ve wanted more. I was thinking—”
“I’ve been thinking, too,” Ed said.
“That’s beyond your pay scale.”
“I might get my grandfather’s old workshop in working order.”
“Now that’s a bolt out of the blue,” Lucinda said.
“In my spare time,” Ed said, as if sensing her concern that she’d be left high and dry. “Just to see if I take to it.”
She knew this wasn’t true, even if Ed didn’t. He would leave the store and never look back when he found he was good at his grandfather’s craft of building custom Finnish hot tubs. “You’ll take to it,” Lucinda said.
“I’d still be able to try to help you out even if—”
“It’s not your responsibility.”
Ed grabbed a bottle of Moxie from the cooler, cracked it open. “He was famous for his hot tubs, my granddad,” Ed said. Lucinda was familiar with the story, but she did not interrupt. Ed was trying to redirect the conversation, and pride rang in his voice; good pride. Pride for someone else’s accomplishments. “He went to Finland. By ship. He was in Yankee magazine. LIFE. The Grocery still has the faded magazine spreads on a bulletin board.”
“I saw Jonah at the Grocery last night,” Lucinda said.
“Since when is he in town at night? And at the Grocery?”
“He looked horrible. A mess.”
“That’s breaking news.”
“I mean. Really sick,” Lucinda said. “His hand looked grotesque. So swollen it didn’t even look like a hand. Purple, blistered, and seeping a yellow fluid. A recluse spider bit him.”
“Jesus. That’s serious.”
“I told him to go see Vern and he swore he would; but I checked with Vern this morning and he hadn’t seen Jonah. I should have forced him.”
“You can’t force Jonah to do anything.”
The cowbell above the door clanked. Marnie from the Gas-n-Go strode in clapping her hands and blowing into them and knocking her boots together to clop off the snow, her face florid from the cold. She wiped at her runny nose.
“Greetings,” she said.
Ed took the tape measure from his pocket and played with the tape, pulling out a length and letting it snap back.
“I hoped to see you here,” Marnie said to Lucinda.
“Our haul of wood pellets is due in tomorrow if—”
“No, no. As deputy,” Marnie said. “I saw something strange last night. I was driving by that old abandoned place, by One Dollar Bridge, and I saw a light on inside.”
“Couldn’t be,” Ed said. “Place hasn’t had power since—”
“A flashlight,” Marnie said.
A light? In Jonah’s old place, Lucinda thought.
“Did you see anyone, the person using it?” Lucinda said.
“I wanted to stick around. But I was looking for my dog, Jelly Belly; she got loose and I was walking around looking for her. I saw it for certain. I came back to the house after I found Jelly Belly. She was over behind the Covered Bridge Diner, eating slop around the Dumpster, she likes all that fried food, like I don’t feed her enough already, but Jelly Belly she—”
“What was at the house when you got back?” Lucinda said.
“Nothing. The house was dark. But with this girl missing, and me not ever seeing a light on in that house in all these years. And just seeing that old guy in the Gas-n-Go recently.”
“Jonah was at the Gas-n-Go?” Lucinda said.
“I didn’t even know that’s who he was, until the boob tube at work aired an old piece about him, about his wife and daughter. I can’t believe anyone believes that about him. He’s always been respectful the few rare times he’s come in. Quiet. If nervous. Bought his tobacco and rolling papers, and crayons this time and—”
“Crayons?” Lucinda said.
“For something he’s building. He said crayons are cheaper than carpenter pencils.”
Outside, the town plow charged past on Main Street to heave a wave of snow onto the sidewalk.
“I just thought it was odd,” Marnie said, “and you might want to look into trespassers or whatever. I’d rather tell you than the sheriff. He kind of . . . I don’t know . . . creeps me out.”
Lucinda took her barn jacket from a wood peg by the door, pulled on a wool cap, and shoved off into the morning snow and cold.