Scrapped

Annie pulled her lasagna out of the oven while she listened to the football game in the living room. She took in the scent of oregano, garlic, and tomatoes. All her boys, including her husband, were planted in front of the television, watching football, even Sam, who was just four. She slid the pan back in. She’d give it another twenty minutes.

She sat back down at the kitchen table, where she thumbed through a huge book of ancient symbols. None of them seemed to match her carelessly drawn symbols from the drowned body. Was DeeAnn onto something? Was it a satanic ritual of sorts? Annie wanted to dismiss that, but she’d learned a long time ago not to rule anything out at the beginning of a story.

“You getting anywhere?” Mike asked as he walked into the room, tossed his beer bottle into the recycling bin, and opened the fridge for another.

“Not really,” she said and sighed. “These symbols look so strange. They must have a connection to the death.”

“Humph, maybe not. You know some of these young people are into carving themselves up. Cutting themselves. I don’t get it,” Mike said, then opened his bottle. The burp hissed into the air.

“I don’t think she could cut herself on the upper arm like that. She seemed to be very young,” Annie said. “Though it’s getting harder and harder for me to tell how old someone is, let alone someone dead in a river for God knows how long.”

“I hear ya,” he said and kissed her head, then left the room.

Just then the doorbell rang. It was Cookie, who was dropping off some new die cuts for Annie. Sheila’s new Cricut machine made die cuts, which the women were enjoying placing in their latest scrapbooks. Sheila just chose the design, plugged the cartridge in, and slid the paper or cardboard in, and out came a sheet of easily punched-out designs—hearts, spirals, and even Namaste symbols.

Annie was always working on at least one of her boys’ books, so she had plenty of cutout soccer balls and birthday cakes. But the croppers had spotted a Namaste symbol in one of the cartridges, and they all had asked for one, since Cookie had gotten them so into yoga and they were all working on a yoga scrapbook-journal project.

Annie heard the front door open, and her sons greeting Cookie with squeals, hugs, and kisses before she waltzed into the kitchen.

“Mmm. What are you making? It smells so good,” she said, arms full of paper bags.

“Lasagna. Why don’t you stay for dinner?”

“That sounds like an offer I can’t refuse,” Cookie said, placing her bags on the table. She fished around in one. “Here’s your Namaste. Isn’t it beautiful? I love the crimson you chose. It will look great on that beige page of yours.” She ran her thin, pale fingers over the rounded edges. “Look at that,” she said. “What a clean line.”

“It’s nice,” Annie said, not quite as enthusiastically. She was still distracted by the symbols. She loved the ancient Egyptian symbols. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to the page. “These symbols are so beautiful.”

“Oh yes, the scarab,” Cookie said, leaning over the table, her long black hair falling over her shoulders. “I have a necklace that has that symbol on it.”

“It means ‘spontaneous creation,’ or some such thing. Good luck and all that,” Cookie said and laughed. Annie loved the way she laughed, with no holds barred. “But what are you doing?”

Just then dark, curly-haired Ben came running into the kitchen. “Can I get some water?”

“Help yourself, baby,” Annie said. “You know where the cups are.”

He stood on the stool and rattled around in the cupboard until he found the perfect cup.

“I’m sorry. Where were we?” Annie said.

“What are you doing with this book?” Cookie said, leaning over it, her black hair falling on its white pages.

“I am trying to find a match for the symbols that were”—Annie lowered her voice—“carved into the drowned body.”

“Oh, can I see?” Cookie asked, her eyebrows lifting as she straightened herself.

“Sure,” Annie said, and slid the paper with her sketchings over to Cookie, whose green eyes lifted further.

“Runes,” she said.

“It looks to me like what you have here are rune symbols. You won’t find anything about them in this book of Eastern religious symbols. Runes are Germanic. I should say, originally Germanic. Then they traveled up through Britain and into Scandinavia, and each of those cultures gave them their own little twist.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Annie said and smiled.

“Some pagans are still using them for divination. I don’t know that much about them. Just what they are. I’ve seen them in shops and so on, but they never called out to me.”

“Oh,” Annie said, with one eye watching Ben get water from the refrigerator spout. “Where can I find out more?”

“Now, see, that’s going to be tricky,” Cookie said, sitting down at the table. “There’s a lot of stuff out there—even on the Internet. But what’s good information . . . I don’t know what to tell you. It pains me to say this, but a lot of pagans are just making stuff up—even the stuff that’s not supposed to be made up. Like claiming they know the true meaning of the runes . . . I mean, I think there are people who do. I can check around for you.”

“That would be great. I’ll look around, too,” Annie said.

Annie found Cookie intriguing. She never talked much about her past. When she was asked about it, she would say it wasn’t important. “I live in the present moment.” But she always knew the most obscure facts—like what a blue moon really was, or what herb to plant during what phase of the moon. And then there was the time she talked about quantum physics, which captured Beatrice’s heart—a woman who had studied physics, then quantum physics, her whole life.

But there was this other, commonsense, earth mama, good cook, and great friend part of Cookie, which was most endearing. In the year she’d lived in Cumberland Creek, she had immersed herself in several networks of people and had plenty of friends—especially the scrapbook club, the group of women who cropped every Saturday night come hell or high water. It had taken Annie a whole year of living in Cumberland Creek to find any kind of friendship. Cookie was just different, attracting people wherever she went. She oozed warmth.

“When will supper be ready?” Mike yelled over the football game.

“In a few minutes,” Annie yelled back. She looked at Cookie and frowned.

“What can I do to help?” Cookie said.