Lauren knocked on her aunt’s front door.
Sylvia opened the door and a bath of yellow light spilled onto the porch. “Oh, Lauren. I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“That’s all right.” Lauren followed Sylvia into the house. “If you’re too tired, we don’t have to do this tonight.”
“No, I’m not tired. And you need to know where things stand with the fair.” Sylvia swept her gray-speckled hair off her forehead.
“I’m still hoping for good news.”
“We have to be prepared. You have a job to do.”
“I’m mostly just trying to keep busy. If I sit around and think about things. . .well, you know.”
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting. You walked all the way out here only to go back into town.”
“I wanted to walk anyway.” Lauren dropped her pepper spray into her bag. She had never needed it, but it was the only thing that gave her mother—and her aunt—peace of mind about her nocturnal wanderings.
“I got distracted,” Sylvia said. “Nana and I decided she should stay here tonight.”
“Nana is still here?”
“She’s already been asleep for an hour and a half.” Sylvia rescued a pair of shoes from under the ottoman.
“Is it all right to leave her?” Lauren wondered what Emma would do if she woke in a bedroom not her own.
“She won’t rouse,” Sylvia said, “and we won’t be long. We’ll take a quick look in the shop and I’ll run you home.”
“Can I look in on her?”
“Of course. Just don’t wake her.”
“I won’t.” Lauren dropped her bag into an easy chair and padded down the hall to the guest room. She turned the knob with extra care and pushed gently on the door. As a girl she had stayed in this room enough times herself to know precisely how long the door would stick before popping open and the degree of pressure needed to avoid a sudden sound.
Emma was turned on her left side, her face toward the dim light from the hall and one arm splayed across the quilt tucked over her torso. Thirty years earlier, Emma had hand-stitched the double wedding ring pattern. These days she was likely to say she had given up quilting because she ran out of scraps long ago. Lauren was grateful to have at her apartment both the quilt Emma made when Lauren was a baby and her grandmother’s final creation, a tulip field in greens and yellows.
The day had been restless and wearing. Had Emma felt the tension Sylvia carried? If she had, she successfully released it when it was time to sleep. Her chest rose and fell in a gentle, unperturbed rhythm of a slumber Lauren envied. With slow steps, Lauren crossed from the door to the bed to give Emma the butterfly kiss they had always shared, brushing her eyelashes across Emma’s cheek three times.
When Lauren returned to the living room, she found Sylvia’s feet clad and a light jacket over her shoulders.
“Ready?” Sylvia said.
Lauren picked up her bag, and they went out through the kitchen to Sylvia’s red Ford Taurus.
“You know my offer to teach you to drive is open-ended.” Sylvia closed the driver door and reached for her seatbelt.
Lauren laughed. “If I learn to drive, people will think it even more odd that I prefer to walk or bike.”
Sylvia smiled. They pulled out of the driveway in silence.
“Did Nana ever tell you the story she had on her mind this morning?” Lauren flipped up the visor, unnecessary in the nearly moonless night.
“She tried,” Sylvia said. “It was disjointed, but it doesn’t matter. I think focusing on the story was her way of trying to make sense of things. That’s what we’re all trying to do today, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“She just wanted someone to listen to her. And at least I did that much right today.”
They were on the highway now. The turnoff to Main Street was only a mile away.
“So,” Lauren said, “nothing new from Officer Elliott?”
Sylvia glanced over at her. “You do know that his thorough questioning was only because he wants to help Quinn as much as we do.”
Lauren raised both hands under the lenses of her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“This morning feels like another day. Last night feels like another year.”
“With every ounce of mayoral authority I could muster, I firmly instructed Cooper to call me if he had the slightest movement on the case.”
“The case,” Lauren echoed. “I don’t like talking about Quinn as a case.”
“I know.” Sylvia turned on her left signal and prepared for the maneuver.
“I’ve been wracking my brain all day trying to think what kind of emergency he could have had.” Lauren’s voice broke. “And then when I think how things went from bad to worse, I start to feel frantic.”
Sylvia eased onto Main Street. Lauren tracked the rows of irregular lights and signs. This far out of downtown, the buildings were gas stations, repair shops, a lumberyard, a tackle shop—the kinds of businesses a community needed but not the sorts of structures with the charm of downtown.
“I have a set of devotional books you might want,” Sylvia said, “and a set of candle stands. People always seem to be interested in nice picture frames, too. Maybe a clock.”
“I appreciate your willingness to donate.” Lauren lifted her heels in nervous tempo against the floor mat. “I don’t want the silent auction to be ostentatious, but it might raise a little bit of money for the women’s shelter in Birch Bend.”
“We’ll have a look around. I can always donate whatever you think will get a good contribution.”
“I know you want to get home to Nana,” Lauren said. “We’ll make it quick.”
Sylvia parked directly in front of the store on Main Street. On a Sunday evening, few businesses were open. Out of habit, Lauren glanced down the street toward the building where she lived.
In tandem they slammed their car doors. Sylvia put her key in the shop door and led the way in.
Lauren heard her aunt’s gasp. “What is it?”
Sylvia grasped for the light switch, and the rank of fluorescent lights flickered on and began to buzz.
Lauren’s stomach flipped. She liked to think she knew the store’s arrangement nearly as well as Sylvia, but the disarray and breakage they faced now was so thorough it was impossible to discern what was missing. She fumbled for her phone and punched 911.